The Apprentice (British TV series) series 4

Series Four of The Apprentice is a British television series which began on BBC One on March 26, 2008. It will run for twelve weekly episodes. Auditions and interviews are reported to have taken place during the first two weeks of July 2007 in London, Glasgow, Manchester and Bristol. A record 20,000 applications were received.

Sir Alan Sugar reprises his role as the boss with Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford again serving as his advisors. "Frances", Sir Alan's boardroom "receptionist", also returns. Frances is in fact played by Sam Moon, who works for producers TalkbackTHAMES. The show's spin-off, The Apprentice: You're Fired!, is again hosted by Adrian Chiles. Filming of the first episode of The Apprentice: You're Fired! took place on March 25, 2008.

Four additional hour-long specials accompany Series Four:

• The Apprentice: Worst Decisions Ever, a look back at embarrassing episodes from previous series (aired 3rd April 2008).
• The Apprentice: Motor Mouths, which revisited opinionated personalities from previous series (aired 18th April 2008).
• Why I Fired Them, a look back at previous candidates in the firing line.
• A candidate profile show.

Production

Production of the fourth series took place around October 2007. Tasks are set to include selling fresh fish, setting up an overnight laundrette business, running rival pubs, creating perfume, designing greeting cards, inventing a new flavour of ice cream, selling wedding dresses and a buying task in Morocco. An unknown advertising task is scheduled for week 8.

On October 19, 2007, filming took place beside One Canada Square with candidates seemingly advertising an "Aston Martin Roadster Experience".

The candidates are based in an impressive 7,000-square-foot (650 m²), £5million warehouse conversion in Candahar Road, Battersea. The luxury duplex conversion, The Glass Factory, is owned by ex-Formula1 racing driver Johnny Dumfries, the seventh Marquess of Bute.

Candidates

See also: List of The Apprentice Candidates

There are 16 candidates taking part in the fourth series. The two initial teams (women and men) chose the names "Alpha" and "Renaissance" respectively.

Name	Age*	Occupation
Raef Bjayou	27	Entrepreneur
Jenny Celerier	36	Sales manager
Nicholas de Lacy-Brown	23	Trainee barrister
Sara Dhada	25	Car sales strategist
Lucinda Ledgerwood	31	Risk Assessment manager
Jennifer Maguire	27	Marketing consultant
Lee McQueen	30	Recruitment sales manager
Lindi Mngaza	22	Business liaison manager
Kevin Shaw	24	Bank manager
Simon Smith	35	Satellite TV engineer
Michael Sophocles	25	Telesales executive
Helene Speight	32	Global pricing leader
Ian Stringer	26	Software sales manager
Shazia Wahab	35	Mosaic artist
Alex Wotherspoon	24	Sales manager
Claire Young	28	Retail buyer

* as of the date of the programme.

Challenges

Week 1: Fishy Business

• Project managers: Claire (Alpha) and Alex (Renaissance)
• Task: Selling fresh fish. The team that makes the most money wins.
• Result: Both teams were given a van containing £600 worth of fish and a choice of London market locations from which to sell. Both teams chose to sell in Islington, with the women's team, Alpha, making this decision earlier in the day. Both teams had problems identifying the fish and pricing it correctly (in particular, Renaissance were selling lobsters for £5 each, less than a quarter of what they should have been). This led to confrontation in the men's team about social class where Nicolas claimed there was a divide between the educated and the non-educated. Renaissance made a profit of £32.69 whilst Alpha made a profit of £153.98.
• Winner: Alpha
• Reward: Dinner cooked by Michelin-starred chef Jean-Christophe Novelli
• Brought into the boardroom: Alex, Nicholas and Raef
• Fired: Nicholas, for mispricing the fish and admitting he was unable to get on with the "less educated" candidates
• Notes: Sir Alan was not impressed by the profit margin achieved by either team, but conceded to team Alpha that "a win is a win". Alex was criticised in the boardroom for dwelling too much on individuals' mistakes during the task, but avoided being fired because he had volunteered himself as project manager when no-one else was willing. There was considerable discussion of a split within Renaissance along class or educational lines, with Nicholas being the main proponent of this argument. Nicholas dwelled too much on the fact that the team had split and Sir Alan was left unimpressed by this, stating that he didn't care who he employed, so long as they did a good job. Raef, for his part, said that he got on "with Prince or Pauper."

