Last night the newest series of The Apprentice kicked off and though Sir Alan praises them as his best candidates yet, I thought they were all a bunch of bumbling idiots.

In the end the girls lost the cleaning challenge and Anita Shah got fired but I would have much preferred to see Mona Lewis go.

Mona proposed herself as team leader for the task but failed to actually direct or lead. She decided that £300 was an acceptable quote for cleaning three cars, and when her customer told her that he normally pays in the region of £60, she more or less called him a liar. In the clip above you see Mona giving another quote for a job which requires the cleaning of two vans and a car. She quotes £10 per car and £15 per van and rounds that up to an even £50. When her potential customer points out that it should actually be £40, she looks disappointed and says “so you can count.” Mona already strikes me as a duplicitous sales woman with no respect for her customer base. She’ll never get far in business with that attitude!

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Anita Shah has become the first candidate to be fired from this years Apprentice series.

Anita was part of the all female Ignite team. As part of their first task they were given a white van, a maximum of £200 to spend on equipment and told to make as much cash as possible.

Despite claiming that she had one of the best financial minds in the UK, Anita started the girls on the path to losing before they had even cleaned a single car. At the start of the task, Anita was asked to hold a calculator and tot up how much they were spending on cleaning materials. She seemed elated when they managed to spend a mere £196 and kept talking about their cleaning ‘budget’. In reality the team had no budget, just a maximum spend amount of £200. They boys managed to buy all their materials for £107, which in the end won them the task.

However I don’t really think that Anita was single handedly to blame for the girls losing this week. They all seemed to lack any business ability and common sense for that matter. Mona, the team leader was wholly incompetent and seemed to think that you win contracts by calling the customer a liar. To make it worse not one of them knew how to work a bloody pressure washer! Anita was the obvious choice to fire though. In the boardroom she came across like a big wet lettuce. She had no spirit, no drive and was defeatist from the moment she sat down. Sir Alan likes a feisty girl and tonight Anita just didn’t live up.

View the original post The Apprentice 2009: Anita Shah Gets Fired! on Unreality TV

OMG!!! Sir Alan Sugar appeared on The One Show tonight saying that this years bunch of Apprentice candidates are his best yet, but to me they look like a bunch of bumbling idiots.

Their first task consisted of Sir Alan providing them with a van and some cleaning materials (all of which they paid for out of their budget). They then had to clean some stuff and make as much money as they could in just one day.

The girls in particular astounded me by trying to charge £300 to clean three cars! When the customer pointed out that his current cleaner does the job for £60, Mona Lewis told him he was wrong and basically implied that he was a liar. They landed the contract in the end but after dropping their price dramatically they then had to summon their customer to help them work the pressure washer.

The boys, to their credit, landed a contract to clean 30 minicabs, but would only be paid for the ones which passed the customers inspection. There seemed to be way too many of them trying to clean at the same time, they took one and a half hours to clean their first car and even then they were forgetting to clean roofs, backs of seats and other pretty obvious spots.

In the end Ignite (the girls team) took £357, they spent £196.45 and so made a profit of £160.55. Empire (the boys team) took £347, spent £107.39 and so made a profit of just over £239. So the boys won, but really not through any great margin and not because of any great planning or talent. I can only hope that this bunch get better with practice!

View the original post The Apprentice 2009: Boys Win, But They’re All Bloody Idiots on Unreality TV

Anita Shah
Age: 35
Career: Business Strategist
Qualifications: LLB in Law & Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice
Lives: Birmingham

Cricket fanatic Anita is a qualified lawyer and self-confessed perfectionist. Anita, who led a team to win at the Visa Business School in 2008, hopes to one day complete a chick-lit novel and launch a new business providing emotional, psychological and spiritual therapy. She is inspired by James Caan for believing that you can be successful by investing in relationships and being nice to people, rather than being ruthless or devious. Anita considers herself to be a humanitarian with a Bridget Jones alter-ego.

She says: “My CV is strong. I am articulate. I can deal with questions and make impactful statements. Many lawyers can’t. People want to chat with me.”

View the original post The Apprentice 2009: Anita Shah on Unreality TV