Last week’s buying task saw Laura bite the dust, while Liz and Stella went MANO A MANO in the house.

Patented Early Morning Phone Call comes to Jamie, and they’re off to Wandsworth. The Bus Garage, and not the prison. Lord Sugar meets the teams, like Darth Vader addressing the Stormtroopers.

The teams will be running an open-top bus tour to show off the sights of London.

Stuart and Joanna swap teams, one of which might be called “Apollo”. That’s project manager Stu, Liz and Stella (“Team Oestrogen”) against project manager Jo, Jamie and Chris (“Team Testoserone”).

Stella suggests an awfentic Cockney tour, while Jamie goes for a Ghost and Ghoul tour. Who wants to do that on a sunny afternoon? Liz upsets a Jellied Eel seller by asking him to act Cockney. The guy looks like he’s just arrived from Krakov. He stares at her. Like, really stares. STARES.

Baggsy sells the authentic experience to Liz: Roads full of bin bags, run-down buildings and the smell of piss. Actually, the smell might just be Stuart.

Jo and Jamie pick anything they can to bicker and argue about. Nick peers on with the vague distaste of someone who’s realised that the man getting off the train had farted. Stuart thinks that the higher the price, the more they’ll impress Lordal. Sell ‘em for a million quid a pop then. His price, £35 PER ADULT, makes a Tourist Information fella actually laugh out loud.

Chris goes to the same fella, and offers him 20% of all sales revenue. That’s not just on the tickets sold in the Tourist Information place, that’s on EVERYTHING. You massive, massive twat. You twatty, twatty twat. My parents are out of the country, so they won’t read this and tell me off for swearing next time they call.

Inexplicably, Liz sells the £35 tickets really well. Stella has been practising her speech for the tour. She forgets Nelson’s first name. This’ll go just fine.

Stella greets the tour, and she’s more wooden than a, er, table made out of wood. Jamie gives his team’s tour, and just makes things up.

Baggsy’s sales technique is to wait for Jo to get a customer, and then run over shouting “WE’RE FOUR POUNDS CHEAPER” like an insane witch from a fairytale. He then stands outside the tourist information centre that rejected him, and begs the owner to arrest him when she tells him to get off the pavement. He’s a one-man annoyance-factory.

Of all the places the teams could be in London, they find the same ten yards in Trafalgar Square. “Stuart, seriously, fuck off”, says Chris, finally, after Stuart annoys a customer out of a deal with the other team. After baiting Chris to hit him, he then chides (that’s right, chides) Chris for being unprofessional. Baggsy. Amazing.

Stella gets lost on the walking part of the tour, after meeting an improbably dressed Pearly King. Or, if you will “a mad, drunk tramp”. Only eight people turn up for the second tour. She’s mocked by a man with bad teeth. She starts a sing-a-long, that misses the a-long. She can’t tell the difference between Banksy and “ordinary graffiti”.

Jamie’s last tour also misses the “a-long”, as nobody is booked in. The visitor’s centre get 20% of everything, despite not making them any bookings. Oh, Chris, you are so fucked, son. Liz, Stu and Stella fill their last bus, and keep 100% of the money.

THE BOARDROOM

Nick praises Jamie’s tour, but it’s all about Chris’s fuck up with the 20%. Alan’s not happy with Jo trying to renegotiate it. Chris and Baggsy patch up their differences.

£834.30 profit for Team Baggs, while Team Jo made over a grand. Even with the 20% off. Their treat is a flight (ooooooh!) to Jersey (oh). Chris, Chris, Chris. This is the best escape since Elisabeth Fritzl.

Stuart, as Project Manager, reckons that they’re all equally to blame. They’re not. Liz did alright. Stella was a muppet. Stuart’s just a cock. In the boardroom, there are arguments over the deal they didn’t cut with the Tourist Information place. The other team’s offer was so ridiculously good, they couldn’t compete.

Alan berates Stella for wanting to provide rubbish things like “customer service” and “making the people who paid, happy”. Stuart sold less than Liz, and didn’t have a price strategy. This is one of those times that in his own business, he’d just wing it. And he can’t wing it here.

Hewer casually points out that they could fire two. Unfortunately, tomorrow night (or tonight, or a Thursday night a few weeks back, depending on when you read this), there’s a show called “The Apprentice Final Five”. So, er, there’ll be one fired, then.

Stuart makes some bullshit points about working 24/7 to make Al millions. Is he a one trick pony? “I’ve got a field of ponies that are literally running towards this.” Cock. Liz and Stella give slightly more professional pitches. Pitches. Ugh. “There’s 60 million people in this country, one of them is bound to shine through”, begs Baggs.

Stella almost gets praised for improving over the weeks. Alan offers “beddy byes” for Stuart. It is the tenth date, after all. Alan fingers Liz, and she’s… FIRED.

Fucksocks.

Stuart hugs her goodbye, a final memory for his Wank Bank. God, Alan thinks Stuart is his Mini-Me. God, he is.

Ooh, next week it’s the Interview episode. All Alan’s mates get to make them look like idiots for an inconsistency that a researcher has been digging out of their CV for the past six months.

Comments

1. Tim says:

   December 9, 2010 at 9:23 am

   I’ve been saying for several weeks that Liz was not as strong a contender as most people seemed to think. But I also wonder if Sugar already knew that Liz was a football WAG – he had previously made comments about Bond Street and her knowing the price of Versace – and didn’t want the embarrassment of having a winner who promptly quit to front yet another WAG-related reality show.

   Although Stuart (not for the first time) yet again stole the show, Jamie enjoyed his best week of the series. I’ll give him credit – learning to be a tour guide in a day is seriously difficult, but he did come out with a series of unintentional gems.

   “The river Thames is literally drenched in history. It’s the second largest river in London.”

   “Straight ahead of you we’ve got Big Ben. The face of the clock is 20 diameters in width.”

   “I think it’s only fair we start talking about Westminster Abbey because once again this is an incredibly important part of England’s history. So you can go there and, well, it’s a church.”

   “You see the building which looks like a gherkin? It’s called the ‘Gherkin’ because it looks like a gherkin.”

   All in all, it was a magical episode for candidate soundbites. I’ve captured the best of them and more in my episode recap at http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2010/12/09/tourists-taken-for-a-ride-as-the-apprentice-does-on-the-buses/

   It’s the return of Margaret next week, for a once-only, sold-out show. Hurrah!

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