Thunderbozz

How to make an episode of The Apprentice : You will need the following: Music The soundtrack to the entire series comprises just three pieces of music. These are: the overly-dramatic theme tune ( derr, derrn, derr, derrn... ); the fast-paced tune, used over shots of the candidates rushing around or desperately trying to sell things at the last minute; and the twinkly one used for building tention and/or suspence. Film clips You can never have too many gratuitous shots of London, the Thames, Canary Wharf, interesting-looking road junctions (in London), the rooves of black cabs/double-decker buses/tube trains/Sir Alan's limo all being driven around London. Shots of the candidates using various forms of the capital's public transport systems are also a good choice. These may look slightly frivilous, but there are a vital element of the show's success. Pilot episodes of the show that used footage of Amstrad's real HQ and its surroundings (an industrial estate in ...

The Apprentice is back. And how. It always amazes me how clueless the candidates seem to be about the whole process. At times, the new candidates seem to have learnt from the mistakes of the past – for example, both teams managed to sort out team names pretty rapidly this year – but then everything falls apart. The women couldn't get themselves organised, at first spending too long choosing a team leader, then arguing over how much money to spend on cleaning products... and then bitching about it in the taxis. Their approach didn't look like it could get any worse... until they started arguing with their potential customers over how much to charge! £300 to clean three limos? £300?!? The phrase "That's an amazing quote" really shouldn't be used when you're charging double what the guy's currently paying. The boys on the other hand started very promisingly indeed. Within five minutes they'd sorted out a plan, had a potential client on the ...

There was one advantage to being internet-less this week. It meant that I couldn't accidentally find out who had won this year's cracking series of The Apprentice before watching it. Not on iPlayer, but on an old-school VHS cassette, I should add (life's such fun in the 1990s house). The grand finalé was a fantastic end to the series. The candidates had so much to do in the three days they were given, and the focus (for us and Sir Alan) was on how the candidates would perform at actually doing business . The task ahead of them looked terrifying: invent a product, create it, design it, market it, test it, launch it... and all without any previous experience of working in the industry. If there was ever a task that would separate the men from the boys, this was it. The return of some of the losing candidates also meant there was plenty of opportunities for squabbling, arguing, time-wasting, eye-rolling and head-shaking. Bringing them all back together for The Apprent...

Well, I suppose it was inevitable, but it's still disappointing: this week's Apprentice was the last for the wonderful Lucinda. Having battled valiantly throughout the series against difficult tasks, new challenges and spiteful words, Cindy proved herself to be an extremely strong candidate. Unfortunately, she's applied for the wrong job. Ordinarily, I would despise someone like her: she earns £100,000 a year yet claims not be driven by money; despite this wealth, she hadn't had a television set for the last five years; some of her qualifications are in herbal medicine. Ordinarily, I'd call her a rich, eccentric loon. But it proved impossible not to take a shine to her over the last eleven weeks. Daring to stand out and be different – whether in attitude or expressed through an extraordinary array of Technicolour dresses – is a brave and admirable decision, but Sir Alan doesn't tolerate style over substance. Her performances in the challenges were also e...

I watched this week's Apprentice at half-past-three on Wednesday morning, having been staring at a computer screen for about a day. As a result, my memory of precisely what happened are slightly cloudy. The Guardian 's excellent " live blog " has handily filled in the gaps. Our six would-be apprentices were given the task of selling wealthy punters the chance to spend some time with some fantastic supercars. Apparently, this is a rapidly growing new business venture, although quite why struck me as a tad confusing. Surely the whole point of those things is to drive them – fast ? Unless you own your own racetrack, there's not much opportunity to do that on the UK's roads... It soon became clear, though, that the target audience was disgustingly rich grade-A posers. Depending on your point of view, poor/useless Lucinda was unfairly/fairly treated by her team-mates this week. Having said she wouldn't feel comfortable selling on her own (because she...

Quite why the producers of The Apprentice felt the need to show the teams' embarrassingly-poor efforts at television commercials over and over again is beyond me. As a result, I spent much of my time watching this week's episode with my hands over my eyes. They were awful. In fairness, I thought Raef's team's effort was half-decent. It was quite obvious at an early stage that Sir Alan wouldn't like it, but it was nevertheless quite a good try. I had assumed the ad-execs watching would have taken a bit of a shine to it, so the first shock of the evening came when it was revealed that they had lost. The second shock (I'm glossing over some of the terrible clothes selections by the victorious boys in Harvey Nics... and Lucinda's stunning glittery number) was when Raef (who looks like something out of a Harvey Nics catalogue) got the boot. Based on the fact that "odious little twit " (to misquote Adrian Chiles) Michael was there, you can only a...

This week's Apprentice in quotations: Michael on geography: "Central London is near North London" Helene on £900 dresses: "God I bet that's expensive... but it wasn't" Sara in a cake shop: "Do you know what? I've been on a cake course!" Lucinda: "Cakes are approx. £600-a-pop" Claire: "Is that expensive?" Lucinda: "I don't know..." Michael trying to describe the dresses: "Imagine the dresses the women were wearing in Beauty And The Beast " A section just for Lee: Motivational speech: "Come on Team Alpha! COME ON!" On pipping the other team: "We fuckin' did 'em!" At the exhibition: "Ah, Hello ladies!" "I'm buzzin'... I'm off to sell some more knickers" "That wedding dress is two-and-a-half grand... and I need to nail her" Nick, stating the bleeding obvious: "We're not in Knightsbridge, we're in Bir...

