Season two of Young Apprentice concluded last night with Irish economist James McCullagh and aspiring film-maker Zara Brownless battling it out for the right to succeed Arjun Rajyagor as the beneficiary of Lord Sugar’s £25,000 investment fund. The pair pitched their rival online games Crazy Cabinet and Piggy Panic to a room of gaming industry experts. But who made it to the next level, and for whom was it just a case of ‘game over’? Read on below the line to find out in my final recap of this season.
Gbemi Okunlola
After seven weeks in which an enterprising bunch of 16 and 17-year olds have regularly outshone their grown-up counterparts on the parent programme, we arrive at the final of this second season of Young Apprentice. Aided and abetted by some familiar faces, economist James McCullagh will take on aspiring film-maker Zara Brownless for the right to succeed Arjun Rajyagor as the beneficiary of Lord Sugar’s £25,000 investment fund. But how did James and Zara survive to the final week? And which one will win?
This week on Young Apprentice it was the turn of many people’s favourite assignment: the advertising task. Led by Zara Brownless, Team Atomic finally won their first task with their youth deodorant Raw. Meanwhile Harry Maxwell led Kinetic to their first defeat – but his fifth in five tasks overall – after a shambolic team performance. However despite being rounded upon by his entire team Harry survived, with fashion designer Gbemi Okunlola carrying the can for a poor packaging execution as she became the fifth recipient of Lord Sugar‘s Digit of Doom™.
It’s time for Young Apprentice to tackle everyone’s favourite task: advertising. Four weeks into the process Team Atomic have yet to win a single task – and Harry M is the only candidate to have lost in every week so far – so the pressure will be on them to end their nightmare run.
Deciding the winner of the task is always a subjective matter – there are no definitive measures such as sales or profit to separate the teams here – but the series has tackled advertising enough times for there to be some clear dos and don’ts which the eight remaining candidates would be wise to heed. Here is my guide as to how to win the task.
This week we reached the halfway point of Young Apprentice in a task which presented us with a number of surprises, such as James McCullagh proving to be a calm and effective leader. Less shocking, however, was yet another defeat for Team Atomic – that’s no wins in four tasks now – as a result of which Lord Sugar‘s Digit of Doom™ fell upon the increasingly incoherent Lewis Roman. The Scouser ended up with egg on his face after his half-baked questioning and incessant waffle proved that selling to the over-50s really wasn’t as easy as pie.
This week’s task marks the mid-point of this season’s Young Apprentice. It sees the remaining nine candidates take on the apparently straightforward assignment of selecting products aimed at the over-50s and then selling them at an exhibition. Of course, we can be sure that things won’t go according to plan.
Here are my pre-episode thoughts ahead of tonight’s episode as to how the task will be won and lost.
The business world isn’t all hearts and flowers, but for one week only Young Apprentice was all about the latter as the teams turned their hands to floristry. Led by Lizzie Magee, Kinetic blossomed, whereas Atomic discovered that every rose has its thorns. After a few verbal barbs, Hannah Richards became the third casualty to be weeded out in the boardroom as her hopes were thrown onto the compost heap.
For many viewers, one of the most enjoyable aspects of watching Young Apprentice (and its parent) is the way we can see the teams’ mistakes unfolding in front of us, sometimes before they even happen. Of course, the candidates are having to work in highly pressurised situations, and there are many thing that can go wrong. Even so, it is usually possible to predict in advance where the key errors will occur.
With that in mind, here are my pre-episode thoughts ahead of tonight’s floristry task as to how it will be won and lost.
This week’s Young Apprentice task took us back to nursery – the children’s variety, not the horticultural kind – as the Apprenti-Kids™ were asked to design and pitch a new product for the mother-and-baby market. They were forced to get to grips with toddler tantrums, bouts of hopeless inarticulacy and one participant spitting his dummy. (The babies, on the other hand, were extremely good.) All this proved to be bad news for gardening entrepreneur Ben Fowler, who was all fingers-and-thumbs rather than green-fingered and found himself on the receiving end of an entirely different type of finger: Lord Sugar‘s deadly Digit of Doom™.
It’s summer, and an unruly mob of teenagers are causing havoc. They rob people blind, accost them in the streets and ruthlessly grab whatever opportunities present themselves. No, I’m not talking about the London riots. It’s the return of the newly rebranded Young Apprentice. Yes, the Apprenti-Kids™ are back for eight weeks of puerile puns (and that’s just Lord Sugar), finger-pointing (and that’s just Lord Sugar) and unfathomably illogical decisions (and … you get the idea).
It has been three long months since the comforting strains of Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights – the theme music for BBC’s The Apprentice – were last heard on our TV screens. Three long months since our last weekly hour-long dose of bitching, over-inflated egos and unfeasibly stupid business ideas. Three long months since serial inventor – and Michael Sheen lookalike – Tom Pellereau surprisingly defeated runaway favourite Helen Milligan (and also-rans ‘Jedi’ Jim Eastwood and Susan Ma) to win the season seven final. (Although it wasn’t a surprise to me, as I had backed Tom for victory early on. *Smug mode*)
But fear no more. The man with the meanest finger on television – the incomparable Digit of Doom™ – has returned. The Baron of Business, the self-styled Britain’s most belligerent boss, Lord Sugar, returns to our screens to put 12 candidates aged 16-17 through their paces as he once again hunts for a Young Apprentice. (No, I don’t know why they’ve abandoned ‘Junior Apprentice’ either.)
Yes, the Apprentikids™ are back!