How did our wannabes handle takeovers at London’s top tourist attractions? Follow every cringe-making second along with us
10.00pm GMT
With that in mind, you’d better join me here next week to see what on earth they do next. There’s no way Amanda Holden can follow the Dyer WDYTYA so skip that, make a strong drink and meet me here just before 9pm.
Byeeeeeee.
9.59pm GMT
Lord! Al is already advertising for contestants for NEXT year. Every year I kind of assume that’s it. It must be over now. The experiment to find the occupants of the next Golgafrincham B Arc. But no, on it goes.
9.58pm GMT
“I’m just looking forward to seeing my mum,” says Paul in the back of the terminal taxi. Spoken like Danny Dyer after he’s just found out he’s NOT related to Henry III after all.
Bye Paul, you big unreconstructed misogynist what Al could not afford to be associated with and who probably had a balls business plan anyways.
9.56pm GMT
And so to Al’s decision.
He says that Paul is not a potential winner and firs his arse right out of the door.
9.55pm GMT
Al accuses Paul of aggression like he doesn’t think that’s a good thing. If Paul wasn’t aggressive, he’d tell him he was a pussy. No wonder these candidates go mad. There is literally no way for them to win.
9.54pm GMT
Jessica is finding this really hard to to listen to and tries to turn away from the table because she knows crying is not acceptable in a boardroom situation.
9.53pm GMT
Oh women, with your feelings and your hormones.
9.53pm GMT
Paul was always the one I thought of as like Lord Sugar and that he’d see as a kindred spirit. But I’ve gone right off him now. Both women get passionate in their own defence and both of them are told to “calm down” by Alan. Sitting on my hands here.
9.52pm GMT
Could this be Jessica’s last stand. I find myself suddenly sad to see her on the cusp of going. I hope the women realise it’s time to turn on Paul because it’s their own means of survival and he’d do the same to them.
9.51pm GMT
Naturally, Paul is coming back with Jessica and... Fran. Wow. That’s got to hurt when she thought she’d gained safety by becoming his wing person. I hope Fran actually tries to kill him.
9.50pm GMT
This is unexpected. Paul is now getting heat for demoting Jessica. It’s like they’ve noticed that he doesn’t really like women and they’re not OK with that. Fair play.
9.49pm GMT
Paul’s team learns that the shitty canapés they served actually cost them a pile of cash in refunds. Everyone sucks lemons as Fran tries to give Jess some props for trying to save the situation.
9.47pm GMT
Paul and team have drained their polystyrene cups and returned to the boardroom. Sofiane makes the fair point that his sales went down the toilet the minute his punters heard the tickets were going cheaper elsewhere.
Trishna adds weight to the argument that Jess was to blame. Paul agrees with her and the knives are fully out for Jess. She might as well be smeared in blood and be tethered to a hook dangling over a shark tank.
9.45pm GMT
Trishna brings up Jess’s hot food thing. She has sensed blood and sees Jess’s feet stumbling into the quicksand. There’s no way she’s going to support her fellow sister now, not wishing to be dragged down with her.
9.44pm GMT
Their treat is to go to Warwick Castle. Full disclosure - I used to work at Warwick Castle in my teens as a wench. That was my job title. It’s as close as I’ve ever come to being an Apprentice candidate.
Back at the sad cafe, Paul revs up his engines and Jessica starts to cry. Sofiane and Fran sound level-headed and measured. But Paul and Jess go at it and he is a big, stubbly bully. I knew he’d do this.
9.41pm GMT
Nebula - profit of 1127.64
Titans - profit £2400.66
9.41pm GMT
Alan tries to grasp the numbers involved and why the price of them, on Paul’s team, fluctuated so wildly. Jessica is blamed roundly and soundly and she fights back, while also fighting back tears. There is no way some baldy boy is going to reduce her to flapping sobs. I like her more and more.
9.39pm GMT
Karrren also smacks down Courtney for his floppy performance as a not-bothered pirate.
Over on Paul’s end of the boardroom table, the hands are clasped and apologetic. Jess uses the word “interject” to appear less Timmy Mallet and more John Malkovic. I think she pulled it off, if only for a moment.
9.38pm GMT
Karrren majorly slags Dillon for singing in a way that suggest pure jealousy. I bet she practices in front of the mirror every night, her finger hovering over that PUBLISH button on YouTube.
9.37pm GMT
OH I almost missed Alan’s under-sea zinger about OYSTER CARDS. How I wish I had. One day I plan to find out who writes those and personally take them to task.
