Adam Hosker
Many thanks to shelly_77
The following has allegedly been by Adam Hosker (contestant from
the Apprentice Series 3)
and was posted
from www.adamhosker.co.uk
.
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The Apprentice: Lifting the lid
Adam Hosker
The one time shot, the biggest opportunity of my life, Sir Alan told us on week one, day one minute one that we were all winners and that we had beat off competition from tens of thousands of applicants. From the initial interview at the Palace Hotel in Manchester last summer I can believe it. It was the hottest day of the summer and as the “Law of sod” would have it we were in the only hotel in Manchester without air conditioning. Of course as it was an interview I had a suit, shirt and tie on.
The first interview was short and sweet, about two minutes, a brief chat and summary of my application form. I could hear people being informed that if they had been successful they would be contacted in one week's time. After a few questions the guy interviewing me asked me to follow a lady who quickly ushered me through to another room. I was quickly sat down and another interview quickly began. Why should we put you through? What is your greatest achievement to-date? What are your strengths and weaknesses? All stuff straight out of a quick guide to HR to be honest. I answered them as honestly and coherently as I could. The final question was if you could pick any job in the world what would it be? “Fighter Pilot” I answered, “The funny thing is that I almost become a Pilot in the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy. That is until I went short sighted suddenly half way through my application process. I was offered the opportunity to pursue a career as a Warfare Officer but after a course to a Naval Base and visits aboard two submarines I decided it wasn't for me”. I think he was a little taken back that I didn't say I want to run Amstrad or something as suck up as that.
I was then asked to wait outside. Put into a holding area, something I was to get very familiar with. In this holding area where just five other people, through some glass doors I could see people coming and going, just about every assertive young business type under 35 in Manchester had turned up. One by one they came and went. I was in the holding area for about an hour. The other five slowly got called away to the mystery room down the corridor. Only another two people came through to join us while I waited. One lady; Kristina a Sales Exec from Harrogate with a distinctive ROI accent seemed to stand out. She seemed ok, another guy, Ian I think, kept talking about reality TV and how he wanted to be a TV star. I couldn't help thinking he was a “right tool”. This for sure isn't Big Brother; it's more serious than that, you need brains, guts and determination. Not a complete inability to fit into society and an ascertaining urge to share your toilet habits with the nation.
Just over an hour had passed. A lady opened the glass door and asked me to follow her. I was ushered down a corridor and sat in another room and instructed not to speak to anybody until I was asked through. The “tool” was also sat in there - he'd started to remove his tie at this point and was asking for a glass of water. He'd got this far but clearly the pressure had already got to him. He tried to continue his conversation about getting on TV. I just nodded, I was imagining what questions would get thrown at me and what answers I would give. I wanted the job, £100,000 a year would solve all my problems, being on TV was going to be something I would have to tolerate to be in with a chance of such an amazing job, well a £100,000 a year job, yes I am motivated by money; or rather the lack of it. Eventually I was asked into the room.
Now that felt real, four people sat “boardroom” style, Kelly and Tom two of the main producers and two others, I really can't remember who. The questions started, where do you see yourself in the future? “Easy running an International globally recognised company”, what is your ultimate aim? “A Sunseeker Predator” after a few odd looks, one of them asked me “what on earth is a Sunseeker? “a Yacht” I replied “but they cost £8 Million so I'm going to need a better job”, I got a few positive smiles, particularly from Kelly. That was the easy questions out of the way, one by one they fired questions at me, from business scenarios to how I would find living in London if I won, if I could uproot at short notice to start work with Sir Alan should I win, if I could cope with long hours and hard work and so on. The interview lasted about thirty or forty minutes, it was one of the most challenging interviews I had been in since the Admiralty Interview Board for a commission with the Royal Navy some eight years previously. I suppose they liked what I had to say because they then put me through to another room to answer some questions on camera. That was equally difficult, a girl called Nicky was asking the questions, she stood me in-front of the camera and started immediately, “right, this is your chance to impress Sir Alan, he will see this, so tell him why you want to work for him and why he should let you on his show”- off I went. I said something about not being full of hot air and that I would only say I could do what I was capable of and that I would work my back side off to get the job. I was then told I would be contacted in a week to be told if I had made it through, I wasn't sure if I was being taken out of the loop at that point but I was quietly confident.
London
As promised an e-mail came through about a week later, it had the date I was to go to London for the next round of interviews. I was also contacted later that week by telephone and told that only 70 from all the interviews around the country had made it to this stage and that I was in with a real chance. I had to tell a few of my close friends, I don't know what reaction I was expecting but I was quite overwhelmed by everyone's response. My friends and their parents all said they could see me winning it, not getting on it but winning it, as though getting on would be a formality for me.
Now, I have been to London before, quite a few times. Usually on business and I fly in, go to a meeting and fly home. I also have a friend at a dance and drama college that I occasionally pop down to see. I'd been shopping on Oxford St once but somehow never seen the sights. I took the opportunity to get down a day early and have a sight seeing day and take in the atmosphere.
