The Apprentice 6 – Preview

Let’s hope that Kaen’s got over that narcolepsy.

Alex Epstein : Oh goody. We’re starting off with a self-described “maverick”. He’s not just any Unemployed Head of Communications, he thinks outside the box! He mixes his Super-Noodles in with his Discovery Fajita mix! WHAT A MAVERICK! His website profile also indicates that he believes he thought of the Bendy Bus before it even happened. Given how the entire London political scene has for the past five hinged on the Bendy Bus, I’m only glad that he didn’t put his thoughts into action, as putting such a political nuclear weapon in the hands of such a maverick would only have been asking for disaster. In that alternative future I would imagine London would just be a smoking crater with him sat driving around it in a giant Bendy Bus, cackling madly, squinting his slightly wonky eye at any skeleton that looked at him funny. In his video he announces that he has a business nous. I originally thought he said “business mouse” and was about to get it out and talk to it. I don’t think it’s underestimating his mental potential that I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Mental Potential Score : 9

Chris Bates : Ladies and gentlemen, may I present your totty for the series. It’s not exactly a vintage calibre, compared to the golden age of Series 4 (truly something for everybody there – Alex for the fans of male models, Lee for the fans of male models with bad skin, Simon for the daddy/bear lovers, Ian for the Hitler Youth, Raef for the mentally ill, Michael Sophocles for that person who found this blog by Googling “Michael Sophocles – come on my face”) but he’ll do. He’s an Investment Banker and wants to set himself up as the head of a pharmaceuticals company, which I think makes him the closest to pure evil we’ve ever seen on the show (apart from Jenny Celery who actually was Satan, and so doesn’t count), and his barking in his video about how he wants to be recognised universally as the pinnacle of excellence doesn’t detract from that impression. He wants to be the SI unit of excellence. The most excellent you can be is 1 ChrisBates. It’s only a matter of time.

Mental Potential Score : 7.5

Christopher Farrell : I wonder how they decided who would be Chris and who would be Christopher. Did they fight naked in front of a giant roaring fire a la Women In Love? Women of course just did things the civilised way and took a surname initial (as in Jenny C and Jenny M), probably because any naked wrestling in front of a giant roaring fire would force Nick to add to his limited range of facial expressions, which would probably break him. Or maybe a Chris evolves into a Christopher a la Pokemon. Christopher is an ex army-man, and I think we all know what that means with regards to this show. He assures us that he has “been to the other side” where his friends lost their legs. Which sounds to me like a particularly vicious episode of Ant n Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. This experience has left him “cool and collective(sic)”, unable to form lasting relationships with women, and also apparently with kicking and being kicked up the backside. Ah, an army education. I can’t wait to see him screaming into an empty baked-bean tin.

Mental Potential Score : 6

Dan Harris : Oh good. He’s wearing sunglasses on his forehead. For no conceivable reason. Between this and his immediately stating that strong women intimidate him (not that that hurt Kate Walsh last year) we are off to a FLYER. Outside of that, he doesn’t come across too badly sadly – mostly a composite of all the more mediocre bits of James Max and James McQuillan. Including the propensity for business waffle, like claiming his success is down to

a) Ego-strength
b) Ego-drive
c) Empathy
d) Pianist’s fingers
e) Drinking the jizz of a pirate every day

Well, except those last two. His mental potential score was low until the part of the video when he talked about how his entire family has rejected his values, although not, but they totally have. Maybe it was being a Nazi in Saving Private Ryan that did it. Maybe they get confused between reality and pretend, like most of the candidates on this show.

Mental Potential Score : 3

Jamie Lester : Every series there’s somebody so wonderfully inept that the show doesn’t even wait until the start of the first episode before they start giggling at them. It’s like a giddy rush to let you know just what a numpty they are. In Series 2 it was Jo Cameron being described as “a huamn car-crash waiting to happen”. Now it’s Jamie Lester, an ex-estate agent, whose audition interview is described as being full of “seminal truisms” and which has basically been edited down to him going “buhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” for one minute twenty-six seconds. I’ve got a feeling this is going to be good. He lists his passions as “dogs, cars, and watersports”. Hopefully not all at the same time. Hopefully not in the way that I’m imagining. In my worst nightmares.

