The Apprentice episode 4 review: candidates confused by paper maps and trugs

The 20-somethings of The Apprentice struggle to get their head round paper maps as they descend on Brighton, writes Corinne Mills
The Apprentice candidates in Brighton (Image: BBC)The Apprentice candidates in Brighton (Image: BBC)
The Apprentice candidates in Brighton (Image: BBC)

It’s scavenger week on The Apprentice and sadly the guy most qualified for success in this task, antiques broker Gregory Ebbs, was car booted last week.

The teams scoured the lanes of Brighton looking for assorted oddities including nautical barometers, asparagus and lace front wigs.

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These Generation Zoomers showed their age and how reliant we have all become on technology. They’d never used a paper map before. They couldn’t quite get a grip on what a vinyl 45 record was. “Is it like a CD?” they asked, their historical recall stretching back as far as it could.

Uber-confident Marnie Swindells was convinced that a trug was a piece of leather furniture rather than a garden basket. To be fair, I’m sure there are many of us who wouldn’t know what Palourdes or a Sahara Desert Rose were, if we weren’t allowed our phones to check.

Frustrated, they reverted to opening shop doors and shouting “Do you know what a Sahara Rose is?” and then moving on. When they did finally find someone who knew, Reece Donnelly from Glasgow misheard them, saying it was a thistle when in fact it was a fossil, an unfortunate miscommunication.

For the most part though, the teams were at least functional, fairly collaborative and more respectful to the shop owners than we’ve seen in previous series. The faux mateyness, however - “come on Rachie, we really want to do business with you” as they wheedled a measly 50p reduction - was on par with the usual cringey negotiating approach we see on The Apprentice.

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Project Manager Denisha Kaur Bharj and her team ended up in the Boardroom as she, Mark Moseley and Reece competed to stay in for at least another week. Mark defended his decision to stay in the same place, not by saying that he had been confused by a paper map, which was probably the case, but by saying that the last thing he wanted to do was “put his thumbs up his bum” which I guess is true, that would have been a mistake. Although after his lucky escape in the Boardroom, he did say he was off to “change his pants”, so jury’s out.

Despite Denisha leading the teams fairly competently and negotiating one of the biggest discounts from a retailer, she was the one to exit this week. She was consistently pleasant, reasonable, competent and calm, a recipe for success in the real world if not in the Apprentice one.

However, the big winner this week was undoubtedly the guy selling plaster resin casts of body parts. Hens, stags and all the party animals will be beating their way to his gaffe as we speak, eager to get their various bits memorialised.

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