And now, just to further enrage Batty...
The UK version of the show went on the air one year after the original broadcast, and is produced by the same team. In place of Donald Trump we have “wide-boy” millionaire Alan Sugar, originally Sir Alan and later Lord Sugar. The format is basically the same, with a few differences along the way.
Season one, episode one
In place of Carol and George we have Margaret and Nick, Mountford and Hewer respectively, Sugar's eyes and ears on the teams. He also goes to great lengths to point out that he and he alone has the power to decide who will be fired, as if he's laying down a marker, to tell the BBC or whoever makes the programme that they will not tell him who is to be fired, that it might be better for viewing figures if this or that person got the bullet or was kept. It's clear he intends to maintain total and direct control over the show, and he sets his stall out from the very start. He also makes it clear he is not impressed by diplomas, degrees or any other paraphernalia. One of his catchphrases will become “I don't like bulls
hitters”, and he doesn't. If someone is making themselves out to be other than they are, or is exaggerating the truth, he will not stand for it. He's also the one to coin the phrase “hiding in the long grass” that I used in the US version (although Trump never mentions or intimates anyone is doing this) and while his US counterpart is seen as a tough-as-nails boss, in terms of the show, he's a pussycat compared to Sir Alan.
Right away he leaves the candidates under no illusions, telling them this is a “job interview from hell”. They should know what to expect, and if they fail to perform he will have no hesitation in kicking them out. He's an East End boy (grew up in the East End of London) and a market trader, unlike Trump, who is a real estate entrepreneur, and he is much more curt and to the point about the candidates than Trump is. He almost insults them, and in later episodes and seasons will. He makes no friends and accepts no attempts at currying favour: the only way to win this boss over is to win the task, and win it big. And keep winning. He will be drilling down into the details of every task with the teams, and there will be no hiding place. Some of the candidates may come to regret ever having signed up for this!
The first thing the candidates have to do, having been split up into the traditional women vs men teams, is pick a name, and though the men come up with theirs --- Impact --- pretty quickly, the women spend over an hour deliberating until they finally come up with... First Forte? What the fu
ck does that mean? Something is either your forte or it isn't; you don't have a first or second forte!
As for the task? Well, just as Trump took his people back to basics by selling lemonade on the streets of New York, Sugar wants his teams to sell flowers on the streets of London. Furnished with £500 seed (hah) money, they will go out in the morning and whoever sells the most and makes the most money will win. Saira, in charge of the women's team, seems to be locking horns with another member, Miranda, shooting down her suggestions and cutting her off all the time, making it seem like she's not but in fact being quite rude and bossy (though I guess she is the PM and has to take control) while Tim, leading Impact, listens to suggestions including going door to door selling the flowers,
The Task
At Covent Garden flower market both teams have the opportunity to buy the flowers they want, at the best prices they can manage. The boys, on advice from one of the professional sellers here, go for lilies, while the girls seem confused and divided, and are late finishing, with many an argument on the way. As he often will do, Sugar has set up a pitch for each team, this time in Portobello Market, from where they can sell as well as do their other sales door to door or on the street. But when they arrive, all they see is a blank space. There is nothing to sell on, no stall, no tables, no display. The girls, arriving first, have used their charm to get a table from a nearby butcher shop so the boys decide not to compete for now, and go door to door instead. Matthew, who lives nearby, directs them to the places he believes they will be most successful.
As it turns out, whether intentional or not, Sir Alan has chosen for them spots in a fairly ordinary market, and there's little or no footfall. Nobody is interested and so the girls are having a hard time selling. On the other team, Paul turns out to be a selling phenomenon, charming, cajoling or wooing everyone he meets into buying the flowers. Even the traditional English downpour can't dampen his technique, and the girls realise (after two hours) that they're getting nowhere at the market, and move on. They begin to sell on the street, but Miranda makes an executive decision to offload some of her stock on a local shopkeeper at below cost price. That's never going to go down well!