Week 2: A Dirty Job

• Project managers: Jenny (Alpha) and Raef (Renaissance)
• Task: Setting up an overnight laundry business.
• Result: Both teams were given use of an industrial laundry for the night. The teams sourced business from a variety of customers, both commercial and domestic. These included a hotel and a fishmonger introduced to the teams by Sir Alan. Alpha had problems setting a reasonable price, attempting to charge the hotel £4990 for £200 worth of washing, and the fishmonger £15 for £60 worth of washing. Renaissance managed to finish their washing and pressing before the laundry had to close, but Alpha were late getting started and hadn't finished by the end of the night. They suffered problems due to mix-ups with customers' clothing, including two lost items for which they were fined £50 in the boardroom. This was blamed on Shazia, who had the task of keeping track of items, but left early in an unsuccessful attempt to get hold of the steam irons at the house, which Renaissance had already removed. Ultimately, Alpha made a profit of £195.55 and Renaissance made a profit of £328.00.
• Winner: Renaissance
• Reward: Tea at The Ritz
• Brought into the boardroom: Jenny, Lucinda and Shazia
• Fired: Shazia, for leaving the laundry early and allowing items to get mixed up.
• Notes: Alpha attempted to earn extra money by asking for tips from their customers, but this did not result in much additional profit because of the mix-ups over the items of clothing. Sir Alan was critical of this tactic and pointed out that it would have been unnecessary if they had appropriately priced their service to begin with. Alpha also offered a '24 hour Helpline' which Sir Alan criticised as pointless. Sir Alan was not made aware of the fact that Shazia had received Jenny's permission to leave early.

Week 3: Cooking With Gas?

• Project managers: Sara (Alpha) and Ian (Renaissance)
• Task: Running a themed restaurant in a pub.
• Result: Both teams had to devise and run a themed food day in a pub with no previous history of serving food. Alpha chose a Bollywood theme and Renaissance chose Italian. The teams were given a list of wholesalers to use, but Renaissance ran out of time and had to resort to purchasing their supplies from Tesco, resulting in substantially increased food costs. Renaissance also produced 200 flyers at £1 each, whilst Alpha managed to arrange all their printing for free. Alpha had to cancel their lunch service due to the food not being prepared properly, but their strategy of selling admission tickets for £5 that were redeemable against dinner, as well as their better purchasing decisions, meant that they were in profit before they had even served a meal. Renaissance actually took more money, but because of cost overruns they made only £301.97 profit against Alpha's £604.27.
• Winner: Alpha.
• Reward: Cooking lessons at the Eckington Manor Cookery School in Worcestershire.
• Brought into the boardroom: Ian, Kevin and Simon.
• Fired: Ian, for poor performance as project manager.
• Notes: It was revealed during the task that Lee did not know how to spell "accent". Furthermore Kevin, a bank manager, did not know how many tomatoes would be needed for the soup. He suggested that if 15 tomatoes were needed for 4 soups then 150 tomatoes would be required for 15 soups.

Week 4: A Photo Finish

• Project managers: Helene (Alpha) and Simon (Renaissance)
• Team reshuffle: Sir Alan mixes up the teams for the first time, with Claire, Jenny and Sara joining the previously all-male Renaissance team and Kevin, Lee and Raef moving in the opposite direction to join Alpha.
• Task: Running a photography business in Bluewater shopping centre.
• Result: Alpha hired a David Beckham lookalike who was popular with the kids, whilst Simon decided that Renaissance should go with a glamour and beauty theme. Simon had little support from his team, with Alex and Claire in particular questioning his leadership throughout the task and the remaining team members also voicing to the cameras that they had little confidence in him. Both teams had more customers than they could handle during the day. Communication issues between the shop floor and the production room caused lost orders for both teams—particularly Renaissance—whilst Alpha had problems operating their computer and were unable to meet the orders. Alpha made a profit of £145.10 and Renaissance lost £73.81.
• Winner: Alpha.
• Reward: A luxury yacht trip to the Isle of Wight and dinner onboard.
• Brought into the boardroom: Simon, Alex and Claire.
• Fired: With regret, Simon whom Sir Alan considered out of his depth.
• Notes: Claire didn't support Simon and "victimised him" in Sir Alan's words.

