The Apprentice Week 7

Thanks to some very strange scheduling on BBC Scotland (who cares about England International football now?) this week’s installment was shown at 11:20-12:20pm. Not being prepared to wait up until the small hours but eager to see the latest disaster I used Sky’s broadcast of the BBC regions on their more obscure channels (BBC2 Northern Ireland Channel 962 to be precise) to watch the program at the normal 9pm time.

The teams were once again mixed up. Sir Alan decided that the fighting between Paul and Saria was too much and that they should be separated. Paul and Saria then picked their team just like the old schooldays (where I was usually the second last to be picked) this time it was Miriam who was last to be picked but put in a very strong performance and must now be considered a serious contender.

James and Ben volunteered to be the respective project leaders for the week in which the task was to negotiate auction prizes to be donated by ten celebrities. The first task was for the teams to select five celebs each and then head off to meet and see what goodies they could extract for the charity auction to benefit the Hackney Empire.

Ben’s team of Paul, Miriam and Timothy worked very well together and managed to secure some amazing items from their selected celebs. The best deal must surely have been Dermot Gavin’s Suzuki Motorbike, an amazing prize. They used Miriam’s charms to sweet talk Michael Winner and she was used again to rescue a very sticky situation when Timothy offended Ian Wright. Miriam’s performance last week as project leader and this week have elevated her to the forefront.

James’ team of Saria, Raj and Sebastian were very poor right from the outset. James has been a consistently strong performer up to this point but came of the rails spectacularly. To be fair Saria picked the three team members leaving him with not much to work with. Saria is a clueless, lying back stabbing witch, Sebastian is a bit off a toff and keeps himself out of the spotlight and Raj is now the weakest of the remaining contestants. They didn’t negotiate hard enough and walked away with prizes, which paled when compared with the opposition.

The outcome was obvious and Ben’s team trounced them at the auction. At the Boardroom meeting Sir Alan seemed to think that Saria had performed well while the other three had let her down. This wasn’t the case - they were all very poor. I do hope that Sir Alan doesn’t see Saria as a contender as this will be a big mistake. James selected Sebastian and Raj to accompany him into the meeting where Sir Alan would decide who was to be sacked.

I have a theory that Sir Alan is working to his own game plan. By rights he should have sacked the consistently weak Raj but he gave Sebastian the bullet the first time he was up for termination. I think Sir Alan takes the opportunity to weed out those he knows he isn’t interested in at the earliest opportunity. He knows that Raj will be up before him again but couldn’t be sure as to when Sebastian may reappear. I think the same thing happened the week he got rid of Matthew and last week’s termination of Laura. Hopefully he knows that Saria is useless and that she will be up for sacking on a regular basis. If Raj is in the losing team next week he will almost certainly go, quickly followed by Saria and then Paul I think. James needs to improve considerably to rescue himself and could also be vulnerable next week depending on which team loses.

Wednesday BBC2 9pm.

Category:

• TV
• Apprentice