The day arrived, I had to be at the studio by eleven, I just found it on time signed in and got taken up to the canteen of the talkback offices. There were ten guys and ten girls in the group. We filled in numerous legal confidentiality forms and photo release forms and then went through to a room. The room looked like a meeting room except for the camera's and crew. We did some communication skills tests like stand in order of age and height without talking. I always find that one fun on courses. Then task one, we split into male / female groups and appointed a leader, there was an older guy with grey hair called Jeremy or something like that who was appointed team leader. We had to assemble an IKEA wardrobe in 10 minutes. We did it but only just. Jeremy was asked out of the group who would he hire and he said me, I was rather delighted. Next we sat a written test and had a short break. We then got ushered back into the room and got handed a brief, to run a bed and breakfast in Blackpool. Get in! I live twenty five miles from Blackpool and do a lot of business in the area. Everyone else took one look and shit themselves! “Who will be team leader for this task” we were asked, everyone sat on their hands, this is my chance I remember thinking, I haven't come this far to chicken out now so I put my hand up to be team leader. The whole point of the task was that what ever we did they would have an argument against us. I suspect to see how we might fair in the boardroom - it wouldn't be very entertaining if someone just froze in the boardroom Naomi style would it? I assigned tasks and over saw the project. Then the onslaught began, presenting our business plan that we had done in about twenty minutes, it was like a Swiss cheese after a gun fight involving the A team. I stood my corner and argued the case though, unfortunately one of my team members thought he was being smart by throwing spanners in the works during the task and then contradicted me in the presentation. Tre, there is an old saying “the emptiest tin rattles the loudest” never was it more relevant. Enough hot air to power Branson around the world twice, he'd clearly learnt one or two marketing and strategy terms and he was determined to say them both at least ten times. It goes without saying who I nominated to be fired! Well; at least that was my first impression of Tre, would it change? I certainly didn't think so at that point. We then moved onto group discussion things like what would you do in this situation and given these ten people you would save in a nuclear war.
At the end of the day we were informed that we now had to tell everyone who knew we had applied that we had got no further regardless of being offered to attend the next stage. It was only a week or so later I received a call from Tom one of the producers to let me know I was down to the last 20 and was needed to come back to London for a Psychological profile and suitability interview. Now that doesn't sound like the kind of thing you want to fail, “I'm sorry but you can't come on the Apprentice as we think you are a bit unstable”. It was only a week or so later I was back in London at the City Hotel to meet with the psychologist, he conducted an interview for about an hour and a half. The cliché questions like how do you get on with your parents and what sort of childhood did you have, naturally I lied, my ass off, but that's all another story.
Again I made the train journey back to the “North and Northern Chums” to await the out come, it was meant to be a week until I got the call with the final decision, the day came and went and another day and another day. At that point I called Tom, he said they had still not decided but it would not be long. A few days later I got the call. I was in, it turned out that Sir Alan had himself picked the final contestants. The final 14 as we were told, the first of many red herrings.
Day one: The first board room
I had stayed in a lovely boutique hotel the night before and got collected by a Silver Mercedes Benz at 6am to be drove across London to the boardroom for our initiation. I hadn't seen any of the other contestants yet, we had done one day of filming a few weeks before, arrival shots at the train stations and brief interviews about why we thought we could win the Apprentice and you wouldn't believe it but our post firing shots into the taxi, I had been fired before I had even done a task! ?But the production crew had things timed to military precision and had kept us all apart. I was excited and very nervous, too nervous to take in the fact that I was being chauffeur driven across London. The cars had been briefed to park a distance away from each other so we couldn't see any of the other contestants, we parked on a road right next to Renault London West, a firm reminder to me that I didn't want to go back. I hated working in the motor industry, I was good at it and earned good money but I couldn't stand the culture or the characters it often attracts. I had been to University and felt I was worth more and this was my chance to prove I was more than just a car salesman. At least people of the calibre to get on the Apprentice much like the views wouldn't type cast me? Ok, well the views didn't.
One by one we arrived at Sir Alan's boardroom, a TV studio just off the A45 not in Canary Wharf, how disappointing. I was the second to make my way into the waiting area. Jadine was sat there, she looked like Condolessa Rice. I sat down and one by one people arrived, forth or fifth Tre arrived, my heart sank, it's the guy I had fired in the interviews, not good, I have an enemy already, I felt I needed to do some work to get him on side and fast. Soon there were 14 and another arrived and another. 16 two more people than I thought I would have to beat, I must admit I was a bit pissed off by it.
We then got called through to the board room. I made damn sure I got to sit right in front of Sir Alan. This was not a time to blend into the background. I think the pink tie and shirt combo proved that, I was using the peacock effect when everyone else was trying to blend in. It was a risky strategy but I was going to go for it from the start, I know how much endurance I have and I knew I could last the course. And so I sat and made eye contact with Sir Alan, I waited for him to break eye contact with me; I wanted him to know that I meant business!
“Right, my people tell me that you lot are the top 16 young business minds in the country” he began, he went on to tell us his catchphrases like I don't like bullshiters, smoozers, liars and all that, the words that would become the weakest arguers among the groups trump cards in the boardroom at later dates. He then tried to tell us that we were all winners for getting there and all but one of us would have to go. I was honestly expecting the first task there and then but instead we were told to go back to the house and enjoy a champagne reception and come up with team names. I must admit I had a few too many bottles, I mean glasses of champagne that night. Start as you mean to go on I say; if you can't play hard why work hard?
Then, came the first little red herring; that was just for the cameras, instead of heading off to the house we were all instructed not to speak to each other and ushered into a holding area, we had a chaperone each and had to stay quiet. We then went into a photo studio to have our official photos taken.
The house although very expensive and in an upmarket area of London, Notting Hill, was decorated with just about everything from IKEA. I was surprised to find that we had Andy and Ghazel from Scotland although Andy had been brought up in Yorkshire until he was eight and counted himself as Scottish, Kristina from Ireland and apart from me everyone else was London based I was even more surprised to find that Andy did almost the same job as me. I was the only representative of the North of England, to be honest the anything North of the M25, oh dear, Navy course flashback. Not sure if I can convince this lot that a Haggis is a small animal we go out and shoot at the weekends though, well, maybe Paul, he seemed a bit of a “Plank”.
