Apprentice - wrong notes

[zico]

A 5am late start for our candidates who are off to Maida Vale, which we find is not just a Tube stop, but also a famous music recording centre. This week’s task is to select an unknown recording artist ( from a choice of 3 acts) then select and mix a sample of their tune, before pitching it to a big corporate client with advertising campaigns, and also pitch for smaller sales to a roomful of assorted London middle-media-moguls.

Lottie also has a self-appointed personal task to find new ways for people to dislike her. She achieves this by telling her team she’d be perfect for PM because since she was four years old, she’s been in music, having played the viola. At four years old surely she’d have needed stepladders to get near the strings. Dean tells the team he has experience in brand management, so might actually be useful this week, and he gets the nod for PM. He sends Scarlett and Carina to meet the corporate clients, while he and Lottie go to meet the artists. Lewis is PM for the other bunch as he’s a marketing guy.

It’s time to meet the artists. Lottie and Dean decide to fake enthusiasm for the acts before mentioning commission. Thomas’s approach is (as ever) to dive straight in, and he says “Look, we’ll be doing the hard work while all you’ve done is muck about writing and performing songs. We’ll make you bigger than Barry White, so we’ll just take 50/50 commission split”. Both teams go for the same artist – guess who the artist prefers. Thomas has to pick his second choice, but gets feedback from the other half of the team that the big client wants something upbeat and definitely not a love song. “So, no love song?”. “No, definitely not, they were very specific.” So Thomas picks the love song then spends lots of time trying to find a bit of the song that doesn’t mention love, so they only have a 10 second repeating fragment. I should mention that Marianne is Thomas’s sub-team leader, otherwise people might get the idea that Thomas is making all the decisions.

Lewis takes Thomas’s track and pitches it to visibly unimpressed clients. They’d told him the previous day their budget was £50-70k, so Lewis decides to ask for £85k before saying “we can maybe negotiate the price”. After that, the only thing the clients want to discuss is how quickly he can get the hell out of their office.

By virtue of her childhood spent playing the viola, Lottie tells her corporate clients that she has 15 years in the music business, which is the biggest exaggeration in the entire series, apart from 50% of everything Thomas says in every episode. They get £17k from the big clients who’ll use their clip just on social media. Both teams hustle at their respective events for smaller clients. Lottie is trying to get clients to pay £550, they offer £525, and Carina steps in to split the difference and agree £500. Pretty dumb and Lottie isn’t backward in telling Carina about it.

Results time, and Dean’s bunch got £50k sales at 35% commission for £15k profit, while Lewis’s lot got 35% commission on £28k for £10k profit so an easy win for Dean’s team. Lord Sugar says it’s 8 losses out of 9 for Thomas and that he’ll be in line for a loyalty card at the Losers’ Café. He’s disappointed with all the losing team, so doesn’t allow Lewis to pick 2 others, and has all 4 -Lewis, Marianne, Thomas and Pamela - in the firing line. Karen says “it’s not often that Pamela speaks” and the Lord castigates Pamela for ducking and diving. He says Thomas is too headstrong, Lewis isn’t impressing, and Marianne seems to be rubbish at managing anyone. Lord Sugar tells Lewis he thinks he’s impenetrable, but the Lord says he definitely isn’t. He probably meant untouchable, but maybe he meant what he said and it's a new way to say someone is very dense.

Lord Sugar asks them to tell him in one sentence what their business plans are – like that’s going to help his decision, unless he doesn’t like flogging pillows – which is Thomas’s plan. Sad news for viewers as Lord Sugar very reluctantly fires Thomas, praising his “honourability” (we know what he means) and also let Marianne go.