Mental Potential Score :7

Joanna Riley

Our first female candidate, alphabetically speaking, and also our first designated “rose from humble beginning, just like you Lordalan” contestant. Humble beginnings being “Leicestershire”. She runs her own cleaning company, which was built on a bed of LIES! Albeit the type of cutesy “Made In Dagenheim” lies that will probably make a feel-good film starring Naomie Harris at some point in the next decade. LOL, she rang up big companies pretending to be a massive company. What a gutsy pistol! Sadly, she spends most of this Lordalan currency over the course of her audition video, where she leaks discomfort from every pore, assuring us that she’s not an arrogant wanker, honest, and she thinks that she could win, maybe or at least make the interviews. Or week 6. Still, she seems more like a possible contender that Business Mouse up there.

Mental Potential Score : 3

Joy Stefanicki : I’ll give her this, she’s the one person who I think is actively helped by her website photo, because she looks prettier in that than the rest of her footage. Joy in our designated “girly girl” for the series, having been travelling extensively, declaring herself as “off-the-wall” and “emotional”, saying she doesn’t fit in with the “blue suit monkey brigade” (?!) and quoting Pretty Woman. It’s like Jo Cameron went away and came back a few years wiser and a few Newtons of force stronger. Mostly gained through the power of chocolate. She claims in her video that she is intimidated by beautiful women with magical powers, so it’s a good job she’s not auditioning to be the fourth sister on Charmed. Which is a shame, as I’d imagine she’s got more chance of landing that role than trying to force her fuzzy-duck-headedness bubble of Marketing and PR into Lordalan’s blunt world of slab grey marketing. I hope that when she inevitably gets fired she tries to organise a group trip to go and see Sex In The City 2 with Kaen and her fellow firees.

Mental Potential Score : 8

Laura Moore And from the woman who was most flattered by her website photo to the one who was most hard-done by. Who could look at Laura Moore’s picture, with her clearly propper up by a barely edited out wall, and do anything but scoff at her insistence that she is 22? To be fair, even in person, the fact that she is the spit of a young Imelda Staunton doesn’t do her any favours, alongside her rather anachronistic childhood dream of being an astronaut or a pilot. (Has anyone since the Baby Boomers really ever dreamed of being an astronaut?). Sadly she is yet another of the women who seems vaguely sane (I thought this was supposed to be the year of the boys after last year’s Vagina Party Final Four?), if sadly prone to going down the “My Boss Says I’m Like A Man Inside A Woman’s Body!” line of self promotion. Seriously, big deal, so was him out of Silence Of The Lambs. This sanity lasts until the audition tape turns to the topic of her business, at which point she flies into a “IT TOTALLY EXISTS!” flap that makes me think something odd is lurking beneath the surface.

Mental Potential Score : 6

Liz Locke : Of course the counterpoint to the women being on the whole more competent seeming, is that they’re also more across the board bland. There’s a black hole of human tedium approaching towards the end, but this is a nice little truck-stop along the way. Liz Locke is a fitness fanatic! She goes to the gym THREE TIMES A WEEK! AND ENJOYS BADMINTON! (Careful Liz Locke, you’re a very special episode of Esther waiting to happen)! She thinks that Birmingham is just a bit too dull for her! She’s here to find out if she has any flaws, because she just can’t think of any! She really wants to stand out (good luck with that dear)! She’s pretty, she’s young, she seems mildly competent, she’s probably doomed to be fired in a Shopping Channel Task it’s LIZ LOCKE ladies and gentlemen.

Mental Potential Score : 1

Melissa Cohen: It’s very rare that a person who constantly prates on about how insane and wacky and Kerrr-azy she is actually might be. In Melissa Cohen I think we might have such a case. Albeit mostly crazy in a very different kind of way than she might think she is. Twitchy, lurchy, bulging out her eyes and throwing out Kimora-Lee Simmons out there as her business inspiration, like Lordalan is going to have ANY idea who she is (can’t imagine he’s much of a Top Model fan). She brags that she’s been nick-named “The Battering Ram” and “The Bulldozer”, but I would imagine that those are just the ones she’s heard to her face. Either that or they’re the names she uses when moonlighting as a lady brawler on the UK wrestling scene. She’s certainly speaks in wrestling-ease, boasting that she cannot be stopped, and she will not rest (until she is crowned WWE Diva’s Champion). On the upside for her, she is apparently responsible for boosting Tesco’s kosher sales nationwide by 75%, so at least she won’t have to suffer the indiginity of Lordalan telling her to pull her pants down to prove her faith.

