Ordinary Gweilo

In week 7 of The Apprentice (the Alan Sugar one), hapless Adam was desperately seeking Nigella seeds. 

I had no idea about Nigella seeds either, but Google does.  Apparently it is against the rules to use the Internet, but surely if you called someone you know who has a computer, they could check and give you the information, couldn’t they?   

Unfortunately Adam’s first idea was that they were something to do with astroturf, and his next stab in the dark had him in a Chinese medicine shop.  No luck there, and the day was almost over before he found the importer and made the crucial discovery that you might find them sprinkled on Naan bread – rather than on a football pitch. 

The importers were in Stanstead, but evil witch Katie refused to go all that way to buy them, and somehow Adam failed to find an Asian cash and carry any nearer, though Alan Sugar claimed there was one less than 10 minutes away.

He then (rather pointedly, I have to say) enquired why they hadn’t asked the importer for a list of local stockists, and Adam claimed that they had asked, but been refused this information.  Sugar found this very hard to believe, and Ghazal (who had made the call) admitted that she hadn’t asked the question, so that was the end of that little deception.  So no Nigella seeds, and an £80 fine.  Remarkably, they still only lost by 97p, but Adam was still fired.   

The previous week, Paul’s downfall had also been a cash and carry, though his problem was that he couldn’t resist buying £300 worth of English cheese.  Horrible English cheese.  To sell in France, where they know a thing or two about cheese.

The task was to sell the ‘Best of British food’ on a market stall in France, and the teams had been given a list of high quality suppliers to choose from.  Selling English cheese in France is obviously a bit of a challenge, but you might stand a chance if you had good quality Stilton or one of the other traditionally-made cheeses.  Buying huge slabs of mass-produced cheese from a cash and carry was never going to work, but that was what Paul decided to do. 

Their other product was sausages.  Someone correctly pointed out to Paul that the best (maybe the only) chance of selling them was to have samples for people to taste, but he tried to save a few £££’s by using an old trick he had learnt in the army to cook them using an old baked bean can.  It didn’t work, and without samples no-one wanted to buy (it can’t have helped that the packaging was extremely basic and unattractive). 

Kristina did eventually take the initiative to find a kitchen they could use to cook some sausages, and then they started to sell some, but it was far too late.  Meanwhile, Paul and the evil witch were trying to sell the sausages at cost price to local shop-keepers, including a Halal kebab shop.  No luck there, funnily enough.

Did I mention that Paul and Katie seem to be a couple?  Sugar doesn’t approve, and both get embarrassed when it is mentioned, so it’s not helping them.  After Paul was fired, Katie seemed determined to get revenge on Adam for mentioning it in the boardroom, and this must have been a factor in her refusal to go to Stanstead for those Nigella chips.  However, she didn’t do herself any favours in the boardroom, and once the ineffective Ghazal has gone, I think she might be next out.

By a curious coincidence, the 6th season of the original Appentice (currently showing on TVB Pearl) also features a romance, and once again it really isn’t helping the couple involved (Tim & Nicole) – though Trump came over all avuncular and seems to want to know all about it (and I suspect he can see the marketing possibilities of an Apprentice wedding). 

The problem for Tim is that his team-mates can (and, in fact, do) accuse him of being disloyal and passing on their secrets to Nicole.  Whether it’s true or not, it’s a perfect excuse to attack him, and Trump seems only to happy to go along with it.  So, although Tim probably didn’t deserve to be fired, it really was his own stupid fault.

Finally, and back to the UK version, in week 5 Adam’s team made lollipops to sell in London Zoo.  They decided that it was a good idea to use natural colours, but somewhere along the way they ended up with a product with almost every additive known to man.  Having labelled them as ‘Natural Orange Lollies" in spite of all the E numbers, they were told that they would have to explain to each customer that they, er, weren’t natural at all.  Brilliant.  They lost.