9.36pm GMT
Dillon tries to justify flogging £55 tickets for a karaoke mermaid.
9.36pm GMT
It is the next day. The costumes have gone, the bleak suits are back and we are off to the boardroom.
Titans - explain your under-sea debacle, Alan’s eyes seem to say. So they do.
9.35pm GMT
Paul starts dishing out free burgers but the awkwardness leaves a sour taste.
By 10pm, some tired looking mermaids are rounding off the show with another chorus from The Little Mermaid. Do they know any other songs?
9.33pm GMT
Dillon’s sub-team try desperately to sell the hot food at the aquarium when they have already stuffed punters with free canapés.
Meanwhile, Paul is getting grief because half-starved punters were expecting hot food (thanks to Jess’s sales pitch) and there isn’t any free stuff. “I’m going to be singing,” trills Dillon back at the under-sea ship-wreck. He’s actually not bad.
9.31pm GMT
Trishna gives an informative talk about Madame Tussaud’s which impresses Claude a lot. “That woman has got a photographic memory,” he gasps as he clearly prepares to offer her a job the minute the cameras stop rolling.
Courtney, on the other hand, is so laid back at the aquarium he might as well have been smoking something. He knows nothing and it shows.
9.29pm GMT
The canapés do the rounds but no one eats them, according to Claude.
Once inside the aquarium, punters are again asked to pay to have a special tour of the premises. Grainne realises they have over-sold the tour by twice. Turns out if you get people pissed on “free” wine you can get them to buy anything. My eBay history could have told you that.
9.28pm GMT
Claude sarcastically clinks glasses with Sean Connery as both events begin.
At the aquarium, the cheap cava is waiting and Dillon is fully dressed in an ill-fitting white captain’s suit that he has clearly saved from last week’s boat show.
9.26pm GMT
Both teams are told some facts about their tourist attraction. Trishna talks over the Tussaud’s woman who politely says, “You’re an expert already,” when she really means, shut up, I’m talking.
9.25pm GMT
Dillon and Alanna are now madly over-catering for their guests. Claude is bitching about the quality of their snacks like a man who has been to too many of those kinds of parties. Show some gratitude, baldie. Some people only dream of tomato on tiny toast.
9.24pm GMT
“Get drunk with the fishes,” says Courtney, trying to drum up business outside the aquarium. Why does that sound like something De Niro would say in a film just before he shoved you into the Hudson in concrete boots?
9.23pm GMT
Dillon talks up the non-aquatic mermaid and is personally affronted that the others aren’t impressed by as singing woman in a fishtail dress.
Jess is annoyed that Paul has installed Fran above her as sub-team leader. Out in space, stars are born and die and black holes suck matter ever inwards to the indifference of the cosmos. But Jess is still annoyed about the whole sub-team thing. And that’s why we love her.
9.21pm GMT
If I were Paul and Fran, I’d be down the supermarket pronto and making the canapés myself. Show some initiative.
9.20pm GMT
Dillon and Alanna spend money on catering while Paul and Fran try to cater for a crowd they can’t afford to feed. They are actually cross that the sales team have sold so many tickets. Surely, Alan won’t go for this attitude.
9.19pm GMT
Grainne and Courtney realise that the mermaid they’ve been selling tickets for is not actually going to get wet or submerse herself in water in any way. She is, in fact, as Karrren points out, just a woman and not an actual mermaid at all. Call Trades Descriptions immediately. I feel cheated.
9.18pm GMT
Grainne spots that the people they’re trying to accost at St Pancras are all running for trains and are not interested in stopping and planning some fifty quid Under the Sea night on their way home.
9.17pm GMT
Fran is as thick as thieves with Paul as he transfers her to Jess’s sub-team to keep an eye on his loosest cannon. She won’t like that.
9.16pm GMT
Fran quizzes the guy at Tussaud’s about how much to charge for their event. It turns out that Jess was right to cut the ticket price to £35 but she has told her punters that includes hot food and it now doesn’t. OH NO. This will be the hot potato in tonight’s boardroom. “OO,” Alan will say. “OO decided to charge thirty five nicker for a ticket and not feed the bleedin’ punters?” If this is the end for Jessica I shall be cross. At least she’s entertaining and she’s mostly been able to squash down the spirit of Jim Carey throughout this process.
9.13pm GMT
Dillon and Alanna watch a mermaid singing something from The Little Mermaid and Dillon knows ALL the worlds. He’s enchanted and suggests that he should dress as a sailor. No one has asked him to, but he is determined and I would suggest not standing in his way at this point.
