It is a truism that people make cities rather than the monuments. This is the same for The Apprentice except that it is populated by those desperately, if unwittingly, trying to make themselves look like idiots. It was a double-firing last night, quite early in the series comparatively. The episode speaks for itself, but the review section can be equally as good and this time they had worthwhile ‘unseen’ footage. Ellie Reed with a change of hair colour and a girly-girly dress (something she insisted in the main show that she wasn’t) was a far cry from the sullen blonde, moping around in the background. Even vicious editing couldn’t hide a certain repetition in language (not unlike Lord Sugar so I’ve read). She first claimed her ‘downfall’ was the result of not being au fait with marketing; then her ‘downfall’ was because she kept being put in a sub-team; thrice, her ‘downfall’ was because she didn’t put herself forward enough. Make your mind up – you’ve had more downfall than Hitler. In the end, there was justification for Ellie to go because she had been put on notice the previous week and she had not stepped up.
The next candidate with the sack placed over him was Vincent Disneur. With a surname like that, it sounds Huegenot but any French style was left on the other side of the English Channel. He was wearing a pin-striped suit – fine at the moment- with a hideous Hawaiian shirt (garish flowers on a white background) topped off with an orange tie. To look at it was like rubbing one’s eyes with alcohol. He must have sacrificed an entire sperm whale (or hijacked the one that beached on the north-east coast) to get that amount of grease in his hair. Altaa said one of her work colleagues said he had separated from his wife. Sad as a parting of the ways is, this appearance was reason for grounds for divorce. The phrase ‘all bells and no braces’ sums up his patter. Even Jedi Jim, who managed to talk his way out of a near-certain appointment in the boardroom for a second time, said his friend Vincent had more gusto than substance. Although Tom Pellerau is still in the process, Vincent has survived longer than any other candidate across the whole UK Apprentice existence without being on the winning team. Mind you, the treats have got progressively worse with each passing series. Having a tennis knockabout with celebrity sports star Pat Cash is indicative of BBC budget cutbacks. For his ‘achievement’, Vincent got a treat all of his own (if indeed it was real, given that he had his face surrounded by stars on it) – a spa session which is better (if true) than much of what the task winners get.