Week 7 sees the teams summoned to London’s only floating yacht hotel at the Royal Victora docks where grumpy Nooky Bear clone Lord Sugar informs them that as boating is worth £3billion a year to the UK (and probably even more to offshore accountants) that they have to get themselves to the annual boat show at Poole harbour and select products to sell – most sales win as per usual.
As Frances has been a perennial loser so far she’s selected to lead Nebula (Sofiane, Shouty Faux Geezer Paul, Northern Peggy from Hi di Hi Jess, Trishna).
K is made leader of the Titans (Sam, Grainne, Courtney, Alana, Dillon). Dillon’s warned by Lord Sugar that arty creative bollocks counts for nothing in the mean world of sales. K continues sharing way too much information by informing us that he even successfully Project Managed the conception of his own child (“I know the exact hotel room”) – and he’s straight to the point when dividing the team (“Does anyone know anybody who has ever owned a boat?”). Sam suggests that the task needs someone who has sold at the high end, which he had done, so K naturally ignores this and selects Grainne and Courtney to sell the top products whereas Sam has to come with him and sell to the public. “You made a tactical mistake” Sam moans. “Don’t take it personally” K insists. Of course Sam won’t – preferring to mutter doomily about how the pressure’s on Grainne and Courtney for the rest of the task because he’s skill and ace.
Over on Nebula Paul insists that he once pitched to the UK’s leading shipbuilder, so sensibly of course Fran selects Sofiane to go with her on the high end team simply because Sofiane says he’d like to and she’s worried Paul will punch him if they work together.
The public subteams investigate a range of tat for their stalls including a scary pen that doubles as a fishing rod (cue Jess screeching “I’ve got a big one!”), fish cushions (which Dillon of course loves as they’re “very kitch”), frog back packs, some weird flashers mack that is apparently a beach changing robe for the Mr Bean in our lives and sexist colour coded pink and blue snorkels (Paul insists bizarrely snorkelling is a big sport in the UK. Maybe he means “bog” sport).
K has no idea on what product to take (“Someone has to take a call” – erm the PM?). Alana suggests snorkels so he decides to take snorkels. But Sam likes the fish and says they’re “eyecatching”. “Yes they are!” K exclaims and goes for the sodding snorkels and fish cushions. They also have to pick a mid range product and have a choice between a “watersports board” which costs £399 and a stand up paddle board which they all agree is the easier product to sell. Alana points out helpfully after both suppliers have left that they should have asked if there were any special trade discounts. Jess does just this for Nebula and the vendor plumps for them – telling K he chose them because they negotiated a closing price. Oops.
The high end teams test drive a 20k speedboat and 16k Jetskis. Grainne and Courtney are very professional and get all the product information from the vendors. Sofiane doesn’t give a monkey about the specifications and just wants a Jetski because his brother used to have one and he wants to join the Romford Navy too (“It’s a toy!” he declares joyously, royally pissing off the vendor).
The next day Fran calls Nigel the Jetski man “Will you let us sell your jetskis in the morning” she asks confidently. There’s a long pause. “What model did you look at?” Nigel asks leadingly. She gets it wrong and he informs them that’s exactly why he’s going with the other team – losers! Sofiane takes it hard (“So you think it’s all based on specifications?” Nigel “No it’s based on knowledge”. Slam!). Frances doesn’t seem bothered by the outcome but decides if they fail the task it will be down to Sofiane “wallowing in self pity”.
At a rainy Poole harbour K prices up his items with Courtney’s help (which Sam ignores utterly selling at RRP because Sam knows best), whereas Frances gleefully accepts the RRP for all her stall tat. “I don’t want absolutely no negativity” she insists, English language manglingly, to Sofiane and Paul. She drags Sofiane off to decorate the speedboat they’ve been stuck flogging with bottles of champagne, because getting arseholed on bubbly in charge of a dangerous vehicle on the briny is exactly what appeals to posh people with money to burn. She complains that he’s not listening to the specification (“he’s like a child in a toyshop – he’s distracted so easily” and sits around looking sad whilst he makes tugboat noises and pretends he’s firing torpedoes. Meanwhile Courtney and Grainne test each other on their Jetski knowledge whilst millions of potential Jetski customers waft past them.