Later on that night we had to choose a team name and a team leader. I was the wrong side of a few bottles of champagne and had a distant memory from earlier that afternoon of Tre giving me a suggestion. I hadn't really come up with anything suitable and it appeared to have been well thought out. In all honesty I couldn't really give a shit what the team name was. I had already decided that I needed to get him onside in-case he held a grudge from the interviews so I decided to be his ally on this one. But the sly sod had used the name of a company he works with to get a cheap plug in and unfortunately my negotiation skills had helped him win the vote. It actually stated in the contract that if we tried to plug any company or product we represented we would be thrown off the show, as it is the BBC I understand why. If Sugar had any balls he'd have fired him the following morning. Well as it turned out he does have but the production team vetoed him on the decision, me and Andy both heard him say to Nick that he had wanted to fire him but he wasn't allowed, as we would later find out he was there for comedy value. The next decision was the team leader, we all voted and it came down to a tie break between me and Andy. I made the suggestion that we both discuss it outside and decide between ourselves, I knew Andy was shitting himself and I liked him, I didn't want him to loose face at this early stage and I could sense the Southerners, I mean others, rounding on the two Northern Lads, so I wasn't going to let them draw blood this easy or early. Plus; I saw him as a potential ally so I took him outside and we sorted out that I would do it, like I said, I was going to go for it from the start, I mean why would Sir Alan want a slow starter, ah yes, but what about Michelle, little miss invisible who glided off the radar to win series two. I figured he'd learnt his lesson from that one though.
Day two; was a none task day, we went into central London to shoot footage for the opening sequence, it started a lot like the advert for the apprentice with everyone trying to push their way to front. We soon got used to the saying “one more time” that always meant about another fifty times. We walked across the millennium bridge at least thirty times before they were happy with the shot. We then got drove to Amstrad head office to re-shoot most of the post firing shots, they hadn't been happy with the original ones. The Director Andy Devonshire had nick named me Robert De Niro for my theatrics on my first exit, they told me to look liked I'd just been fired, I think I got a little too into character, it was a laugh all around though. As the day wore on I could hear over the CB radio, “tell De Niro one more time”. I was chuffed, an award winning Director was calling me De Niro, although I think it was documentaries he had won the awards for, but I'll take it.
Task 1: Coffee
We got drove to the Isle of Dogs to a random business premises and then ushered to the back of the building, where there was a Helipad marker on the floor. We got told to line up and wait, all of a sudden you could hear it, the chartered helicopter carrying Sir Alan, as it hovered above us it was a struggle to stay on our feet, this wasn't the first time I'd been close to a helicopter, I'd been up in Sea Kings before so I was braced for it. I could see Sir Alan through the window, he looked terrified, now I know he fly's fixed wing aircraft for a hobby but let me tell you, helicopters are a different experience all together, lots of fixed wing pilots won't go near a chopper. I suspect that is Sir Alan's school of thought. When he stepped out he put a brave face on it and marched over to us very assertively to announce the task but I could see his face in the helicopter, he was bricking it. It set the president, this is the only part of the Apprentice that gets shot and re-shot, anytime Sir Alan says something he doesn't like or if the production team aren't happy with what he says, they re-shot.
As if the helicopter wasn't enough excitement, Sir Alan decided to change the team leaders. I was gutted, I'd made a good friend and ally in Andy, we had similar backgrounds and interests and just hit it off, oddly enough so had some of the “Blue Bloods” but we can get to that later. I must admit to feeling rather isolated at that point, I knew for a fact that if we won Andy would get fired, the girls would round on him from the start.
Once on the task Jadine tried to lay down the law, what an aggressive woman, she seemed to confuse management with bossing people around and making lots of noise, and she wouldn't be the last to make the same mistake. She was completely incapable of making a decision and looked to me and Lohit every-time a critical decision needed to be taken.
Once the jobs had been dished out we all went to work, firstly me and Lohit convinced Jadine that it would be an idea to check out the area for potential sales the day after and do some market research. We had a walk around and I found a man selling coffee from a small van on the street just by where we would be set up the day after. I asked him how much coffee he could sell in a day, when it was busy, how much you could charge per cup and so on. We then identified that there were a lot of offices and when people were working in the offices the streets went quiet, it just made sense that we could split into teams on the stall and out selling to offices when it went quiet. That was the reason Jadine called Tre and Simon back, we had to be in two teams and someone had to man the stand. The £50 Tre and Simon had done in the previous hour was eclipsed by the multiple orders we were getting from office blocks, five and ten at a time! Anyway, back to the fact finding day, while we were checking out office blocks we walked past a printers, I convinced Lohit that it would be a good idea to try and get them to do us some leaflets and so on as he had been put in charge of marketing. I managed to negotiate 1000 fliers and the Eclipse Coffee signs for the side of the van for free as a demonstration of what they could do for us in the future, a little white lie perhaps but we didn't know if we would be back in that area for another task and lets face it contacts are important in business.
Onto the selling day, Exmouth market, we turned up at about half five in the morning to set up our stalls, ready to catch the rush of people heading into work. We started filming in early October so it was a bit chilly that morning, one or two of our team had already started to drift into the background, hiding among the numbers. We divided up into teams, Simon and Tre – Me and Lohit – Paul and Rory making the coffee, Jadine running around like a headless chicken and Ifty, well being Ifty and charging up and down the street without fear accosting anyone and everyone like an over excited puppy. He was great to watch in action, I can't believe how much energy he had, it's a shame we didn't get to see the best of Ifty. He was and is a gem and a great friend, he truly is a great man regardless of what happened on the show, he left the show because his wife and little boy are his rock, he missed them dearly and I think he realised he already had his riches back home with his family and didn't value the job as highly as them.
