Lord Sugartits still isn’t looking for a friend or a dog or Lord Lucan. Though to be fair he’d have a better chance of finding Lucan than the amazing BLADDY BIZNISS mind that he seems to think he’s going to find. Anyway, last week, Bilyana managed to talk her way out of a job and got fired.

5.30am is apparently a thing not that any of this lot seem to know. They’ve been summoned to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The girls are busy bitching about how the boys think they’re better than them. Well, they are so far because they won last week. After a brief history lesson from Lord Sugartits, he reveals that the task this week is to design something. A gadget. He doesn’t bladdy care what it is or what it does, just make some bladdy money. More specifically they have to design a homeware thing.

Irish Jane claims that she invents products. She makes soup. That’s her pitch to be project manager. Quiet Katie just says it’s up her alley. My bins are up my alley so what does that tell you? Katie doesn’t have anything more to add so Jane is voted in even though she says “gen-you-wine-ly” instead of genuinely.

Azhar is voted project manager for the boys. Apparently he thinks people call him a “killer whale of the sea world”. Where else do you find killer whales? And what’s he doing in Sea World? The boys briefly debate which room of the house to invent something for. They dismiss the bathroom as there’s not a lot that can be done in there. The girls seem to think there’s loads of things in the bathroom that need a gadget. They have no ideas though.

The boys struggle with recycling, so decide to invent something that has different compartments to recycle things and compact them. So, a bin then. Fruit and veg man Adam doesn’t like the idea of a bin. He thinks rubber gloves that double as a pan scourer is a better idea. None of them have ever been in a kitchen have they?

At least they have ideas though. The girls still have no ideas. Apart from a splash screen to stop kids splashing water on the floor and a cushion to cover the taps so you can put your feet up in the bath. I can’t even…. They go to speak to some Netmums because if they don’t approve it, no one does. They don’t like the idea of the splash screen, pointing out that it’s only water and therefore not the mess that Scottish Laura thinks it is. They do like the idea of the tap cosy though proving that people will buy any old tat for Christmas presents for people they don’t like.

There’s only two hours to design everything so the girls are still fussing about what they’re actually doing. The boys seem to be intent on making both the bin and the rubber gloves. Except that Azhar and the bin team think the bin is the way forward so they’re going with that.

Northern Jenna has decided that they should do the splash screen and Jane has gone with it. Silly girls, didn’t they listen to the Netmums? Quiet Katie is silently fuming that all her hard work has been dismissed. At least she’s not whining like the boys whose feelings have been hurt. Boohoo.

The bin arrives and Azhar thinks it’ll sell because it looks like an espresso machine. The splash guard arrives for the girls and they test it out. Turns out it doesn’t stop water splashing on the floor but they all think it’s amazing.

On the way to pitch to Amazon, they do some sums on the back of an envelope and decide that they should pitch one million units to each retailer based on various margin percentages. Actual BLADDY BIZNISS. Except they have no idea what things like “gross profit” mean or how much they’re selling things for or how to add things up. Quiet Katie points out that pitching one million units amounts to a £9 million order. Jenna doesn’t seem to think this is incorrect or ridiculous.

The boys start pitching their composter bin. According to them, 72% of people actually cook at home. Amazing. Who knew? Chinless wonder Steve does a fairly good job of pitching before Duane, who came up with the idea, bursts out with how much he loves it.

Jenna is still trying to work out figures while Jane sits back and does nothing. Gobby Maria yells that they only need to pitch it and get the orders. Scottish Laura, who hates water, pitches to Lakeland. They ask about cost price. Jenna witters about units before Katie steps in and deciphers it so people can understand. Lakeland Man points out that kids could just draw on the bath with the crayons and make more mess than just water on the floor which isn’t even a mess.

The boys are up next with their composter bin which Lakeland customers would totally want. We know the pitch went well because we barely see any of it.

And so, to the boardroom. Lord Sugartits ain’t bladdy impressed with the splash guard. He asks if they had any other ideas. Katie throws in a grenade and says the tap cushion won when it came to the market research. Then Lord Sugartits pretty much laughs in their faces at pitching one million units. Bladdy fools.

Half the boys are still pouting about the rubber glove idea being dismissed. Lord Sugartits isn’t into bladdy composting so he doesn’t get it. He’s also not impressed by the boys not pulling together.

Onto the figures. Karrrrrrren says she cringed the whole way through the girls’ Amazon pitch and is amazed they ordered 7,500. Lakeland hated it though and ordered none.

But what about the boys? Well, Amazon aren’t into composting either so they only ordered 3,000. Lakeland bladdy loved it though and ordered 10,000 meaning they won by 5,500 orders.  Again, a quite substantial margin. They win dinner at The Ivy – Swankydoodledandy.

In The Cafe Of Doom, the girls still seem to think that they did a good job. What fools. Jane thinks Katie just stood around bitching, conveniently ignoring that she had the good idea and understood that the figures were mental. Back in the boardroom, Lord Sugartits points out that the product was rubbish. Laura admits it was her idea. Karrrrren points out they had no ideas. Jenna and Gabrielle now have to defend their sub GSCE standard maths skills where Jenna admits she’s not very good at figures. Yeah, we kinda got that. Maria is busy rolling her purple eyeshadow eyes all over the place about being accused of falling asleep in the car. There’s shrieking until Lord Sugartits breaks out the diabolical. Jane decides to bring back Maria and Jenna.

Karrrrren diplomatically says Maria has energy while Nick tells it like it is and declares “she is just a very noisy young woman.” Quite. Jenna thinks Katie should be there instead of her and Jane agrees but says she bought Jenna back because she thought that was what Lord Sugartits wanted. Maria’s main issue was that she fell asleep in the car. I fall asleep in cars so I have some sympathy with her there.

Jane tries to claim her business is amazing before being shot down in flames by Lord Sugartits who points out that she can’t be that good because she ballsed up so badly. In fact, he can’t bladdy believe any of them have their own businesses. Jane and Jenna are ganging up on Maria who isn’t helping her cause by not having contributed anything to the task and so Maria, with her crazy purple eyeshadow, is fired.

But he isn’t done yet. Oh no. He makes out like he’s going to fire Jenna and Jane too but even though he’s disappointed in them, he sends them back to the house. Lucky them. No one back at the house can believe that Jenna survived. Neither can I to be honest.

Next week, our hapless bunch of fools get to make condiments. Tasty.

Comments

1. Tim says:

   March 29, 2012 at 2:09 pm

   This was one of those episodes when I really, really wished Sugar had just said “to hell with it” and fired all three of them. How can seven businesswomen not sort out margins properly? (Jenna actually meant ‘mark-up’, not margin – two very different numbers.) And on what planet were they when they thought Amazon would ever place an initial order for 1m units of a product which only has a maximum sales potential of 2-3m? (I’ve done the maths over on my blog to illustrate just how mad this was …)

   http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2012/03/29/the-apprentice-season-8-episode-2-household-gadget/

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