Dillon’s in his element hanging fish cushions artfully around their stall (“Would you like to come inside our little aquarium?”) whilst miserable wet punters shuffle by. Jess springs into Walter Mitty-esque action, bullshitting any customers she can find with non-existent family members (“My four year old has one and loves it”) and sales (“We’ve sold loads”). ” You can’t lie” Paul tells her… “Yeah good advice” she rolls her eyes (to be fair it is sales – she has a point!).
Poor Dillon’s struggling to sell his watersports board (“It’s extremely – er – floatable”) but seems to have got a pity sale from a woman who promises she just has to go and find a cashpoint (Dillon “It’s the charm of the Irish”) then disappoints never to be seen again, so Dillon makes a face like a child who has learned the truth about Santa before starting sneakily trying to muscle in on Alana’s sale (“That was MY customer”, Alana “Lying bastard!”).
K’s also struggling to make sales but comes up with a masterful strategy to shift the changing robe (“I’m going to take my trousers off right now!” – presumably so people will buy the robe to wrap around their eyes). “Do you think that puts people off?” a traumatised Alana asks Sam, “should we tell him?”. Sam doesn’t care as long as someone else gets fired (“Leave it another hour”).
Sofiane consistently cocks up the boat specifications with George their first posh twat punter and it’s up to Fran to go on about it having a canopy. “He wants it… I can read his body language” he insists as Fran looks at him as though he’s a fart in human form.
Courtney makes a feeble attempt to pitch to the people ignoring him (“It’s a lovely day for er jetskis”). They call the subteam to explain how hard it is to sell and Alana pulls a “we’re doomed” face whilst Sam noticeably (to Claude) doesn’t offer to step in with his high end skillz (“Lets focus on these boards…” sees potential customer “are you into watersports madam?” – customer runs away). There’s no way Jess is going to let Sam win the task innuendo competition though and she hits back by trying to interest punters in a “full facial snorkel” (kinky!). I’m surprised she doesn’t manage too crowbar in Seaman Stains and Master Bates quite frankly. She tries modelling the snorkel for effect but Paul tells her she looks “like something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie!” (more David Cronenburg surely?).
Things pick up for Courtney and Grainne when they pitch to a bloke who runs a Jetski training company who wants four and they pass him on to Nigel the vendor when he wants to negotiate a bulk discount, having done everything right. “I’ll take over” Nigel informs them and they are ecstatic.
Meanwhile Sofiane does a legs akimbo calendar boy pose on the boat whilst Frances tries to tempt customers with a “couple of extras” and they look worried she means Sofiane’s bollocks rather than free life jackets. “Are you happy to go ahead?” she asks “Go on – it’s got a canopy!”. “Yeah go on” says the silly rich man as though he’s buying a big chocolate bar at the WH Smith till. However the voiceover warns ominously that all sales only go ahead after credit checks by the vendors.
Poor Dillon’s luck doesn’t improve when he tries to bulk sell all the stock to trade at the end of the day and the shop woman buys one fecking fish cushion for her dog to chew.
Back in the boardroom and Frances does a big gulp when Grainne mentions casually that they may have bulk sold four Jetskis. Dillon says he took Lord Sugar’s comment about selling as a “challenge” (Sugar “It was”) before blaming the weather for his poor sales whilst insisting he “engaged every single person”
Alana’s asked what she did and she’s disarmingly honest “I stood by the waterboards all day”. K’s excuse for not selling is having “all this PM admin work to do”. Chinny. The Titans are asked if K was a good PM and tumbleweed ensues until Alana says bluntly he’s a not a good leader.
Over on the other team Frances suggests Sofiane was “quite excited by the Jetski” which isn’t enough for Karren (“It’s fair to say VERY excited!”) although her diss goes right over Sof’s head as he wistfully declares he “sort of fell in love with the Jetski”. Jess is pulled up on her porky pies and nobody bothers to ask what the frick Trishna did all day, although she does at least pipe up in support of her PM.