I took Lohit to one side and explained that I didn't think it was a good idea to just approach people say do you want a coffee and then let them walk off, we had to be much smarter than that and I had a plan, a simple plan but a plan none the less. A demonstration for anyone who works in sales is the most important part of the sales process, that is the selling within the selling process. I got a cup of ground coffee and asked Lohit to smell it, then I asked him what he thought, he said it smelled wonderful, like the shop we bought it from, a little Algerian coffee shop in Soho, the aroma hits you as soon as you walk in and you just take in a full lung it's euphoric. “Right Lohit” that is our demonstration, we get talking to people and once we are we ask them to smell the ground coffee before we ask them to buy one and we explain that it is specialist coffee from an Algerian coffee supplier who use the finest quality coffee beans, plus what ever else we can think of. This tactic worked so well, for parts of the day we honestly sold to around 80% of the people we approached, we specifically target people we thought we could have a little banter with, groups of women, gay men and young couples in particular were easy to talk to and seemed to like us so as the day went on we focused on that profile of customer. On the show that went out on air you see me and Lohit along with Jadine doing a silly dance, yes embarrassing and unfortunately my fault, I sold that idea to a guy who had come to buy coffees for a girl at his office who's birthday it was, he was clutching one of the fliers we had distributed the evening before that me and Lohit had managed to get from the printers. I sold him the idea of us supplying 10 cups of coffee and a Happy Birthday song for £80, a great cash injection for our little enterprise, although on the way there we found out that Happy Birthday is copyrighted and would cost us about a grand to sing it on national TV? So the production team told us anyway. Between Lohit and myself we managed to generate the bulk of the profits for the task and managed to talk Jadine out of buying biscuits and sandwiches to sell during the lunch rush, the task was to sell coffee and I kept harping on about keeping it simple to win, the task is sell coffee, so lets sell coffee. It was a strategy that proved very effective and we won the task, I must say it was won with Jadine in charge but she had very little effect on the result. This task was one that really annoyed me when it was played out on TV, Lohit and I were instrumental in winning this task and for some reason Tre and Simon got a lot of credit for having a half hour purple patch, oh the wonders of editing.
As I thought, Andy got fired, as one or two of the girls have since admitted they didn't like the way Andy spoke to them and did little to help him win, just doing enough to get by without using any initiative for themselves and giving him enough rope to hang himself by and making him take all the decision. This trend carried on and I know for a fact it was Katie who made the suggestion to the rest of the group of how to deal with him, not that many would have realised, she had a way of using soft tones and suggestion followed by a little look and a laugh to trivialise the venom.
Task 2 : Doggy Product
Oh dear, the doggy product task, oh dear, a mitigated disaster of epic proportions. The task started badly with Rory's autocratic nonsense and demands that we strip off to get creative. Don't get me wrong, I love Rory as a guy - he's great, completely nuts but a great fellow. However in a position of leadership he forgets about being a leader and kind of sinks the ship, he was another that confused leading with giving autocratic instruction, I started to think that none of these people had ever managed people or projects before - as it turns out I was right. Lohit has run large teams of people, I have run teams of people and actual teams with my football coaching and Paul and Katie were both ex-army officers, as for the rest of them I very much doubt it.
As for the rest of the task Rory was barking up the wrong tree, totally chasing his tail, he really got the wrong end of the stick. His demeanour really got everyone's back up and extinguished most of the creativity in the group, what was left was put out by his inability to listen to his team members, he took way too much control rather than giving others ownership of parts of the task and then macro managing the project. Ifty was missing his kid, we had a chat about it the night we got back from the design day, it had been a tough day, just one day to research and design a product to sell to Britain's top retailers. In the real world you would take at least 12 months to go to market with something like this. The time constraints in the Apprentice are phenomenal, most people would really go to pieces faced with this kind of thing, it is really easy to watch the programme back and say, oh you should do this or that but never was it more apparent than this task that you really need to have your wits about you to survive two minutes on this show. As Ifty found out, he switched off for parts of the day, all be-it for a respectable reason but he was effectively fired for it. There is no place for complacency in this game.
www.thecoolmarkwebsite.co.uk
A very strange thing happened to me in this task, I had been given the responsibility of pitching the product to three retailers. A difficult task considering the product, I had prepared my presentation and had been practicing what I would say the evening before. Rory then came and asked for a private word with me. “Adam, uhmmm, I have made a decision, and uhmmm, that is that you will not be presenting to Harrods or Pets in the City” I asked why? “well I don't think they will take to kindly to someone like you in a place like Harrods”, as I bit my lip, “what do you mean by like me”? “You know, Northern and well ermm, well, working class”, I was livid!!! I couldn't give a toss about Harrods as far as the task was concerned, Pets at Home was the big fish but the reason was bordering on some form of Racism!! Although I must admit one of the reasons I wanted to go on the Apprentice was to go and sell to Harrods, to be able to say I closed a deal at Harrods would have been a big thing for me. I kept my professionalism throughout the task, I knew the product was key and our product was terrible, but I didn't want to put additional strain on the task so I waited until it ended and then let rip a bit on Rory, I went a bit too far saying it was no wonder he went bankrupt if that was how he ran his businesses. I felt pretty bad after because I really got on with him on the final and since I have spoken to him lots. That is the kind of strain we all got put under, from time to time it can bring out the worst in you, as we saw with Katie often.
Meanwhile some-else was going to pieces, Katie had run out of ideas when Naomi came to her rescue with the idea of a cupboard to keep doggy clothes in, a great idea in my opinion and one that won the task for the girls. I remember walking into the boardroom and seeing the girl's product and thinking that Sir Alan had brought something in to say, that is the kind of thing I expected you to design, then I realised, it was the girl's product and we had lost.
Not surprisingly both Ifty and Rory got fired, Sir Alan could easily have fired all three, although Tre's delivery was not very tactful he was absolutely correct in his analysis of the situation, he could have been managed much better just by listening to him and giving him an open floor to give his ideas for a better solution.
