Hey everyone, below is my review of the fourth episode of The Apprentice!
At the beginning of this episode, we found out that there were 7 candidates on each team. For Team Infinity, Bradley, Avi, Dani, Shazia, Simba, Rochelle and Joe, and Team Apex was Victoria, Megan, Reece, Denisha, Mark, Marnie and Sohail. In Team Infinity, Bradley, Simba and Shazia wanted to put themselves forward for being the project manager, with Bradley saying that if there was a vote, he would vote for Simba. In the challenge, the candidates had to search Brighton & Hove to find a variety of items; including a barometer, a puppet, a lace frontal (ombre) and a palourde. Joe thought that ‘palourde’ was maybe something to do with fish, with Rochelle stating that the 1974 winning song as a vinyl must be a rare record. From Team Apex, Marnie said that ‘vinyl 45’ must have a particular meaning, with Mark saying that a sahara rose might not be a rose, as they do not grow in deserts.
Dani said that there seemed to be 4 main categories of items to look for, and suggested that they started out as far from the centre as possible and worked their way in. Tim added that it was a great idea, but a shame that it wasn’t the project managers. For Denisha’s team, she was thinking of sending everyone to the BN1 and BN2 postcodes as that’s where she saw the most shops that could have the items they were looking for. Simba chose Shazia and Brad for his sub team, with Denisha choosing Sohail and Reece. Some of the girls on Denisha’s team suggested that she have another person on the main team as it means more brains, with Victoria adding that the team with the most people had the least items to look for, and the team with the fewest people had the most items.
Shazia explained to her subteam that the truggery was quite far away, with Bradley reminding Simba of the plan, to start far away first and then work their way into the centre. Sohail and Reece were both sharing duties on the phone where Reece was supposedly told that the sahara desert rose was a ‘thistle’ (when actually they had said fossil, and he misheard what they said on the phone through the panic). Mark and his sub team of Megan, Victoria and Marnie had their first item successfully bought, when Mark decided to take the lead and build rapport with the shop owner, collecting the record for £1.50. Victoria and Megas agreed that if someone is going to take charge of the deal, they need to be allowed to do the negotiations. On the other team, Rochelle and Avi were going head to head with their real life sculpture deal, with Rochelle being able to bring the price just under £100 and Avi swooping in and asking for £80 (which the seller wasn’t happy with). The final price was £120 and a cup of tea with a mould of Joe’s teeth. Sohail, Reece and Denisha were still on the lookout for a Sahara desert rose, when Reece spotted an Indian restaurant with the same name, and Denisha shrugged the idea off. Dani also made a successful deal with the asparagus spears by suggesting they go to the farm where they are organically grown, rather than in the shop, but Avi suggested that due to them running out of time, it would be easier for them to buy what was available at the store.
Mark and his team decided to go into a local store to try and find a barometer, asked several questions to see if the owner knew anything about a trug, barometer or palourde and they were disappointed with the result. Marnie thought that palourde could have been something to do with leather or furniture. Shazia was in charge of buying the vinyl record and instead of asking for the price, she offered £3.50 and then tried to backtrack on her offer. They ended up paying 70p more than the other team, and she said ‘it was a great end result’. Denisha managed to get a sale of £27.50 on the wig (almost half the price of the other team!) and Megan, Mark, Victoria and Marnie couldn’t find a barometer at the flea market, but picked up an incorrect trug. Reece thought he was chasing a seller of fresh asparagus and was told to come to the venue at 2.30pm, and it was over to Rochelle and Joe who almost started outbidding each other when it came to the sale of the wig, with Joe asking for £100 and Rochelle almost bringing the seller down to £97.50, hoping that the extra £2.50 they paid wouldn’t be the difference between them winning and losing the task. It was Sohail that got a real life sculpture of his belly button and Mark had a successful sale on the barometer by managing to knock off £4 of the asking price, as it was the other team who had asked seller Rachel to put the item on hold for 30 minutes. Megan asked if she was able to put their trug on hold and Marnie was disappointed that Mark only managed to bring the price down by £4, saying she could have done better. Simba, Shazia and Bradley were given the bad news that the barometer was sold to another group of young professionals in suits and luckily there was a spare available, and although it wasn’t a nautical barometer, they decided to purchase it anyway. They asked seller Rachel what ‘palourde’ was, and she said it sounded fish themed.
