Kurran sensed it was his time to shine... until he heard this week's challenge was designing women's shoes and had a swift change of heart
BLAZING rows in front of customers, teams falling apart at the seams and Lord Sugar breaking boardroom protocol to show exactly who’s in charge.
Yes, just another regular week on BBC1’s The Apprentice, where Rick got the boot in the shoe designing task and we learned nine other things.
Last time out, Lord Sugar summoned the candidates to the Royal Albert Hall as a link to… that’s right, bodybuilding.
This week it was the Adelphi Theatre because — as if it needs saying — they’d be designing women’s shoes.
Tune in next Wednesday when the Amstrad boss will be at Billingsgate Fish Market to set them on a skydiving experience mission. Possibly.
A man of his word. A captain leading from the front. A true inspiration, for whom no challenge is too great.
And then there’s Kurran who has none of these traits.
He’d be project manager, no doubt, regardless of the task: “It doesn’t matter what it is, I’m stepping up, 100 per cent.”
Kurran, it’s designing women’s shoes…
“Obviously I expressed quite a strong passion to PM a task. However, this one I feel a little bit uncomfortable around.”
And with that he exited, stage left, from team leadership duties.
Jackie’s Team Collaborative plumped for an “urban heel” which, if you don’t know, is “fashionable, ghetto and gangster”, according to Rick.
Lord Sugar was almost in agreement: “A woman would rather have a verruca on her foot than that.”
They are, according to Daniel, at least. And not just that.
Ohh no. Team Typhoon’s design is for the hip-and-happening woman of today, who’s after pink-and-grey sneakers with an interchangeable bow.
Just so happens, alas, that this particular female is three years old and off to a Disney Princess birthday party, at a soft play centre.
So many names would have ideally suited the teams’ product and brand identities.
Clogs by Clots. Mules by Fools. Heels by Imbeciles. Wellies by Wallies. Flats by Tw…
Anything, in fact, other than Vibing 1.0 by Nu:Switch and Out Out by Fleekies.
No idea what Kayode was wearing at the urban heel launch, other than he was probably going for the “street” look.
Sesame Street, unfortunately.
My only thought was: “Blimey, it’s Big Bird’s pimp.”
Typhoon cast its pricing plan in stone, wrote it in blood and worshipped it on the altar of Claude Littner — there’d be no going below an agreed bottom line.
Absolutely no dropping the price beyond this. No room for manoeuvre. Negotiating strictly forbidden. On pain of death.
Right up until Daniel and Sian stitched up Tom and did it anyway, at the very first opportunity.
The golden rule of business is that if you’re going to have a blazing row, never, ever, do it in front of a customer.
Well, forget that. Rick and Jasmine’s bust-up obliterates the theory.
Rick basically told a pair of possible clients — to their faces — that his team were wasting their time with them as the duo clearly weren’t interested in buying.
Sub-team leader Jasmine even told him: “I’m going to have to ask you to leave if you carry on like this.”
The result? A £3,600 order.
It was hardly a surprise when losing team project manager Jackie brought one-armed, useless Kurran back into the boardroom.
But, despite Alan Sugar’s heavy hints at the candidates carrying “two passengers” in the form of Kurran and Rick, the latter escaped apparently to fight another day, with Jackie picking Kayode, surely tactically, to join the week’s trio of doom.
But there’s only one person running This Process, and it’s not Jackie.
Sugar was straight on the phone demanding everyone else not currently enduring a “treat”, learning Irish dancing at Pineapple Dance Studios (poor sods), return to face his judgement.
Rick was duly fired and Kurran somehow kept his place with the desperate plea: “I can see things that other candidates can’t.”
Harvey the Rabbit? Dead people? Whatever’s on ITV at 9pm on a Wednesday?
Or maybe his own future career, as a pizza delivery driver.
In which case he’s in for a surprise.
I can see that too.
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