Task 3: Provide Services
This task was the kiss of death for me, the poison that is Katie Hopkins joined our team, I quickly realised that she was hell bent on getting people fired by sabotaging tasks and laying the blame at other peoples door. I had over heard Katie and Paul plotting to mess up the evening part of the task so Tre would take them into the boardroom and they would be able to gang up on him and get him fired. As people were soon realising the project managers were sitting ducks it was becoming a poison chalice, unless someone made a huge cock up the losing PM was in the taxi home. I had other ideas, win the task and let someone else get fired. The first part of the day I was with Tre and Simon in the garden, I grafted and helped get the jobs done as quickly as possible, it became apparent that Paul and Katie were over promising on the few jobs they were selling and Lohit was being brushed aside. They had told Tre several times that they had sorted the evening event, however once I joined that side of the team and asked what had been sorted out they replied nothing, what do I think we should do. I was fuming, I made a split second decision, I could explode or go quiet, so I quietly said that it would have been a good idea to have something sorted already, here comes the editing, then I suggested that as they hadn't we had to quickly review our options.
We then went off to Richmond to see what the potential market would be, except they had another agenda or two, firstly was it was skipping off in front holding hands and whispering in each others ear, not helpful, then going into lots and lots of pubs to ask if we could DJ for them, I'm sure they knew it would never work and was a tactic to waist as much time as possible. They wouldn't let me near the phone to let Tre know what was going on, eventually I snatched the phone out of Paul's hand and ran off down the road, I rang Tre and told him they were trying to sabotage the task and suggested we quickly regroup and get out to do the sing o gram business which he agreed to. Paul and Katie were not happy at all, as soon as they caught up Paul snatched the phone back off me and tried to talk Tre into sweeping drives in the dark! Tre quickly shot him down and told us to meet up with him straight away. We made an absolute fortune as sing o grams, one bloke in particular paid us £40 to do a few songs for him and his family, poor bloke didn't make the final edit, I'm sure he only did it to get on TV, I bet he was gutted. I am sure that rescuing that task for Tre was the catalyst for my firing. That really made me an enemy of Paul and Katie and that poison would soon spread through the house as they both had quite a lot of influence.
Task 4: Design, Manufacture and Sell a product for children
How the hell did we lose this task, we did such a great job the first two days. I had elected for a leadership style that Lohit later complimented me on, in fact most of the team had mentioned how surprised they where at how good a leader I was. I gave everyone a role and specific responsibilities, partly because that allowed me to macro mange the project but also to make it easily identifiable where it went wrong if it did. The design and production days went so well, Nick was bored out of his mind, the camera crews hardly filmed a thing on the production day, I had everything so well organised, enough produce, an organised production line, easy to produce products, we worked until two in the morning; it couldn't have gone better.
I confirmed something I had suspected from the previous task on the way back to the house after the first day. We had been driving from Kent somewhere. Me, Sophie and Katie were in the car, Sophie had fallen asleep and Katie and I were talking. She was doing her usual flirting with me, touching my arm and leg, that goofy annoying smile and the put on dirty laugh, between trying to keep the sick down I asked her a few questions based on suspicions I had. She had kept the whole Army thing away from the group, it was clear Paul knew, I had spotted some deflection techniques she used when she was asked questions and the suggestive way she spoke to people. So I said “did you go to Dartmouth or Sandhurst”? Her face nearly dropped out of her arse, “why do you ask”? “You were an Intelligence Officer weren't you”? “what makes you say that”? “Lots of the things you say and the way you say it”, “Sandhurst, I was in the Army, but I would prefer it if you didn't mention that to others, I don't like to talk about it”. I wasn't sure if that meant something bad had happened during her time, or yet another little trick, so I used tact and kept my mouth shut. If I wasn't already, now I was a major target, she knew that I knew what she was up to.
On the selling day we had a slow start, the Orange lollipops were taken off sale before the zoo opened. The shot of the man from the zoo telling us we couldn't sell them was in the car park before we set up. We didn't get permission to sell them until well after lunch so we lost half of our product line for over half the day. The locations that Simon had found were terrible, the final one was half way between two walkways, the only way of getting people to our stand was me jumping around in the Lion suit, it went down very well, most of the kids loved it and it caused a great commotion and attracted lots of people to the stand. Towards the end of the day I asked the team to get as much as they could for the remaining stock but to get rid of it all, Sophie and Katie as I later found out just went nuts and started to sell them for 10p each once out of my view.
The day after it was the boardroom, in most tasks the boardroom is the day after the task. It actually lasts a full day, we never got told what the timings where and it always seemed to last longer and longer each time. It was the most stressful day of the task, I hated it. I always had a constant feeling of knots in my stomach that got worse as the day went on. The camera crews would turn up at six in the morning and get us out of bed. Once we were dressed we began our solo interviews. One by one we got taken into one of the rooms in the house and interviewed by one of the directors. Most of the morning involved waiting around and thinking things over from the task. This just achieved making me more nervous as the day went on. One or two people didn't seem that affected, to me that just proved that they weren't that bothered about the job.
Once we arrived at the studio we were sent to the green room, whilst in there we were told that we couldn't talk about the task, we got followed around by chaperons to ensure we didn't. We often had to wait around for two or three hours before we go taken into the waiting area, the crew would then take thirty minutes of shots of us sitting around, we couldn't talk at all during that time. Eventually the phone would ring and Frances would call send us into the boardroom.
