The Apprentice: series five, week three

Posted by Stewart Turner

MajHe famously boomed that “business is better than sex” a couple of weeks ago, but last night’s Apprentice proved that for braces-sporting Belfast boy Ben Clarke, a bit of how’s your father actually comes a very close second.

When he wasn’t slapping his bum suggestively in the John Lewis boardroom or cooing seductively down the lens of a camera, the brash trainee stockbroker was busy persuading his colleagues to market a fitness tool into which they could somehow incorporate the act of coitus. “Resistance,” he purred. “Something under your a*** to make it spring”. Quite.

Last night Sir Alan challenged his band of would-be employees, now whittled down to an unlucky 13, to come up with a new piece of gym kit and flog it to the bigwigs down at the local fitness centre. After Sir Alan had a quick dabble with the teams, Evil Debra put herself forward to lead Ignite, while James, the man with a permanent expression of a wounded puppy, headed up Empire.

Ignite did pretty well – in spite of Debra’s brutal management style. Doubtless inspired by Geordie Phil swaying his way through every single brainstorming session and taxi ride, they eventually settled on the “Bodyrocker”, a reinterpretation of those weird inflatable balls you never quite know what to do with down the gym.

What’s more, despite some serious disagreements over the ethnic balance of the advertising campaign, they eventually managed to flog an impressive 10,000 of the things to John Lewis. As a result they romped home, and as a “treat” Sir Alan laid on a painfully over-the-top recital of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ by plummy opera singer Katherine Jenkins. Personally I’d prefer a mug of tea and a bacon sarnie down at The Bridge caff.

And Empire? Well, they ended up saddled with a piece of kit that can only be described as an old cardboard box with a pair of Odor-Eaters stapled to the end. James decided to bring Ben – whose ugly baby the awful exercise crate undoubtedly was – and Maj back into the boardroom, and in the first raving injustice of the series so far, Sir Alan unexpectedly handed the latter his P45, presumably for no other reason than his unwillingness to make a t** of himself on national TV.

James and Ben: consider yourselves very, very lucky.

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