WARNING! Contains spoilers We may be halfway through this year’s Apprentice, but still the teams continue to make a right (meat)balls-up of familiar tasks, leaving themselves in a stew. In a closely fought contest selling gourmet food in Edinburgh in which both teams made tasty profits, Phoenix’s meatballs proved slightly less appetising than Sterling’s Scottish-themed … Continue reading »
For those of us old enough to remember a world of computers before the windows-based graphical user interfaces developed by Apple and Microsoft - when every byte of memory mattered, modems were big clunky devices you plugged an old-style telephone handset into and we considered 5¼-inch floppy disks to be wondrously compact – this little gem … Continue reading »
So, what’s been happening today? I’ve spent the day mostly working at home after a morning business meeting at Reading’s Madejski Stadium. Take-away Chinese for dinner. Heather’s out at her book club meeting. And I’ve just finished editing an interview with Olympic cycling bronze medalist Bobby Julich for the cycling blog I run. A pretty … Continue reading »
WARNING! Contains spoilers The candidates worked up a sweat this week as they were tasked with devising a new fitness programme. While Sterling’s Beat Battle mixed martial arts and dance class seemed more fit for purpose, they were knocked out by Phoenix’s retro Groove Train. In the boardroom it was every man for himself, and … Continue reading »
A regular series delving into my musical archives to look back at tracks which are at least 20 years old. Maybe it’s because the Eighties coincided with my peak cinema-going years, but for me the decade represents something of a golden age of film soundtracks, when creating a compelling title track and accompanying album didn’t … Continue reading »
Isaac passed another small milestone on the road to adulthood this morning as we received confirmation of which primary school he will moving up to in September. It has its downsides as well as its upsides, but it certainly marks the beginning of a big and exciting phase in his life. First, the downsides. There’s no escaping … Continue reading »
39. The atomic number of yttrium. Part of the title of John Buchan’s famous novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps. The international direct dialing code for Italy. The sum of five consecutive prime numbers (3+5+7+11+13). The duration in nanoseconds of the reaction in the largest nuclear explosion ever conducted. It’s also the number of weeks pregnant that Heather is … Continue reading »
WARNING! Contains spoilers! After three weeks of getting used to selling rubbish and other cheap tat, the remaining 13 candidates on The Apprentice should have been well prepared for this week’s task of, well, buying rubbish and other cheap tat and then selling it as really expensive tat via the phenomenon known as ‘upcycling’ or, … Continue reading »
For their third assignment, the remaining 14 candidates on The Apprentice were given the task of creating a new condiment. Both teams attacked this with relish but soon ended up in a pickle as production problems left them playing ketchup. In the end, it was Phoenix who bottled it, and in the boardroom Lord Sugar … Continue reading »