Mental Potential Score : 8

Paloma Vivanco : First of all, best name ever yes/no? At least on this show, if not in the history of the world ever. Her audition video starts with a tale of blood and violence which never gets resolved, which automatically makes me like her more than everybody else, and frankly would even if she was called, say, Liz Locke. She’s got the entrepreneurial experience to do well, having started her own business at the age of 21. Tragically it collapsed by the time she was 22, which raises the tantalising prospect of it actually being her starting up a Unicorn Taxi Service whilst pissed on the day before her 22nd birthday, then waking up and realising it was never going to work. My love does wane a little at the sound of her spouting clumsy reality tv cliches like “I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to win a job interview” and “I wake up every morning with a fire in my belly” (although if that fire was emanating from her womb, and was a sign of barrenness, then Lordalan will be pleased) but I cant’ help rooting for her. She’s from Peru! She will MAKE. YOU. BLEED!

Mental Potential Rating : 7

Raleigh Addington : If there’s one streak of contestant with a less proven record than army guys and “emotional” women, it’s weak-chinned poshos. I guess you can argue that Lucinda and Katie both made a decent run of it, and Simon Ambrose managed to win, but on the whole an upper-crust accent is a precursor to carnage, and so it appears to be in the case of Raleigh Addington, whose video audition is basically one long cruise from him towards the big clunking fist that is this show. The stammering, the stuttering, the constant touching his nose (*cough cough* not implying anything *cough cough*) the comparisons of himself to BoJo and the inept rattling on about his strategy to “keep his enemies close, but his, no, keep his friends close and his enemies closer and I’m going to pick off the rivals and be left with a load of weak people at the end and win yes I am” all leads me to believe that doom is on its way, and he probably should have just stuck to satisfying bored Tory housewives. Then again I’d actually say the same about actual BoJo, so who knows?

Mental Potential Score : 7

Sandeesh Samra : So here’s that black hole of dull I was talking about. Her audition tape is 90 seconds of her saying that if there’s something on her mind she’ll say it. Oh and that Lordalan’s ears are like her dad’s. Fascinating.

Mental Potential Score : 0

Shibby Robati : Here we go, this is much better. Impressionist, surgeon, comedian, entrepreneur, monobrow Shibby Robati was BORN to make an idiot out of himself on a show such as this. From his video he definitely seems to have a surgeon’s sense of humour given my experience of them. Which is to say that most of the laughing at his jokes will be his own, or pretty young nurses looking to get a hand in the till. He cites his success as being down to an inner core of drive and ambition and nougat and also, not a desire to earn money, but simply to be the bestest at whatever he turns his hand to. Which I’m sure Lordalan will be glad to hear, as he’s such a big fan of abstract concept such as that. Anywho, Shibby rabbits on about how cocky and arrogant he is to the extent that it made me nostalgic for the golden age of Syed and Tre, before the show stopped having a requisite Asian wideboy. Oh how I can only hope those days are back again, and that they are called Shibby.

Mental Potential Score : 3

Stella English :Oh Stella English. Truly you are the biggest disappointment of them all. Looking at your website picture and profile I had such high-hopes. Such an icy blonde stare, such an inspiring background (rose from no qualification to being the only woman in all of Japan or something), the tough mother-bear stance. And then I flick to your video and what do I see? Some giggly piece snorting her way through some story about how when she was young she drew a red car, and then when she grew up she bought a red car! Without even remembering! How spooky! Also she drew a house, and then when she got older, she BOUGHT A HOUSE. And also in the picture she had hair! HOW CRAZY! She claims to be unpredictable and crazy, so I’m hoping the website picture is actually a whole other personality, just lurking underneath the surface ready to burst out and take off Raleigh’s face at any time. We can only hope.

Mental Potential Score : 2

Stuart Baggs : God, James Corden’s comedy characters just get less and less amusing don’t they? This one is called StuBaggs, is a contestant on The Apprentice, is proudly “not politically correct”, and also sells yo-yos. How logn do you think it will be til he resorts to shouting “I’M FAT!” and jiggling his belly around like a bowlful of jelly? I given it 15 sec…oh no, wait, this is an actual real life contestant on The Apprentice. And the youngest ever apparently, serving to exist probably only to remind us of just how mature and level-headed many of the contestants on Apprentice Babies were.
He says his greatest inspiration is that he’s still alive, unlike so many other people (including Nick), so he’ll obviously really stand out amidst all the walking undead who mostly inhabit this series, along with those witches that Joy is so scared of. Hopefully he makes interviews, and we get to hear more “proudly unpolitically correct” gems like when Paul Tulip said that all tramps should be shot or whatever.

Mental Potential Score: 5