This was my first time in the final three, I lost by £11, a three day task and it came down to a “tenner”, I couldn't believe it! I had to chose the two people I would bring into the boardroom, Simon had messed up big time on the location, Lohit had been fantastic, using the demonstration process I taught him in the coffee task to great effect and so he was in no danger, Katie had been anonymous and done everything she could to stay out of my view but I couldn't pin anything definite on her, Sophie had been great on the first two days but gone to pieces when it came to selling to the public and Natalie had made a mess of the labels and her head had gone part way through the task. She thought I was getting at her. The truth is me and Nat got on really well, one of the directors had taken Nat to one side and interviewed her, he really planted seeds of doubt and sent her into a rage, I watched the interview from a distance and I saw her body language change, as soon as it finished she turned and stormed towards me. That was when she went off and screamed at me, I let her vent and walk away to calm down, then I went and went off at the director, “I thought you lot were meant to be impartial, impartial my ass, you just head fucked that girl and now you have jeopardised my task you fucking prick, how am I supposed to get anything out of her now!” He wasn't best pleased but I was shocked at what these people would do to get there clips of big brother style entertainment. I had to make a decision whether I would take her into the boardroom with that in mind, in the end I decided that she should have seen what was happening and made a decision to let it affect her performance. I chose to take Sophie and Natalie into the boardroom, on a personal level that was a terrible decision because they were both very good friends of mine until then but for business reasons I had no choice. I was very sad to see Sophie go but I think she felt her time had come, she even sent me a packet of cigarettes when she got home. We had had our money and mobiles taken off us when we went into the house and cigarettes had become the valuable commodity they are in prison, so it was a great gift to receive.
Task 5: Art Task
I was hoping to change teams after the last task, Natalie was really pissed off I took her into the boardroom, Katie was a real sneak and I didn't trust her at all and Simon was just too unpredictable and his brain would go AWOL for large portions of the day. Unlucky for me the change wasn't made. At this point the strong contenders were appearing, the people I wanted to be on the same team as were Kristina and Tre, they both had qualities I can respect, they work hard and say it how it is. I knew that being one person down we would struggle against them and we had to work double hard on this task if we were to win. I had also spotted Naomi as a superb Lieutenant, she was shocking by all accounts as a leader but as a second in command or given an individual task to do she was great. I also knew how well she and Kristina had been working together.
Not the greatest thing for me but the task after taking Natalie into the boardroom she was my team leader, “guess who's in the boardroom if we loose this one” I remember thinking, as much as we got on I knew it would be an eye for an eye, I had to ensure that I was bang on form and not give any excuse for her to take me in.
Now, from Sir Alan's briefing the task was to sell art, not to put on an art exhibition but to sell art. From the start I had the end in mind, what can we sell, who to, how much for and how many. What the rest of them were thinking I still have no idea, Simon just kept harping on about how much money people earned who worked in the city, Nat was more concerned with the catering and bowing to Katie's “superior” knowledge of all things up market, I mean have you seen what she wears? Lohit was for once not on his best form and got drawn into the whole creative time to express ones self and I was certainly not on the same page as the rest of the team. Convincing four equally intelligent and determined people that they are all wrong and you are right is not an easy task in this kind of situation. Katie had so much influence over the girls at this stage and Natalie was more inclined to listen to her than me after the previous task, she had really lost some faith in me for taking her into the boardroom. They settled on the strategy of the “soft sell”, well everyone but me anyway. During our initial chats I had mentioned that we should not get carried away with the art and concentrate on the business elements of the art, I said we need to be sure to ask questions about commercial viability and not just find out about the artists, the second Katie got Natalie away from me in the car she began to contradict all that, she had seen Natalie as an easy target and was undermining me at the same time, ensuring at least two boardroom seats were filled when the task went wrong. Either that or she was actually stupid enough to think that was a good idea? Judging from her comments in her solo interview after we viewed Elizabeth Hoff's work of “Adam, was way off we were learning about her, her passion, her art, understanding her as an artist…..he was asking how much do you sell these for and how many can you sell, this is not a car lot”, now, let me think, aren't they important factors in assessing the commercial viability of a product? Not a car lot? Is there any difference really, buyers buy when the benefit of a product outweighs the cost, regardless of what it is, and lets be honest, £950 - £1950 for something that looked like it would be on sale in IKEA for £40 was the only thing that was way off. I did try to explain that regardless of the fact we were in London it would be a real stretch to find people who could afford to spend that on a whim within a few hours unless we had a regular buyers list, but lets not forget the other vital point that I discovered, she hadn't ever sold any art, she was a commercial photographer trying to launch herself as an artist, not a good idea in a short term sales strategy.
Natalie eventually decided on Vanessa Warren and Elizabeth Hoff, she assigned me to look after Vanessa and everyone else would look after Elizabeth. Oh dear, she thought I had been given the weaker of the two but I knew I hadn't, she had a customer base and affordable work, I had it all to go at and the rest of them had an up hill struggle because they thought the other work would just sell it self because it was so pretty. And these people want to work for Sir Alan, not a good sign.
So the day of the sale, Simon and Katie trot off into some posh part of the city, to find the wealth of rich city folk who have money dripping from their wallets to waist on a few photo's by an artist they have never heard of. Meanwhile, I was locked in the basement of the gallery armed with Vanessa's list of customers, I rang everyone of them and invited them down and confirmed arrival times and asked them to ask for me on arrival, all but one of them turned up, 75% of what we sold was to people I had appointed, I sold half of the total and Simon the other half, although one was to a Spanish lady I had appointed talked to about a piece and then Simon took her to the cash machine when I had turned to get her a drink before doing the paperwork, it didn't matter because it was a team effort, but leg breaking territory back on the car sales lot. On top of that, Vanessa was overjoyed at the way she had been looked after, I had advised Lohit on how she wanted her section setting up and it was done to perfection by him and I had kept her informed throughout the day of everything that was going on. On the other hand, Elizabeth whom everyone else was looking after arrived like Hurricane Katrina and stamped her feet about everything they had done and then demanded that no-one should try too hard to sell her work. But didn't they put on a good exhibition for everyone who came to drink the free wine and then leave without buying anything, a great job I think, and the icing on the cake, Katie sold nothing, brilliant!!! I hate to say it but “I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!!!” Fucking idiots! While I'm having a rant, Katie also mentioned that as the lips were so expensive it would take someone of a higher mental agility and vocabulary to sell them, clearly aimed at me as I was the only person selling Vanessa's work and that coming from the lady who's pitch was “all I know is she is really pushing the boundaries with this stuff” . Now, hang on a minute, I used to sell BMW's for anything for £30,000 to £100,000 to some very well educated and respected people and all of a sudden I don't have the mental capacity to sell a photo for a couple of grand? “How many did you sell with your wonderful Sandhurst trained not so West Country now accent and vocabulary, oh yeah, nadda!!!” See you don't need a great vocabulary to get your point across sometimes.
