The Apprentice - BBC series 4 - week 1

The price of fish

The sixteen candidates must have been expecting they would return to drinks on the terrace of a luxury London pad after their first meeting with Sir Alan Sugar in the new series of The Apprentice.

The candidates in the three previous series had all done that but things were different this time. They were sent straight out onto the streets to to sell wet fish.

Two ineffective leaders were chosen: Alex for the boys and Claire for the girls.

Each team had £600 worth of fish in a van and the two teams had to sell it for as much as they could. The fish had not been labelled. Sir Alan had kindly provided each team with a ring-binder full of pictures of fish along with their name - and the wholesale cost of the fish. Viewers waited to see if either team leader could get the fish properly identified and priced.

Alex told Raef to identify the fish and Nicholas to price them. There was nothing for the others to do until that had been done.

Ian paced up and down and told Raef and Nicholas to hurry up, telling them he was desperate to get started. It never occurred to him to take some of the pages from the ring-binder or help with the identification.

Alex wandered off down the market and saw a sign at a fish stall advertising lobster at £4.90 a pound.

"We're doing lobster at 490 at the moment," he shouted.

Nicholas labelled the lobsters at £4.90 each.

One was soon sold. Michael was really pleased with himself. He knew how to sell. "Would you like another one for half price?" he asked the shopper.

"I don't want to rob you," the shopper told him. There was no sign at all that Michael figured out why she said that.

Later on Nicholas found out that the girls were selling lobsters priced at £23 each.

"The girls are selling it at at £23 per kilo," he told the guys. "We're selling it at £4.90 per unit."

Alex must have forgotten why the lobster was mispriced in the first place. "We've been let down by the prices," he grumbled instead of figuring out what price the remaining lobsters should be priced at.

The girls were just as chaotic. Some of the fish were never labelled in the first place. Lindi started selling fish before it was even priced. "Two of them for seven quid. Is that alright?" She would later criticise Claire for being a poor project manager.

When did they realise you don't need eight people to staff a market stall selling fish? Not until late in the day. Claire seemed to know that London is full of expensive restaurants and a team was sent to the West End. They finally managed to sell some fish at above the wholesale price.

The guys went off to an office of solicitors where one partner gave Michael a lesson in how to negotiate a price down and down and down. There won't be a better example in the whole series.

The boys' team, Renaissance spent the whole day selling £600 worth of fish for £632.69, a profit of £4 each. The girls did a little better. Their team, Alpha, made a profit of £153.98 and were sent back for a meal in the house prepared by Jean-Christophe Novelli.

Alex chose Raef and Nicholas for the boardroom meeting with Sir Alan. Nicholas started waffling on about liking art and culture and not liking football. What had that got to do with the price of fish? He had made Sir Alan's first choice easy and was given the first taxi ride home.

Although Adrian Chiles was back for You're Fired. Karren Brady made a few good points but the show drifted for most of its 30 minutes. Let's hope there are some sharper guests later in the series.

The Apprentice forum