The Apprentice Finale: How Ricky Martin Became Alan Sugar's Business Partner
This week’s business lesson: If you can crap gold, you can run a profitable business.
Much like the BBC perplexingly does this time of year by rearranging the dates, times and formats of its popular shows just to confuse people with its unwillingness to commit, Im slightly rearranging with the borderline popular with my close relatives and friends blog to give a complete post run down of the final 5 and how they became one in just 4 days of television fun, because just like The Apprentice Final to a normal television slot, Im unwilling to commit as well. Wednesdays task was the final interesting one where they give people actual things to do and it saw Misogynist Adam fall at the final hurdle due to an ill fated luxury chocolate venture which had him umming and ahhing in front of a group of industry experts (fat people) and initially saw them (Floppy Haired Nick and Abomination Jade) lose to Snake Hips Ricky and I have a dream Tom who created a luxury mens aftershave which they put across better by knowing all the numbers. Its ironic how much emphasis Lord Sugar puts on luxury projects considering he made his name by selling crap electrical goods and buying Tottenham Hotspur. Yet life goes on, and Misogynist Adam bowed out of the contest with the only one regret that he didnt manage to take down Abomination Jade beforehand, leaving an all male final, yet he had fun on his return home which resembled this scene from 300. This years final thus featured Floppy Haired Nick, I have a dream Tom, Snake Hips Ricky and Abomination Jade who had to have their business plans and personalities gone over by the BBCs crack team of interviewees and out of work abusers. Floppy Haired Nicks business plan was internet based, and saw a piece of programming which would be included on recipe websites which would allow you to buy all the ingredients for that recipe in just one click, where you would be able to choose between all the supermarkets and the costs to get the best recipes at the best prices. I thought this sounded quite good, no-one else did, and when Nick tried to pitch it as the next facebook, presumably for the morbidly obese, people got more and more sceptical, saying there was little money in it and it would be a goliath programming task, also the day someone shares a recipe on facebook instead of a picture of a cat looking startled is a day the juvenile point of social media dies and Nick would be responsible. Abomination Jades business plan was in keeping with her personality, annoying and unwanted. She wanted to set up Britains largest call centre to target people in debt or similar house hold issues you want to be kept quiet with a series of websites of which could give advice or relief whilst taking away a profit. If you think it sounds evil and soul sucking, its because it is. Everyone pointed this out, whilst also mentioning that her forecasts saw her making over £80,000 in 3 months without spending any money, now that makes more sense, if she had highlighted that it would also include her shitting gold then everyone would have been more responsive. Meanwhile I have a dream Tom wants to create some £25m hedge fund fine wines, not particularly shrugging off his boring tag with any great aplomb as no-one really has anything to say to him other than accuse his dad of writing it for him. Tom does nothing, of course he doesnt. Finally its over to Snake Hips Ricky, who gets ripped to shreds for putting comparisons to the God Thor, absolutes about him being the best business partner in the world and more clichés than a beauty speech to misunderstood teenage goals. It transcends embarrassing into the realm of having itchy teeth. However people are very impressed by his business plan which sees him recruiting experts in the pharmaceutical industries to do pharmaceutical things, its a recruitment agency basically, but it sounds intelligent. Intelligent people are impressed. After much work done by the BBC editing team to make what is essentially interviews interesting, they give feedback to the Lord Sugar and its actually one of the more up in the air finals in recent times, apart from Jade, she hasnt won, she sucks. Floppy Haired Nick has more creativity, but after picking Tom on that reason last year it shouldnt particularly go to him otherwise the whole business plan part of this falls down, and that is the case. Jade leaves first on the grounds that her business plan is evil, terrible and shes an annoying cretin. (Sugars words, well, you could tell he was thinking it.) Nick then leaves on the grounds that the proposal he has would take a lot of computing hours as well as being difficult to generate revenue. Which leaves just Snake Hips Ricky and I Have A Dream Tom, Toms is the riskier one as there is no guaranteed return if the prices of wine drops, Sugar describes the risk as an itch he needs to scratch, I get those £250,000 itches all the time. However, after looking completely like Tom was going to win on the grounds of boring people in to submission, Lord Sugar hires Ricky on the fact he clearly knows what hes talking about and he could bring the God of Thunders power down on him whenever he wanted. Who was hired: Snake Hips Ricky Was it the correct decision: Nick had more creativity, but Rickys business plan was the strongest and most likely to return a profit, yes it was. Although Nick did have better hair. This weeks business lesson: If you can crap gold, you can run a profitable business.