Maybe she realised the error of her tactics part way through, she said in one interview that it was:
“So soft that I'm wondering if it's too soft but I just don't know how to make it harder”
Now I think she was talking about the sales process, I know she is quiet public about her sex life so there is a chance she may have been talking about her and Paul's love life, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if that was what she was talking about - she wouldn't would she?
When Simon sold the lips photo I was very impressed, when we got back to the house I asked him how he had done it, he admitted that he had moved his microphone so the production team couldn't hear him and told the guy it would be a great investment because once the show aired and people saw the work it would go up in value and to just put the money on his credit card and sell it on e-bay once the programme aired and make some profit. Completely against the rules, people were not allowed to know what we were filming and we were strictly forbidden from using the camera crew as a negotiating tool, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
When Natalie made the mistake of not taking Katie into the boardroom she was destined to get fired, I didn't think at any point I would go on that one, I had performed so well on the task that she really didn't have evidence against me, other than saying I was negative. The only reason people used that was because Sir Alan said he thought I had been a little negative when he appointed me team leader for the zoo task and it became a trump card for the other contestants. I was sorry to see Natalie go because she was a friend in the house but it was certainly the right decision.
Task 6: Selling Cheese to the French
Until this point Rory had been the worst leader - little did I expect ex-army officer Paul to be an even bigger disaster, I must admit I didn't like Paul from the very start. I am sure the feeling was mutual, he always spoke down to me and made constant jibes about me being Northern. Quite funny really as I spotted him straight away as the kind of chap whom gets accepted to Sandhurst because Daddy sent him to the right school and he had the correct accent, then they get into active duty and get dragged through by NCO's, I don't know what happened through his career in the Army but to be commissioned for four years and never gain a promotion only means one thing, completely bloody useless, they have to serve the minimum four years and just get horizontal moves around various jobs, they usually end up in recruitment.
Now to me Paul was the weakest link in the house by a country mile, he had no commercial awareness had been sucked in and sucked off by Katie (allegedly) and was a jumped up arrogant twit who was incapable of taking criticism. I knew no matter what I did on this task that I was in the boardroom if we lost and decided that on this task I would play some dirty tactics for once. I'd been straight as a die in the last task and been dragged in so this time I would cover my arse better.
When we went to Macro and bought the gel burner, I had seen some small camping stoves for fifteen pounds outside a petrol station around the corner but afterwards when Paul came to me with the wonderful idea of using a gel burner, the plank, they are used to keep food warm in hotels, I agreed and let him commit suicide. When he decided to go ahead and buy the cheese in the same store, again I let him, I could have easily talked him out of it but I just let him get on with signing his own death warrant. The quantities he decided on were phenomenal, on the coffee task we did 300 units in 10 hours with 8 staff, for this task we had 5 hours and 5 staff, he opted for 1000 units. This was becoming easier than I thought. In few hours we had in the cash and carry he had destroyed his chances of winning the task completely. I was just looking forward to seeing France at that point, I'd never been there. To make matters worse, Paul's bigoted view of people from the North such as myself was nothing compared to his distain of the French, “cheese eating surrender monkeys” he kept referring to them as, lots of respect for his customers then.
Once the gel burner and bean can was ready to mildly warm the sausages I quickly ran over to get the camera crew, Paul had tried to hide us behind another stall where the camera crew wouldn't see us. I had to make sure they had footage of this, once I was happy they had it and Margaret and Nick had witnessed it first hand I talked to Kristina about someone going to a pub to get them to let us use their kitchen, I didn't speak French so I suggested that she should do it. That was it, Kristina had semi saved the day and Paul had signed his death warrant, which he made even worse by him wandering off to flirt with Katie for the bulk of the day.
Not surprisingly once back in the boardroom it was me and Kristina in the final 3 with Paul, we annihilated him, he said I was the least intelligent person in the house and blamed me for us loosing by hundreds of pounds because I spent £50 too much on a banner, I guess maths is just another thing to add to his ever growing list of things he isn't particularly good at. That was it, time for the trump card, Sir Alan asked me why I thought I was brought into the boardroom again so I let slip about him and Katie carrying on and Kristina followed up with a real onslaught, he was speechless. I then I made the final blow by pointing out that we had lost the task by a significant margin through decisions he and Katie had made together without consulting the group. It was the shortest boardroom yet, about 15 minutes in Paul was gone.
I have no doubt that Paul took the two people into the boardroom that should have been sent back to the house. Ghazel the least inspiring person in the house had gone into a shell for the whole task, she was utterly invisible, she cut some cheese and sold perhaps 1Kg of it throughout the day but only to people who approached her. Katie as usual had done nothing right, everything she was involved in went completely wrong, buying sausages, just created extra problems, encouraging Paul to buy cheese, an even worse decision and then leading him around like a puppy to attempt to discount sell stock to shops in the middle of the day was not a smart move. She didn't do a single thing well. I really couldn't understand why anyone rated her as a business person. She had consistently flown in the face of common sense and basic business acumen, how could Paul not see she had made so many mistakes in the advice she had given him, Sir Alan was clearly gunning for her in the boardroom at that point. Katie further expanded on her lack of commercial awareness when she summarised the reason for the loss on me spending £150 on a banner, I didn't I spent £100, £50 over budget, she was well aware that the printers had printed it without permission or an order from us, we only bought it because Paul had spent 4 hours in Macro choosing Cheese and inventing a burner so we didn't have time left to get anything else and make the ferry in time. We lost the task by £800, we actually lost money, so if it was my fault for the £50 that was insignificant against the loss we made. She went on to give Kristina trying to rescue the task and being too orange as further reasons for Paul not to be fired. Clutching at straws I fear.