9.12pm GMT
Courtney and Grainne try a similar but more polite approach and immediately employ the word “yourself” where “you” would have done as well. It’s what I watch this show for, a peak into the world of someone who completely misunderstands the power of language and just bludgeons folk with it. It’s like reading that transcript of Donal Trump at the New York Times. Absolute guff.
9.11pm GMT
It’s straight onto food tasting as Paul’s team stuff their faces and make MMMM noises. With their mouths still full, they choose a burger. A fifty quid burger.
It’s lunchtime in the city of London and Jessica is flogging their entertainment package to city workers to people just like her. They all nod but none of them actually open their wallets. She drops the price drastically for a group booking but she has literally grabbed that figure out of the air. At least she’s actually sold something.
9.09pm GMT
Claude nay-says from the off as he watches Paul writes hot food buffet cheques that his team can’t cash. They all agree with him and he impresses upon him that any failure to sell the £50 tickets is on the sales team, not him.
9.08pm GMT
Paul’s team lap up his suggestion of a “fun casino”. Spot prizes for Royal Flush? A gunging if you lose at roulette? Count me IN.
9.07pm GMT
Paul and Jessica both want to be PM and verbally throw their fighting cocks into the ring. Jess is a woman so immediately loses to Paul the minute a man speaks up for him. She is un-pleased but, like a woman, surrenders the field while biting her lip.
Courtney is trying to make their do a dating-related thing. Dillon suggests an underwater theme for their aquarium do. How DOES he come up with this stuff?
9.05pm GMT
It’s just off Trafalgar Square where there is now such a proliferation of those floating Yoda human statues it actually makes me quite angry. It was clever once but now it just looks like sarcasm.
Alan has chosen the London Aquarium for one team and Madame Tussaud’s for the other. They must hold eventy type things in said venues, sell tickets and make some flipping money.
9.03pm GMT
So, it is week eight and that means the calls are getting more sarcastically early. This week, a 5am call informs the wallies they need to open their sleep-crusted eyes and get to the National Portrait Gallery, pronto.
9.02pm GMT
“Your task is very simple, pick the right boating products,” says Alan in the flashback to last week. What a ridiculous sentence. In no other arena would that be an OK thing to say to another human. I love/hate this silly programme. I like how they haven’t changed it over the years. Apart from making the contestants more flamboyantly stupid.
9.00pm GMT
Right, lower your expectations. It’s time for Alan and his merry band of desperadoes to dance the dance of the fiscally dim. Who was looking wobbly last week? Who do we think is in the cross-hairs going into the dressing up and looking stupid task?
8.59pm GMT
10 Rillington Place, on the other hand, looks absolutely brilliant.
8.59pm GMT
Just in case you were wondering if you should switch over to BBC Two now to get a bit of culture with that Stephen Poliakov drama, don’t bother. It’s rubbish.
Stick with us for another 60 minutes of unadulterated schadenfreude.
8.57pm GMT
Holding his little boy aloft like he’s the future king. He’s actually a bit breathless. Is there a way, in these crazy times, that the line of succession could be jiggered to give Dyer the throne when her maj breathes her last? I think we’d all be fine with that.
8.56pm GMT
At the risk of live blogging Danny Dyer’s Who Do You Think You Are, I cannot take my eyes and ears off it and don’t want it to end. “My blood is his blood,” he says of Henry III. Imagine living with Danny Dyer after he made this show? The surreptitious ordering of a crown from the Past Times catalogue. Commissioning a Dyer coat of arms. God, I love him.
8.51pm GMT
The Apprentice is all very well, but hands up if you’d rather just have another hour of Danny Dyer dumb with awe at his heritage? *counts hands* Yes, that’s everyone.
8.41pm GMT
But in the meantime, please enjoy Danny Dyer repeating the mantra “I am a direct descendent of Thomas Cromwell” over and over. It’s mesmeric.
4.04pm GMT
So we said goodbye to Karthik and Samuel in last week’s nautical blood-bath. Big Al didn’t event wait for the final firing squad to give old Karthik the finger, so keen was he to see the back of the self-styled Special K, or whatever he called himself.
This week, the remaining liabilities must dress up in humiliating costumes to flog experience packages to tourists in London. Grainne in a mermaid costume, Courtney as a lack lustre pirate asking if punters want to “get drunk with the fishes”. It’s got classic written all over it.
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