The subteams scores are in and Nebula sold £2580.68 whereas Titans only sold £188.90. But surely the high end sales will swing it. Er no it doesn’t matter as to Grainne’s horrified disbelief not one of the Jetski sales went through (she misses a golden opportunity to blame this on Nigel the sarky vendor man who took over the bulk sale) whereas somehow Frances and Sofiane shifted two speedboats giving Nebula a total score of £40480 against Titans £188. Frances is moved to tears of relief and gratitude which Karren like a complete fucking bitch points out helpfully (“Do you want a tissue Frances – are you crying?”) because for all her supposed feminism she doesn’t mind showing up another woman for showing vulnerability.
Nebula get sent to do rowing with one of the British double gold medal winning rowers (no, not those ones – one of the ones nobody has heard of apart from maybe an answer on Pointless).
Sugar dismisses the rest disdainfully like he’s Charlie Brooker (“Go away”) such is his rage at their world of fail. In the Bridge Café Sam starts smugly sowing his seeds (“Courtney and Grainne should be worried”) until Alana points out he didn’t exactly put his case “that strongly” which K grasps upon like a drowning man holding onto a watersports board (“If you had showed passion I would have selected you”).
Back in the boardroom and K admits it is a “very very horrible day in business for me”. Grainne and Courtney are accused by Claude of putting all their Jetskis in one basket and not touting for trade from passing customers. Courtney suggests that all the other tasks Titans won were down to him. Sam moans that the water board things were hard to sell as they needed to be attached to a boat (Sugar “You were at a BOAT show!”) and Dillon backs him up (“I’ve seen Sam sell”) until Karren slaps him down (“What are you his spokesperson? Why don’t you talk about yourself?”).
Dillon reckons K let the task down but K says “A captain is as good as his team” and is adamant his name’s “on the board” to which Sugar responds yes for shittest task fail evah, before trying to liven up the format by announcing he doesn’t even trust K to bring anyone back and firing him for being “a diabolical PM”. Oooh! K’s still living the dream (delusion) in the Taxi of Doom where he declares he will build his own billion dollar “unicorn” business (Unicorn because it is a fantasy?).
Grainne is asked to suggest one person to bring back and she poises her knife expertly above Sam’s back, complaining that he is “just gliding through the process” (pretty much as Grainne is doing). Dillon’s asked to choose someone else and he can’t bring himself to say anyone, coming precariously close to dooming himself. And then under pressure he suggests himself (Doh!) and Alana for being “weak sellers”. Karren and Claude both think Dillon is too nice and knows too much about cushions, but also think Alana needs to put herself “forward” (this is the same Alana who won her task as PM right?). Back in the room and Sam gets the most flack for disregarding PM instructions like a maverick and his repricing of sweets against Alana’s recommendation in the task she won is mentioned, which he denies. Despite it being on film and everything. Dillon isn’t doing himself any favours claiming he’s not at his best “selling twelve apples for a pound” (which is a freaking bargain by the way! Hope his business plan isn’t a greengrocers) and that he prides himself “on my talent”. Alana sees which way the tide is turning and admits she does herself a “misjustice” by clamming up in the boardroom. Karren says she suffers “from a lack of confidence” but for once adds a bright side “it’s a great shame as you have a lot to offer”. Somehow she survives as Sugar suddenly remembers she has run her own business.
Sam’s fed up with being “accused of being a silent assassin” pointing out that he “top sold” in every task. Dillon insists he’s “not just a nice guy but can be really aggressive” and tries to look hard. “I’ve created money from air” he adds but Sugar cuts him down “being a nice guy is not enough to win this process” before firing Sam for not being a team player (“It’s nice to have nice people in business so Dillon you can stay” – eh?!). Sam follows K in the Taxi of regret (it’s like Strictly Come Dancing tonight) but he seems reasonably upbeat.
Back at the house Dillon snarls it’s “No more Mr Nice Guy” – cue a clip of him dressed as a sailor singing shanties in next week’s task. I am Dillon hear me Rahhhh!
Liking: Dillon , Sofiane, Alana
Wearing thin: Jess
Unconvinced by: Paul, Courtney, Frances, Trishna
The real silent assassin: Grainne
Bye Bye: Michelle, Natalie, Lovely Sausage Olly, Aleksandra (Conscientious Objector), Mukai (Utter Twat in a bow tie), JD, Rebecca, K, Sam
View From The Funny Farm 