‘The Apprentice’: Series 8 Week 8 review

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‘The Scream’ sold last week for $120 million, but the only screams in tonight’s The Apprentice were likely coming from the art community.

This week Lord Sugar had summoned the motley crew of money-makers to a dank tunnel at Waterloo Station for the weirdest Skype call ever. The task was simple: buy and sell street art. It’s always a good one and this year was no different; watching candidates suck up to artists and pretend they know what they’re talking about.

Would they be able to find a bankable Banksy? Or turn a profit with a Turner Prize winner? Shame they weren’t selling fine art, else we could have shoe-horned a ‘show me the Monet!’ pun in too.

Critiques of the Week

As Gabrielle, Stephen, and Jenna schmoozed artist Nathan Bowen, the other half of the team, Ricky and Nicholas, were on the streets of Bristol getting a glimpse of Nathan’s work in it’s natural environment, and neither were impressed.

While Bowen was having more smoke blown up his arse than a dimwitted chimney sweep, Ricky was being less kind to his work: “I think that’s awful”. So the look on Ricky and Nic’s faces when they discovered they would be selling Bowen’s work was priceless.

Name-dropping of the Week

Team leader for Phoenix, Tom, certainly knew his way around the urban art scene. In an attempt to prove his worthiness to the artist known only as Pure Evil, he blitzed him with his knowledge, reeling off names like Banksy, Space Invader, Rex Belcher, Shepard Fairey, Gentleman Mammoth (we may have made some of those up…), as though he were some naming robot gone haywire.

Mr. Evil barely had chance to get a word in edgeways, standing there like a man slowly being asphyxiated by enthusiasm and with the same look on his face people have when they’re cornered by a nutter on the bus.

Look-of-Utter-Horror of the Week

Tom had pinned his hopes and business plan on nabbing Pure Evil, and thought he was sure to get him. And then came the devastating call that informed him he hadn’t.

Never have we seen such hopelessness and despair on a man’s face. Any urban artists out there who want to capture the visual essence of ‘Shit, I have no idea what to do!’ in its purest form, just draw Tom’s face at that exact moment.

Terrible Idea of the Week

Gabrielle had the nifty idea of getting artist Nathan Bowen to draw some of his “crazy workmen aliens” (as Ricky had described them) live during the gallery showing. Then excitable business puppy Stephen called up with the ridiculous idea of having him hidden out back to add more Banksy style mystery, or some such nonsense.

“It’s outside the box. It’s way outside the box,” he enthused, and by the way Karren Brady’s face was all twisted up you’d have been out of your mind to try it.

‘Masterclass’ of the Week

There was plenty of ‘Va-Va-Voom’ in the warm welcome that Renault received from Phoenix upon entering their gallery. Sadly Beefeater Gin were not in for similar treatment at Sterling’s event.

When they were eventually found by Stephen, he managed to balls up the welcome and only offered them a drink as an afterthought, in a farce that Karren Brady called “a masterclass in how not to treat a corporate client”. To top it off, the art that Sterling had picked out for Beefeater looked like a nightmare on canvas. No wonder that Beefeater didn’t buy it – they’d have had to have been off their heads on their own gin to even contemplate purchasing it.

Aired at 9pm on Wednesday 9th May 2012 on BBC One.

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