Week 5: Mid-series sales

• Project managers: Lucinda (Alpha) and Claire (Renaissance)
• Team reshuffle: Kevin is transferred to Renaissance to even the teams at six candidates each.
• Task: Inventing several new flavours of ice cream; selling to a new market.
• Result: Both teams had to develop a range of ice creams at farms selected by Sir Alan, that specialised in making ice creams, and then try to sell direct to the trade market in London. Alpha decided on "Avocado & Chilli" and "Toffee Apple" flavoured ice creams after a focus group meeting; Renaissance turned up late for theirs and found that no-one had come anyway, and so got the opinions of two drinkers at a local pub, deciding on "Very Berry" and "Cider & Elderflower" flavours. Alpha seemed to be doing better than Renaissance for most of the task, selling in large quantities to a cinema chain (pushing Renaissance out of a potential deal with the same chain) and a group of pubs. Lee was enthusiastic throughout the task, naming Lucinda an excellent project manager, and suggesting "tea flavour" as the ice cream of the nation. Renaissance had problems in acquiring orders throughout the task, but secured a large order from a designer restaurant right before the task ended. Alpha made a total sales revenue of £1273.64 and Renaissance made a total sales revenue of £1455.45.
• Winner: Renaissance.
• Reward: A helicopter ride to a country estate in Wiltshire, to learn archery and golf.
• Brought into the boardroom: Lucinda, Jennifer, and Lindi.
• Fired: Lindi, as second-in-command for the sales and marketing team, whose failure cost the team the task.
• Notes: Sir Alan made a point of complimenting Renaissance. Not only had they won the task based on sales revenue, they also managed to create potential for repeat sales for their supplier through 13 retail outlets. Sir Alan went on to say; "In the trade business, this is like gold dust. Very well done". In the boardroom it emerged that Alpha's sales to the cinema and pub chains had been achieved through exclusivity deals, which Sir Alan criticised for limiting the farmer's potential future sales. He went on to comment that he would have disallowed these particular sales had he known before meeting in the boardroom, although this wouldn't have affected the overall outcome as it had already been announced that Alpha had lost.

Week 6: Yours truly, angry mob

• Project managers: Michael (Alpha) and Kevin (Renaissance)
• Team reshuffle: Alan Sugar transferred Michael to Alpha and made him the project manager.
• Task: Create a brand new "occasion" for a range of greetings cards to pitch to prospective retailers.
• Result: Alpha came up with the idea of a "National Singles' Day" to be held on February 13th, and produced a range of cards intended as an alternative to Valentine's Day cards for single people. (Lee had suggested "Alien Day", a day where you could send a card saying the world was being invaded by aliens.) Renaissance's theme was caring for the environment, with a series of cards carrying messages about green issues. Alpha spent several hours debating whether "Singles' Day" should have an apostrophe. The teams pitched their ideas to general retailer Tesco and specialist retailers Clinton's and Celebrations. The retail buyers questioned whether environmentally conscious consumers would want to express their views by sending a card. Doubts were also raised about the wisdom of stocking a range of "Singles' Day" cards at the same time as so much selling space was given over to Valentine's cards. Alpha sold to all three retailers, gaining orders totalling 22,500 cards, 19,500 of which were from Celebrations. Renaissance sold 6,000 cards to just one retailer, Tesco.
• Winner: Alpha
• Reward: A private piano recital from Myleene Klass
• Brought into the boardroom: Kevin, Claire and Sara.
• Fired: Kevin, for his mismanagement and for insisting on delivering the sales pitch himself when Claire was better qualified.
• Notes: Sir Alan reprimanded Michael for his celebratory outburst on winning the task, reminding him that it wasn't a "football match", but he let the matter slide after Michael apologised. Sir Alan was highly critical of Renaissance's environmental theme, pointing out that people did not want to receive a lecture on a greetings card, and that the whole principle of sending greetings cards was in any case of doubtful environmental integrity. Since the theme had been Jenny's idea, Sir Alan was surprised that Kevin did not bring her back into the boardroom. The panel of the You're Fired audience agreed that if he had brought Jenny back he could have survived. Back in the house, the contestants berated Sara for her alleged lack of input into the tasks.

Week 7

• Project managers: Lee (Alpha) and Jennifer (Renaissance).
• Team reshuffle: Jennifer and Michael switch to Renaissance and Sara gets moved to Alpha
• Task: Buy a set list of ten items in the marketplaces of Marrakech, Morocco.
• Result: Unknown
• Winner: Unknown
• Reward: Unknown
• Brought into the boardroom: Unknown
• Fired: Unknown

Weekly results

Candidate Week Result 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Alex PM B Claire PM B PM B Helene PM Jennifer B PM Jenny PM Lee PM Lucinda B PM Michael PM Raef B PM Sara PM B Kevin B PM Fired in Week 6 Lindi B Fired in Week 5 Simon B PM Fired in Week 4 Ian PM Fired in Week 3 Shazia B Fired in Week 2 Nicholas B Fired in Week 1 Candidate 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Result Week

Legend Finale Interviews Renaissance Alpha PM Project manager B Brought back to boardroom

External links

• The Apprentice at BBC Online