As sales begin to move for the girls Saira seems to be the main seller, and as the day begins to wind down she decides they should head to King's Cross railway station, while the boys go to Baker Street. Probably a bad move, as they both find out to their cost. People on the way to or from trains are not interested in buying flowers. Nevertheless, the girls do manage to sell out before the deadline, as, a short time later, do the boys, but only by slashing prices to the bone, a tactic the girls have not resorted to (other than Miranda's earlier unsanctioned below-cost sale).
And now for a word...
This is a section I didn't run in the US version, because quite frankly neither George nor Carol really speak to the camera during the task, beyond the odd wink or look or smile or grimace. Nick and Margaret, however, frequently give their considered view as the task progresses, so here I'll note whenever they say anything about it that I believe is worth mentioning.
Nick (following First Forte): “They're running out of time. There are some good ideas in there, but they need to start buying or they'll be in trouble.”
(He's referring to the scatterbrain approach of the girls, who are trying to decide what they need to buy to “dress up” their bouquets --- ribbons, bags etc --- while not actually concentrating enough on buying the actual flowers.)
Nick: “I think they've got confused. This is an ordinary street market but there's no traffic here. It's a residential place, local people come here to buy their vegetables. I think they're going to stay here for about twenty minutes and get disappointed.”
Nick (yeah, Margaret is keeping schtumm it would seem!): “The only salesperson there is Saira. It's not pretty to watch, but it's effective. It's almost physical. It's a bit confrontational, but she's shifting the merchandise.”
The Boardroom
I should point out, there is a significant difference here to the US version. Whereas Trump's failed candidates can return to their jobs, a condition of Sugar's process is that everyone must give up their job to be selected, meaning that whoever is picked eventually is immediately available for work. However this also means that the other thirteen candidates are now out of a job, unless some under-the-counter/gentleman's agreement deal has been worked out, of which we are not advised. To all intents and purposes though, fourteen people leave their jobs to vie for this one, and thirteen are going to find themselves unemployed at the end. It does add a level of seriousness and tension to the show, and is I guess meant to ensure that the candidates work even harder to be the chosen one.
We'll find too that unlike Trump, Sugar will have much more to say in the Boardroom. He will use it as an opportunity to slap people down, point out mistakes and basically make his displeasure, if any, known to all concerned. He will not pull any punches and will be the star of the show in every way. If Trump is the kindly but somewhat eccentric old uncle, Sugar is the drunk, cursing, snarling one who throws things at people and tells them to get out. He is, really, not a very nice man and he doesn't care a toss who knows it. He's not here to make friends, or create a TV persona or market a brand: there's no “Sugar Ice” (!) “Sugar Cola” or “Sugar Dogfood”, unlike his American counterpart, who has his name and face on virtually everything he sells or is involved in. Sugar has one aim, and that is to make money, or in this case, have people make money for him and in the process show him who is worthy of becoming his apprentice. In this, he is both less, and more, of a showman than Donald Trump.
In a total reversal of fortune compared to the US version's first episode, the boys come in with the first win and beat the girls quite comfortably. Sugar is impressed, and says so. Miranda, not surprisingly, is taken to task over her early-doors cut-price strategy; Sugar says that the time to re-evaluate prices is maybe 4 or 5pm, near the end of the task, not 1pm. He says he detects an air of panic and he's not wrong. Also unsurprisingly, when asked who she wants to bring back Saira choose Adeneike, whom she had something of an argument with, and Miranda.
Behind the Boardroom Door
Not quite sure why, but the three of them talk in really low voices so it's hard to make out what they're saying, but I do hear Nick mentioning that Adenike was “a real thorn in Saira's side”...
And then there were three
Miranda's interrogation continues; Sugar tells her he can only see what she did as panic, no matter how she tries to justify it. Selling at a loss just cuts him up, it goes against everything he believes in. Adenike tries to claim she sold well when Sugar takes her to task but Nick shakes his head and says, as we saw, that Saira was doing most of the sales. She however then puts her foot in it when she blames her two teammates for not following her strategy, and Sugar reminds her that she herself told him a short time ago that she allowed some of her team to operate semi-autonomously, as they had greater experience in sales.
