I have to say readers that I am still in mourning after arguably my favourite Apprentice candidate of this year – Duane Bryan – in my opinion was unjustly fired during last week’s exercise task. Though it seemed on You’re Fired that Mr Bryan has now joined Blue, so I don’t think he’s that bothered, however it’s no coincidence that the first episode of this series without him is the least entertaining to date.

That’s not to say that there weren’t occasional funny moments, this is still The Apprentice after all, however it wasn’t nearly as great as past episodes in which the candidates have ventured outside of London have been. This week’s destination was Edinburgh, a place that most wouldn’t see as a foreign trip apart from Jenna, who was worried that she wouldn’t understand people if they started talking Scottish to her and was lucky that Laura would be on hand to translate.

The reason that the teams were going up to Scotland was to set-up their own gourmet food mobile units, a task Lord Sugar revealed to them when he popped in on the candidates unsuspectingly while they were busy playing X-box. Sugar wanted the teams to stray away from the old fast food favourites such as cheap burgers and use good quality ingredients – if like me you watch The Apprentice on a regular basis then you’ll realise that normally at least one of the teams will source cheap ingredients in order to increase their profit margins.

I began hitting my head against the desk then when market trader Adam, appointed Team Phoenix project manager by Lord Sugar, suggested that they make their Italian meatballs with low grade products. Adam constantly butted head with Tom, who understood the task remit – namely to use high grade produce to make their gourmet produce – but the market trader inside him wasn’t having any of it. Maybe Tom would’ve had more luck on Team Sterling where Project Manager and Non-Scotch Speaker Jenna decided that quality was the way to go for her Scottish beef casseroles. The train ride to Scotland saw the teams decide where they would pitch their mobile units but more importantly saw the BBC fork out for almost an entire first class cabin when I thought they were meant to be scaling back the budget – although they may’ve got a senior citizen’s discount thanks to Nick Hewer travelling with them.

The other Nick had the great idea of ringing a local hotel to discuss the busiest areas, eventually deciding on Parliament Square as the team’s initial location. Meanwhile Katie shouted down fellow sub-team members Steven and Jade to convince them that the team’s best starting point would be outside a football ground, before a Rangers Vs. Hearts match which had a 12:30 kick-off. Her decision was based on the amount of footfall that the match would attract not realising that they would rather pay £2 for a sweaty burger than £5.99 for some measly meatballs and a bit of pasta.

Talking of those meatballs, after meeting with a Michelin-starred Italian chef who championed the use of high quality ingredients, Adam took his ideas on board and decided the best idea was to raid the value range at the local Morrisons which to me absolutely screams quality. Steven’s sub-team were tasked with creating a name for the product and came up with the truly genius Utterly Delicious Meatballs and while Adam bowed to Steven’s superior creative knowledge, he was a little miffed as the chef had allowed them to use his name along with the recipe.

While Adam’s team seemed to be making mistakes left, right and centre it seemed that Jenna’s downfall may have been the cost price of her Scot-Pots which came to a cost price of £1.50 per serving, something which she would struggle to get money back on. In the end Jenna didn’t need to use Laura as a Scotch translator but Gabrielle did come in useful when haggling with some French tourists who’d just had their breakfast. Neither team’s sales seemed to flourish in the morning with the football fans predictably not wanting to pay £5.99 for any sort of food, while the passers-by at Parliament Square were a little intimidated by a professional wrestler wearing tartan, flanked by a rather hungry bagpipe-player. By lunchtime the Scots Pots were flying off however, with kick-off looming Adam seemed to be giving away his meatballs before the team moved on.

Eager to drum up more meatball sales Steven – draped in Italian flag – accompanied by Katie dressed as a pizza and Azhar as a Roman centurion, made a deal with a tour bus company to do their sales pitch to the tourists, then offer them the chance to get off the bus to sample their wares. Unluckily this was post lunchtime so most of those on the bus had already eaten and those that weren’t were just a bit puzzled that Katie was dressed as a pizza but selling meatballs. The funniest moment in this episode, not involving Lord Sugar, came when the trio were walking back from their first bus to get on the next one only to miss it then give up on the bus idea altogether.

You would’ve thought that this would mean that the team would move on to a third location but instead they stayed at the spot they’d specifically chosen due to the deal done with the bus company. Team Sterling also moved to Princes Street where sales seemed to pick up so much so that you had to wonder why the guy from the hotel told Nick that Parliament Square would be a better location. As the 3 for £10 and 2 £6 deals which started to fly, I wondered whether Sterling would be cheated out of a victory for the second week in a row due to Jenna spending a lot more on ingredients. That wasn’t the case however, as Sterling’s brilliant sales meant that they made slightly more than Phoenix despite Adam’s team spending a lot less on ingredients. Though Jenna was the winning project manager, she was also the winner of the stating the bloody obvious award as she told Lord Sugar ‘I’m from the North’ to which his straight-faced reply was ‘you know, I hadn’t noticed.’

With the Northern wonder giving Team Sterling their second win so far this series, it was Team Phoenix who tasted defeat along with those stale iced buns at the Bridge Cafe. Every year there’s at least one candidate who I think has never watched the programme before, last year it was eventual winner Tom, this time I believe it to be Steven who is the eternal optimist refusing to believe that he did anything wrong, despite making a lot of bad calls. It was Katie though who was chastised for championing the football match location and Adam for deciding to charge £5.99 when they got there, with Lord Sugar quipping that the Scots don’t even pay that much for a striker but as somebody who doesn’t follow football that joke went straight over my head.

Along with Katie it was Azhar who Adam chose to go back to the boardroom, even though it was very nearly Jade thanks to the vendetta the market trader had against her for her poor direction in the retro video last week. With accusations of Adam being out-of-his-depth and heaping a lot of the important decisions onto Steven, it seemed that he may well be the first Project Manager to be fired this series. I did think it might’ve been Azhar however once in the final three he gave a good calm and clear account of himself, while arguing that Adam was out of his depth. Katie’s only saving grace might be her gender as the boys are still outnumbering the girls at this stage but she has the worst track record being in half of the final threes so far this series. After last week’s travesty I’m reticent to even guess who’s going, however I think it might be Adam mainly for thinking that Steven is a better candidate than he is but that would mean losing another entertaining candidate over two quite dull other options.

Despite being on the losing team this week, somebody who really stood out to me was Tom, who for weeks now has been getting the gist of all the tasks but is constantly talked over by louder members of the group. He successfully led his team to victory by understanding the rubbish task two weeks ago and last week was the only one who realised that using all the equipment for the retro dance exercise routine was a bad decision. This week he knew what had to be done in order to win the task namely source good ingredients to create an interesting product neither of which happened on the day. Now that I’ve accepted that Duane has gone I think I will be backing Tom for the remainder of his time on the show which probably means he’ll be gone next week.

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