This week's Apprentice was explosive. Sir Alan was rightly appalled by the lies, the deception, the back-stabbing, the name-calling, the silly mistakes and the sheer ineptitude of this week's losing team – two of whom got fired. Both Technicolour Lucinda and Doe-Eyed Sara have come under a lot of fire in recent weeks for not pulling their weight or contributing to the team. Full credit to team-leader Lee for giving them the opportunity to show what they could do. OK, so they might not have had much responsibility, but they did the task they were set pretty well. The candidates are like that little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When they are good, they're usually pretty good, but when things go bad they are horrid. Claire was uncontrollable, wrecking Alex's negotiations. But Alex was part of the group which made mistakes over the clock (although he can't be held responsible for much, in fairness). Team-leader and former B*...

This week's Apprentice was the most cringe-worthy to date. Not just because of Kevin's woeful attempt to pitch his team's idea, either. From what we have seen of them over the last six weeks, every single one of the remaining candidates (without exception, albeit to varying degree) has proved themselves to be quite dislikeable. It was clear from the very beginning that tensions among the candidates were high. From the argument in the car between Technicolour Lucinda, Kit-Cat Clock Helene and B*witched star Jennifer to the massive spat that broke out in the house following Doe-eyed Sara's return... it's fair to guess that there won't be too many Valentines cards being sent between them next year. Kudos to Spiffing Raef for defending Sara (apparently the only one to do so, although we always remember the influence that editing can have), despite her very limited contribution, and shame on the rest of them. It's quite staggering to think that any of ...

As you might have guessed, I've got a bit of a soft spot for Lucinda. She has her faults, make no mistake: her methods of dealing with people in social situations probably need a bit of work, her ripostes to Sir Alan need a bit of work, and she may well be "a bit of a fruitcake"... but The Apprentice would be a much duller place without her. This week, Luce turned it around, and impressed everyone – well, nearly everyone – with her relaxed but effective management style. I honestly thought that they'd absolutely demolished the other team, led by annoying Claire, and was shocked to discover they'd missed out by a couple of hundred quid. In the firing line, Lucinda's weaknesses were exposed, but she was saved by the bitchiness between Ninja-lookalike Lindi and former B*witched star Jennifer M. It was interesting to see how The Apprentice presents the geography of England. When the candidates leave "London", they enter what's known as "T...

Week four of The Apprentice , and it was "Chopper" Simon who... well, got the chop. Sir Alan admitted that he fired him somewhat reluctantly, but it was probably a fair decision. Simon looked panicked and out of his depth: managing the team was beyond him. That said, you had to feel sorry for him at the end. As he left the boardroom for the last time, there were tears in his eyes; his parting words to receptionist Francis could have been taken from a romantic old film; his last words in the taxi home were quite sad. Credit where it's due: of the three in the firing line, at least he had the courage to admit he had made mistakes, and to accept responsibility. The other team-leader, Helene, proved to be just a dislikeable as her predecessors. In the brief scenes we saw her, she was rude and didn't show any real signs of leadership at all. Lucinda (in her Technicolour Dreamcoats™) was absolutely useless at her task within the group, but she can't be accused of...

Another cracking episode of The Apprentice this week, this time providing more cringe-worthy moments than ever before. From Ian's point-blank denial that reluctant Head Chef Kevin had given a pep-talk to reluctant Head Chef Kevin's woeful attempts to calculate the number of tomatoes required, Sir Alan's fears that none of the boys possess much business acumen appeared to be sound. It was quite obvious that the boys weren't going to win from quite an early stage. You can sometimes make a guess based on the amount of footage we see of the two teams: as a rule, the losers tend to get more airtime. What gave it away was their woeful lack of planning, resulting in several trips to Tesco to buy supplies. They're cheap, but they're not that cheap. You could tell, however, that the girls team still have issues to sort out. It was surprising to see Claire come out in support of talkative team leader Sara in the boardroom, but as soon as they were away for their r...

This week, it was the united and rejuvenated boys team who were victorious in Sir Alan's latest task to help him choose an apprentice. It was a remarkable transformation following the apparently seismic divide (between "prince and pauper") that led to their defeat in week one: amazingly, that's all been put aside and it's the girls who are at loggerheads with each other. This week's team leader Jenny (pictured, left) is probably one of the ugliest people you're ever likely to meet, and she's got a personality demeanour to match. Not only was she bad at running the team, she was incredibly rude, unbelievably arrogant, and reduced poor Lucinda (right) to tears. Plus, her quotation on The Apprentice 's website doesn't make sense. (It's "If you’re sitting on the fence, you’re taking up too much space".) I must admit to having a little bit of a soft spot for Luce (the one who refuses to dress in business-like monochrome) beca...