One week into The Apprentice Series 2, and it’s one decent and honest chap with integrity down, 13 slavering egomaniacs left. In a week which saw some utterly non-obvious editing of the girls selling melons, and the boys doing their best not to openly piss themselves laughing at the worst team-name suggestion ever, it’s one nil to the ladies.

After a quick introduction in the boardroom, and a sort of giddy-down unpep talk from Sir Alan, in his finest I’m not quite a cockney geezer style, the 14 hopefuls were taken to their luxury 7 bedroom house. The house two doors down (ie in the next borough) was sold recently for £45 million, apparently, don’t you know. We don’t know how much the candidates’ house is worth, but we do know it has 7 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. Why do you need one more bathroom than bedroom? Perhaps it’s just that big that by the time you’ve reached the West wing you need to go again. Who can say?

No time for that sort of earthiness for our heros: they’re straight to the champers, and Syed is pulling out all the stops. He impresses the boys by using the word dynamic.

A lot.

And he impresses the girls, or one of them at least, by telling her she looks ten years younger than she really is. Yep, he has a way with ‘em don’t he just?

Jo: shocked!

Paul, meanwhile, has a quiet moment off-stage left, with a piece to camera. Not for him the arse-licking, it seems. Good chap that Paul. And then he ruins it by pointing out that he’s clearly the man for the job. The others, meanwhile, some of whom probably have names, are desperately trying to outbore each other with their greatness. Except for Jo, who is giving her first masterclass in over-enthusiasm. She goes on to become one of the stars of the show, mainly by being able to become ludicrously excited whenever anything happens at all. If she asked me the time, I’d have to pretend I hadn’t heard the question, simply because I couldn’t cope with the response: “Oh my god I can’t belieeeeeve it! It’s four twenty-eight! Oh my god oh my god oh my god”. Rinse and repeat. To be fair to Jo, she does admit in her profile that she’s “loopy and a bit mad”, and anyone on this show who shows an ounce of self-awareness gets instant respect in my book. That said, she sees herself as Tigger, which is clearly wrong, since he’s loveable and cute. No, Jo, you’re shocked Margaret from the Catherine Tate show and that’s the end of it.

The ha-ha team

In the house, it’s time to choose a team name. The girls come up with their name , Velocity, in a trice (cue more Jo joy), so it’s left to the boys to provide the first pure comedy nugget of the series. Syed, you have the conch.

Syed: Murdoch!

It is said that if you give one monkey part of a typewriter and a banana, he will in no time at all come up with a better team name than Syed’s implausibly bad suggestion: “The A-Team”. Syed, or Murdoch as he will henceforth be known, had clearly put a lot of thought into why it was a good name, and wasn’t shy of listing the reasons:

• Whatever task they take on, they win
• They always come up with results
• All the words we’re listing, successful, vision, etc, all that’s rolled up into the A-team

Genius. But eventually, the boys go for Invicta. Tuan tells them it’s Latin, which seems to impress the group, and tells them it means “invincible”, although I always thought it just meant unbeaten. Either seem acceptable these days, although to be fair, “these days” not a lot of Latin gets spoken, and arguments on the finer points of definition are few and far between in anyone’s lives.

Moving on…

The task

The Week 1 task was to buy some produce, and sell it in Hackney. Simple. So off they all trot, in their chauffered cars, to New Spitalfields market at some ungodly hour, to buy some apples and pears. And it turns out that when getting hold of produce at New Spitalfields market, serious is not the way to go. A peck on the cheek, a faint brush of flesh, a wink (could be a twitch - the jury’s still out) and a smile, and you can have more rotten fruit than you can shove into a Luton Van for around forty quid. Probably works best if you’re female, mind. Then again, Murdoch probably should have tried it, instead of his hey look at me the salesman all talk of closing (in front of the customer…) approach. Let me tell you something, the real Murdoch would have glammed it up and kissed a few traders that morning, and that’s what makes him a winner, Syed. (That and the talented team that scrape by in spite of his efforts, so some parallels exist I suppose.)

But I digress. The A-Team headed off to Ridley Road market in Hackney where their pitch awaited, and the girls continued to blag last year’s grapes. Having blagged too much, they decide to only sell the fruit that doesn’t make you instantly gag on sight or smell, leaving the rest behind to fester some more in the sun.

Paul: Not Turing

At the market, we learn that Paul doesn’t know the difference between a pound and a kilogram: he’s a great salesman, but not a numbers guy, he confesses. Right. So you can sell anything, but you’ve no idea how much for? Samuel meanwhile, in his own words, is “grafting”, where grafting means putting peaches onto the stall. Ansell, meanwhile, is doing pretty much all the selling. Ben is writing numbers that he’s making up on the spot. The others must be sleeping under the stall or something.

The girls split up, with some on the stall, including shocked Margaret, who suddenly does come across all Tiggery, showing how much she loves bouncing when they see their pitch. It’s a crappy metal contraption on wheels, basically, but even this is enough to send her into raptures. Nick comments on the girls and their reverse bartering, which is getting them good money, and working better than their trip to a garage, where Nargis and Michelle were offered an oil change for a basket of fruit.

When both teams sell out, the A-Team try to turn a profit into a loss by heading to the nearest corner shop to buy some more fruit, while Velocity grab their remaining fruit - the bits that have’t risen up and destroyed civilisation that is. After selling a million grapes for a penny, the give the rest away: question for Karen the lawyer - if you give away rancid produce for free can you be done for food poisoning?

Meanwhile, Paul reveals his sheer selling power, somehow persuading the good people of Hackney to part with up to a fiver for a single apple.

The boardroom

It’s announced that the girls have trounced the boys - Invicta not looking such a good name now, eh boys? Should have gone with Murdoch’s idea perhaps. Sir Alan has a pop at the girls for their tactics, and so does Ben, which gives us the first near-tears of the series from Margaret, and while the boys are sent outside to talk about how they had the right product for their market (Quality product, someone interjects, clearly not getting the Amstrad ethos quite right), the girls work out how to persuade the Sugarman that they should still win. He relents, and they get to drink champagne in Tower 42. Ben quivers his bottom lip for a while, and chooses Syed and Sam to join him for the firing decision.

Ben: Fired!

Jenny, who’s working uncommonly hard today (have a break woman, put your feet up: you can tell she’s stressed when at one point she sends them in without even bothering to answer the phone first), says they can go back in, and it’s denoument time. Ben plays it nice and naive, and understandably gets his marching orders.

Apparently there are also candidates called Alexa, Sharon, Ruth, and Mani. I have a feeling their moments in the spotlight aren’t far away.

Week 2

Next week, the teams are off to hospital to create themed calendars, involving, it transpires, children and animals. Murdoch should be in his element…

Tags: Television, Brilliant