It looks like Miranda is for the chop, but as he will often do, Sugar surprises everyone and goes for Adenike, believing her questioning of the PM's strategy was unforgivable, even though Miranda's losing money for the team sticks in his craw. He tells her in particular she is lucky, and Adenike becomes the first one to be fired, which is just as well, as it's hard to remember the spelling of her name...
After the Firing
Generally, Trump tends to say something generic like “that was a hard one” but Sugar often does a little post-mortem of a few words, backing up the reason he fired who he did.
“That's the way I saw it folks. I think she was undermining exactly everything that was agreed.”
Thoughts in the cab
Adenike: “I am obviously quite a strong-headed person. I like to get my opinion across, especially when things don't seem quite right. If you're actually fired for not supporting a losing strategy, that's fine. I'm proud of what I've done, I'm proud of all my suggestions. The bottom line is I have been fired and you just have to accept it and move on.”
You're fired!
Name: Adenike Ogundoyin
Age: 30
Occupation: Restaurant Manager
I can't tell you all that much about her as she was the first to go, and didn't really distinguish herself other than by her disruption of the team and her questioning of Saira's decisions. It was she who wanted to target hospitals and funeral parlours, leading to Margaret's incredulous comment "You wanted to ring funeral directors in the middle of the night, and get them to step out on the pavement and buy sixty quid's worth of flowers from you? That was your strategy, was it?”
She came across as quite sullen, making you wonder why maybe she didn't put herself forward as leader if she thought she was so great, and was another, like Miranda, who refused to accept that she had made mistakes. She originally came from Nigeria, and very sadly, died in 2011 after collapsing at a meeting. There is no information on how she died.
Take me to your leader
First Forte: Saira was a good leader, per se, though she seemed to be one of these hands-on people who have to do everything herself, and she certainly didn't entertain any dissension in her ranks. As one of them put it, she was quite dictatorial, but it more or less worked. She's quite arrogant and condescending, as she says herself in her bio, people can see her as a little bossy. Indeed.
Impact: Tim certainly had a clear startegy and knew what he wanted to do. He used his people well, didn't worry about personal sales--- Paul was clearly the best salesman by a mile and he let him run with it, resulting in a huge win for his team --- and generally nobody seemed to step out of line or disrupt the team really. In other words, there was no Sam.
May the best team win?
Hard to say really, as this was only the first task and for me it looked like it could have gone either way. But compared to the squabbling, one-upmanship on the girls' team, Impact was an ocean of calm, so it's not too surprising that they won. Mind you, the last pitches were disastrous initially for both teams, but Miranda's “panic selling” earlier probably lost them a lot of their potential profit. Nevertheless, I doubt I could have called this.
Weeding out the weaklings
A little early but I saw nothing from Miriam, Rajm Sbastian, Rachel or Linday, an d Adele seemed to do nothing but complain.
The Front Runners
Again, too early to say but Tim and Paul seem to be the two standing out. Saira is good but her abrasive and condescending personality may lead her into trouble with her team.
Sight Adjustment?
Personally, I think selling at below cost price (twice) was a miscalculation Miranda should not have been able to come back from. I think she directly contributed to the team's poor performance, I think she made an unilateral decision that should have been cleared with the PM, and when called on it she did not hold up her hands and admit she had been wrong, she still tried to justify the unjustifiable. I suppose Sugar must have seen something in her but I would have fired her. Adenike was culpable too but not in my opinion as much as Miranda.
Adjustment required: 60%
Oops!
Not to harp on about it, but selling so early at so low a price was a serious flaw in Miranda's logic and, had the takings been a little closer and the girls just narrowly beaten I think she would have had to shoulder the responsibility for that.
The one that got away
For all the reasons already given, I believe Miranda is lucky still to be in the process.