The Apprentice: series five, week five
There's a bit of history between the bug-eyed, hungry children of the world and Mr John Harvey Kellogg. For example, at the age of about eight I went through a six-month stint eating carefully disguised clusters of twigs simply because they were plugged by an affable Geordie Olympian named Steve Cram. No matter that I was borderline obese and almost had a coronary just crawling out of bed every morning: by scoffing bowl after bowl of these babies I was convinced I’d become a world-beater. My mum, it has to be said, was less convinced.
With this hard sell in mind, Sir Alan Sugar set his budding Apprentices the task of creating a brand, box and TV ad for the vast vats of Baker’s Complete dog food he picked up cheap from a geezer in Romford a few months back. And in a scene eerily reminiscent of the bit where Dorothy finally gets to meet the Wizard of Oz, or the last time the spooky Face of Boe appeared in Doctor Who, the Amstrad mogul’s Cuprinol-hued bonce was projected onto the giant screen of the IMAX cinema in London, where he put “rough, tough cream puff” Kimberly in charge of Ignite and Kate "All Saints" Walsh in charge of Empire.
Empire, it has to be said, executed an annoyingly decent campaign with their “Treasure Flakes” idea, which boasted Belfast stockbroker Ben’s finest performance to date as “Captain Squawk”, the Reverend Ian Paisley reimagined as a sinister, flapping Sesame Street character. In fact, Ben would do well to keep the bird suit on for the remainder of the series – he’d probably stand a better chance of winning by squawking his way though brainstorming sessions and keeping his highly punchable face covered up.
Sadly, Ignite’s campaign was altogether less successful. After passing on sourpuss Lorraine’s half-baked idea of using a bunch of cute characters with names like ‘Benjamin Bran Flake’ and ‘Rodney Rice Crispy’, Kimberly was eventually bullied into taking on Phillip’s utterly insane "Pants Man" concept. Yup. Pants Man. Breakfast cereal? Pants? No?
After fielding a fake call or two in the back of his Roller, Sir Alan met the teams back in the boardroom to announce that Empire had romped home, and it fell to losing project manager Kimberley to bring blustering Geordie buffoon Phil and whingeing, tearful Lorraine back from the grotty Bridge caff for an almighty showdown.
“You made a mistake on pants” boomed Sir Alan, doubtless provoking a few more mistakes involving pants in the process. After an ear-splitting row, cream puff Kimberly was well and truly chewed up and spat out by the miserable old goat, presumably for her complete failure to control stroppy teenager Phillip. She was perhaps a little unlucky, and all those people tipping the Geordie estate agent to win may well be feeling a little foolish this morning.
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