This week’s episode starts with a motivational message from Elle:
“Do you ever get up in the morning and just think ‘this isn’t worth it’?”
This week is all about Sam Curry (although I think every week is all about Sam Curry). Lord Sugar practically hand-plucks Sam to be PM because he’s learned and academic and intelligent and, frankly, we haven’t seen nearly enough of him yet. Charleine is PM on the other team. Meh.
The task: create a children’s book. Charleine HATES Richard with the energy of a million volcanoes and so does the obvious thing and makes him sub-team leader. But alas, this is tactical. She is purely doing this as a method of disarming him. Despite being honoured with that title, Richard essentially isn’t allowed to speak. It’s the price you pay for power, Dick.
Sam rambles about what their book should be about and there are shots of everyone frowning at him. But hold on a second! He speaks sense. He is talking about producing a book about morals and life lessons which is what the children’s book I wrote earlier this year is based on, which is further proof that he and I really should be in one another’s lives (Coffee Sam Curry?)
To make him even more appealing, he starts talking about Aristotle. You’re killing me SC!
Charleine’s team decide on a book about bees but the illustrator, who is allegedly professional being that he draws using a computer, is shit. I mean, I could come up with something better than that on Microsoft Paint. Concerned with the written content, April asks the team how honey is made saying “I just want to check that, in terms of not lying to children”. Fair enough.
Spoiler: we never do actually find out how honey is made.
Sam’s team can’t decide on a premise. The result is a story about a dragon that’s been cross-bred with an elephant which presumably is a lesson about gender identification? It features this sentence:
“He came across the flowers that looked rather dry; he looked on at the plants, moisture-rife.”
Selina is all “we can’t include that word in a kids’ book”. Naturally I agree with her until I discover she means ‘rife’ not ‘moisture’.
The other team start recording their audio-book with Charleine on the phone directing them to “make it sound like the wind is saying it”. She demonstrates by repeating it exactly how David had already been saying it – more like a tepid whiff than the wind. She then does the pitch herself to the potential buyers. Richard wanted to but she’d rather see hell freeze over and implode before letting that happen. Sadly, she is shit at pitching so basically they don’t sell any books.
Elsewhere, Natalie is attempting to sell copies of Mr Snufflegums or whatever Sam’s book is called, to a woman in a shop. In fairness, this woman is a stone cold bitch but Natalie is putting all the effort into it of a disgruntled mother at a child’s sports day.
Sam is educated, in case you hadn’t gathered, so he takes his team to some street in London where they only sell intelligent-person books that are about 600 years old (like stuff by Shakespeare and the original copy of the Bible). Obviously no-one’s interested in a copy of Mr Snuggleton given that it was written in a day, printed overnight and has the phrase ‘moisture-rife’ in it.
The only option is to sell all his copies to a random shop for about two quid. Sam then says that it was like selling his child and that he’s just a heartless mother – and I nearly burst with fondness.
Sadly, Charleine’s book about how bees don’t make honey wins the task and Sam’s head is on the chopping block in the boardroom.
So basically Natalie, throughout the episode, has had a face like a stroppy teenage boy and her attitude has stunk like a crate of dead seahorses. Her excuse is that she has a cold, so coughs at strategically placed moments, such as when Lord Sugar talks to her. Everyone blames her for the altercation with the book shop bitch, which is indeed her fault seeing as Brett told her the figures and told her to write it down, which she didn’t do. She is then all “um, Brett, you didn’t tell me the figures, check my notebook if you want”.
HE COULD CHECK YOUR NOTEBOOK NATALIE BUT YOU ONLY DON’T HAVE ANY FIGURES WRITTEN IN IT BECAUSE YOU IGNORED HIS INSTRUCTIONS TO WRITE THEM DOWN.
Sam chooses to bring her back into the boardroom, but then spends 11 hours deciding who else should be brought in, which is a really bad move given that he’s been slagged off for losing the task due to his indecisive nature. At this point I have my head in my hands, tears welling up in my ducts, feeling that he’s digging his own grave – leading me to my firing prediction: It should be Natalie, but I fear it might be Sam.
Brett is brought back in for no real reason but it’s wonderful that he is purely for the fact that he uses the phrase “I shit you not” to Lord S.
It’s dicey, but Natalie is fired – along with her attitude problem – and Sam lives to see another day, blessed be!
– A
Andrew Bullock 