Sir Alan delivered a video message to the candidates telling them they would be taking the best of English produce to a market in France to sell to French "people". You could tell he wanted to say "nutters" - his hallmark phrase for the consumer - but stuck with "people" in the interests of entente cordiale. He appointed Lohit and Paul as team leaders, with Tre, Simon, Jadine and Naomi on Lohit's team, and Adam, Kristina, Katie and Ghazal on Paul's team.

Lohit's team - Eclipse - settled on an English Breakfast theme, buying up smoked salmon, English tea and jams. It seemed like Simon was a real asset to the team with a flair for the French language and some good input on product selection based on his knowledge of the French.

After picking up some sausages from a farm shop at a prison, Paul's team - Stealth - went down to Makro - popular cash and carry wholesalers - and stocked up on cheese. Kristina rightly picked up on it being slightly ludicrous to goto Charlton's finest cash and carry to bulk buy cheese to try and sell to a nation of cheese connosieurs. Paul's luck also failed him when he and Adam picked up their signage from an obviously displeased printer in Maidstone, who wanted a large lump of their budget for a glossy banner which transpired to be a poorly worded translation.

Eclipse did seem to manage a decent day of sales, successfully selling to shoppers and local businesses. Each week we are introduced to a new skill from Tre, and in this task he showed us he could "bullsh*t in any language". Apart from some squabbling between Jadine and Simon (which Tre put down to it being that "time of the month"), the team functioned well together.

Stealth's day was beset with problems, caused in large part by their inability to cook sausages and hand out samples. Paul had spurned proper cooking apparatus in favour of a makeshift cooker, created out of food tins and a candle. This 'Boy's Own' solution wasn't up to scratch and really dented their selling potential. When Kristina finally arranged the use of a local kitchen to cook some samples, they did manage to start selling sausages.

Paul decided to take matters into hand and wandered into a "Euro Kebab" to sell his pork sausages. Euro Kebab was a Muslim owned Kebab shop selling Hallal meat and this happened to be in the middle of Ramadam. If he had pulled it off, Sir Alan would have had to just quit and hand the whole business over to an obvious genius. Predictably, that's not what happened and Paul and Katie quickly made for the exit. All things considered, the shopkeepers reaction was remarkably restrained.

After a day's trading, the teams returned to the UK. They assembled in the board room to find out how they had did, although I'd have thought that as each team would most likely have an idea of how well they done, and presumably do talk to each other in the house in which they all stay, so the results can't be that much of a surprise to them? That aside, Lohit's team made a profit of over £400. Paul's team made a loss of over £100.

Paul took Adam and Kristina into the board. Adam, for his cock-up over the signage and Kristina for being a snake in the grass was Katie put it. This was only ever going to go one way, and after a bit of theatrics to suggest Adam was also in the firing line, Sir Alan rounded on Paul, called him a "shambles" and sent him packing.

(Lovers of continuity errors will have noted the brown/tan shoes Paul wore as he left the boardroom, and the black shoes as he got in the cab!)

I mentioned at the start of the series that I do happen to know Lohit and it was great to see him at last feature properly in an episode, and he did a great job of leading the team. He's starting to look like a proper contender to me. Simon has also done a great job, and I can them two along with Tre and Kristina making up the final four. That's my prediction anyway - what do you think?

Labels: apprentice, review, tv