Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Hmm, this day late thing seems to becoming a trend sadly. Fear not though, because with just three weeks to go the Apprentice Awards are 110% committed to reporting on what remains of Britain’s least reality-television TV show (which is still actually very much a reality TV show – how else could Stuart Baggs possibly still be on it?).

"How good are we if even when we're sh*t we still win?" Hopefully Professor Hawking is hard at work on Stuart Baggs' question as we speak

This week, finally, wonderfully, mercifully, we said goodbye to Laura, her big mouth and small amount of talent. The aforementioned Baggs will no doubt mourn her passing somewhat, but with Laura gone we really are down to the cream of the crop. Well, at least we are on the girl’s side – the boys continue to be an utterly useless pile of yellow snow. Anyway, here are the Awards:

And the best Oscar goes to – for some reason Ridley Scott seemed to have jumped behind the camera this week. Not only were we treated to some overly dramatic music at various intervals, but we also got a large dose of architectural porn as the candidates travelled to the City of London to be briefed. Shame the winner ends up working in a crap retail park in Essex really.

Most tenuous link of the series – speaking of the City, Lord Sugar was surely stretching it a tad with his link between “Wheelin’ & dealin’” on City trading floors and the candidates legging it round London searching for ten bizarre items wasn’t he?

The relationship counsellor section in the Yellow Pages - the perfect companon for a day in the taxi with Laura

Questions of the week – both from the utterly clueless (but still very handsome) Jamie as he wandered the streets filling Vodafone’s coffers: “Do you do 4m long kitchen work tops?” and “What is a 22 carat gold Tikka?”. Surely, surely, the clue is somewhat in the faintly Indian-related name isn’t it Jamie?

The least likely story of 2010 – I still think he’s useless, but to be fair to Chris he’s happy to stoop as low as it takes. Telling a cabbie’s shop that his brother was “taking his Knowledge exam on Monday” was priceless. Is there anyone in the country (with the possible exception of Prince Andrew) whose brother is less likely to be a cabbie than Chris?

The Adam Smith Award (part four) – more spot-on economic analysis from the candidates, this time from Jamie on the cost of buying the ten items, “I don’t think people will give us stuff, but we can try to get it at trade or cost price”. Erm…

Have we really not learned this lesson yet? – Liz on the prospects for the boardroom, “I think Lord Sugar’s going to be really impressed with our work today”. That faint thudding noise you can hear is 7m viewers banging their heads against their 4m long kitchen table tops in despair.

The return of a legend – Michael Sophocles (the useless but ‘innocent half-Jewish boy’) undoubtedly produced the best moment in Apprentice history with his boardroom celebration a couple of years back. Yesterday his successors on the boy’s team tried their damnedest to replicate it, forming a rugby scrum on the sofas as they celebrated that most simple of tasks – being on time for a meeting with your boss.

Quotes of the week – so many good ones this week, but so little space to include them all. My favourite three though: From Herr Baggs, “I think he feels like he’s been fired already to be honest” – the only thing worse than Stuart is a confident Stuart. From departing Laura, “I’ve never had to shout or scream to get to this point” – erm, pretty much pick any episode from this series here. And from PM Liz to an 80 year old plate merchant, “Oh Tony don’t, you’re making me weak at the knees”. Ugh, Ugh, Ugh, Ugh, Ugh, Ugh, Ugh