Reece had discovered that the asparagus they went to go and collect was not in fact fresh, and had already been out for 1 or 2 days, so they decided not to purchase this item, with Denisha’s team finally working out that ‘palourde; was a fish, and Joe adding that he mentioned this at the beginning of the day. Whilst walking past some random shops, Dani asked if they had any Sahara desert rose and she was able to bag that item for a very cheap price, and we saw Mark carrying Victoria along with the rest of the candidates, running towards the end of Brighton pier before the time was up. Reece explained that if his team lost, it was due to the lack of strategy, and Simba said that they were not able to get their last two items.
In the boardroom, Team Apex led by Denisha, were grilled at the fact that 12 different florists had told them that Sahara desert rose was not a flower, with Reece saying that he misheard the person on the phone saying ‘thistle’ instead of ‘fossil’. Baroness Brady also pointed out that nobody had said that the asparagus was fresh, and Sohail took one for the team by getting his belly button moulded into a sculpture. The girls spoke about how Mark jumped in on Victoria’s negotiation with the realisation that the seller would have gone down to 70p, from the £1.50 that they agreed on. Baroness Brady also said that the sub team didn’t realise that they had walked past one of the items in the flea market, and they didn’t make use of the phone calls to the stores or contacts that were available.
For Team Infinity led by Simba, Lord Sugar praised them for heading to the ‘Sussex Trug Store’ which sold the exact item he was looking for, managing to get the sale from £25 to £12. Shazia explained that she took a lead on the vinyl negotiation but offered a price before finding out the selling price, with Bradley jumping in to say that they should have been given the price first, before offering any money. Joe highlighted the fact that Avi kept offering £80 for the sculpture of Joe’s lips and Rochelle said that the bidder was not going to go down in price, but it seemed like they were both talking over each other. In the end Team Infinity managed to get 6 of the 9 items, spending £277, but having spent money on the wrong item, they had £150 worth of fines, giving them a total of £452.89. For Team Apex, they only managed to get 5 of the 9 items, spending £311.50, but also got £200 of fines for getting the wrong items and missing others, giving them a total spend of %11.50, meaning Team Infinity won this challenge! Their prize was to head off to see ‘Only Fools And Horses’ on stage where Bradley showed off with some of his funny one-liners. Avi said that his team won the challenge because his sub team got 4 of the 4 items, and Dani said that SImba was a good project manager.
Denisha said that her sub team only managed to get 2 of the 4 items, with Marnie saying that the main team were messing around with trying to find asparagus spears. Reece added that he felt like the subteam not being on the phone was a big contributor to the failure of the task. Denisha explained to Lord Sugar that she had guided items for each of the teams and spoke to who was on each team, with Victoria jumping in to say that they were given the items they knew nothing about, Denisha adding that they should have got the trug. Mark explained that you create your own chances, but Baroness Brady responded by saying you spent £69.50 on the wrong trug. Sohail also explained that there was a lot of phone snatching by Reece when doing the phone calls.
In the end, Denisha brought in Reece and Mark. Lord Sugar and his team said that Denisha didn’t prove herself as a project manager, Reece was asking lots of the right questions but not listening to the answers, and Mark only went within a radius of 500 m which is why they only got half of the items they needed. Denisha explained to Lord Sugar that calling the suppliers and contacts was frantic, Reece was asked what he actually did in the challenge, to which he replied that he was on the phone, was involved in the logistics and also did a deal. Mark fought back the idea of using the phone by saying that if he knows there is a street with 6 vinyl shops, he’s not going to waste time calling them up, when he can just quickly pop into each one to see if they had the product that was needed. After leaving the process, Denisha said ‘I’ve got so much more to do in business’ so let’s see if we hear her name anytime soon!
Click here for my video review!
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