I returned to the house to stunned silence and responded with a salute to Katie, I couldn't resist the jibe back at her. She was gutted, she had convinced herself that either I or Kristina would go, how wrong could she was. I was so annoyed at the response I got, after a minute or two Simon said that I was the Lazarus and he couldn't believe I was back. He did his usual insincere I'm glad you are back but it really didn't wash, Simon just didn't want to make any enemies.
Task 7: Run around London and negotiate for ten items
This task was a set up from the start, at this point the teams really should have been mixed up, I clearly had no back up from anyone in my team and Katie and Kristina hated each other. It makes good TV though to have a team of people who hate each other, and believe me there was some true hatred in that team. In the house I spent most of my time talking to Tre by this point and I couldn't help thinking that he owed me one from his leadership task if we end up on the same team. It wasn't to be though. I was handed the poison chalice, did I put my hand up to be team leader and try to win the task or did I let someone else do it and let them drag me into the boardroom again. Katie said she would do it but I knew for a fact she would set me up, hell I knew she would try to set me up regardless. Once we began selecting the teams I decided to pair Katie with Kristina, I knew they would want to out do each other on the negotiating and I could keep an eye on Ghazel who was becoming a liability. To just tip the balance none of our team lived in London and the whole of the other team did. That may sound like a minor detail but it was major factor, every-time we located a shop that had a product; we had no idea where it was, it made planning logistics impossible, we had to cross reference everything with an A-Z where as the other team knew exactly which areas they could get the majority of the items from. Trust me this gets worse.
After an hour and a half of us getting on the road, the camera crew with Katie and Kristina broke down for over an hour, they had to send a new camera from the studio to replace it, while their camera was off I was not able to speak to them and they couldn't make any calls to find out valuable information. I'm really not sure if it had really broken but it seemed rather convenient as our camera crew for the first time on the Apprentice demanded that they stop for lunch! On a one day task! We had to be back at six, I was really pissed off! I argued with the producers that I wanted the time back at the end of the day, they refused to begin with but later allowed Katie and Kristina an hour on the end of the day to make up for the hour and fifteen minutes they lost waiting for a replacement camera. It was a waist of time, all that meant was they got the hour back during rush hour, they lost an hour where they could make good progress and it was replaced with London rush hour traffic so they got nothing done in that hour. As soon as I got back to the house afterwards I asked the other team if they had stopped for lunch, Tre responded, “stop for lunch on a one day task, no, you plum”, as I thought, a proper set up. I don't think I had ever been as angry, this being taken right out of my control. I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth and knew it.
In the first hour I had managed to negotiate a pair of leather trousers from £110 down to £55, a wet suit from £220 down to £40, a car battery from £35 to £29 which was not shown on the show. We had got 3 of our five items by that point while Katie and Kristina had only got a leg wax kit with a £4 discount. We were also setting up all the appointments for the other two while getting our items. We only had a bin and a bay tree to find. Katie and Kristina were close to a garden centre so I swapped the Nigella seeds and the bay tree as they had called me back to say they couldn't find out what they were and they had dropped seriously behind their schedule. I could have easily left them with the Nigella seeds and used it as an excuse to get one of them fired in the boardroom but I wanted to win the task even if it meant doing all the work on my own. The girls then caught up by getting the Uni Cycle, bay tree and tiles quite quickly. I could sense a victory, then, the camera crews decided to go on strike.
Once back on the road we managed to find the bin, eventually after trying to find it in at least 12 shops, everywhere that stocked them wouldn't give us permission to film and in the rules it said we had to negotiate on camera. Time was running short and we managed to locate the Nigella seeds at a cash and carry in Acton. We had to get back to the boardroom to meet the deadline and the girls had managed to get their items, I planned a route for them to get to the cash and carry, gave them the contact name and headed off to the boardroom. Once we got back we had the telephone taken off us, we had yet another hour were we couldn't communicate with our team members, it wasn't until we got into the boardroom that I found out they had got stuck in traffic and hadn't gone to the cash and carry, the annoying thing was they actually got back 10 minutes early and the cash and carry was only 1 mile from the boardroom. For that we got fined £80, for not getting a product that we had located but not managed to buy.
Simon's team were also fined, for breaking rules, Simon had negotiated off camera to buy a damaged piece of marble an inferior product to what the brief had stated. For some reason they only got fined £50. You would have thought cheating would warrant a larger fine.
So after the fine and all I was up against I lost the task by 97 pence, I was astounded. The first task I had led I lost by £10 and now 97 pence, when Sir Alan asked me what I had to say for myself; I told him I was improving, he wasn't amused. I knew his mind was made up, not necessarily for business decision or for making any big mistakes but simply being in the boardroom too many times. In the final edit a big deal was made about the Nigella seeds but the truth of the matter is if we had managed to negotiate another £1 off anything we would have won by 3 pence.
Nothing that was said in that final boardroom made any difference to the final decision. I had to win that task to stay. Sir Alan hadn't spotted that other members of the group were gunning for me and didn't want to win tasks. Katie in particular wanted to loose knowing I would get fired on my next visit providing she hadn't taken responsibility for any of the task.
So that was it for me, I had a difficult run, four consecutive boardrooms a new record and I had to be proud of that. I had learnt a lot about business and a lot about myself. I really felt I could have gone further but to do it I would have needed an ally and a bit of luck, unfortunately I had neither and achieved what I did in-spite of that.
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