The worlds of entrepreneurs and employment skills will be brought back into our living rooms with a bang tonight on BBC One as the eleventh series of The Apprentice begins.
With a double bill in store (the second episode is being aired tomorrow on Thursday 15th October), we’re in for two consecutive evenings to get to know this years candidates. Season eleven sees the return of Karen Brady but the departure of Nick Hewer as Lord Sugar’s right hand man with the formidable Claude Littner taking his place; you may remember him for the dreaded interview stages of many a previous series!
We all shivered in fear last year as the infamous Claude Littner, aka the scariest man in the world ‘put down’ 2014 candidate Solomon’s business plan, calling it a “disgrace” and specifically criticising the colossal amount of sail boat logos on one particular page of the business plan – seeming to feel it more of a school project than a comprehensive business plan. This tense episode left the audience shuddering and we hope to expect more of the same from Claude Littner in the upcoming series.
However, this season promises from the trailer to be ‘the toughest one yet’ coining Destiny’s Child – ‘Survivor’ as the backing track to the teaser trailer. Despite this, series eleven is set to take a more traditional approach as Lord Sugar is said to want the focus back on the business for series eleven. This year the candidates are older with an average in the late twenties, so with what we have heard about the focus, we can potentially expect a decidedly more serious bunch than previous years. Gone it seems are the young, somewhat inexperienced candidates of the past, who were hungrier for fame than businesses launches, as we see a more reputable bunch of intrepid candidates take the stage to compete for Lord Sugar’s invaluable investment.
With a series promising to bring it back to real business, will we learn more from the show about the art of being an entrepreneur, the seed of a business start-up, employability skills and the stakes involved in a massive career change to become ‘Lord Sugar’s Apprentice’?
Yet the show will still keep many of us captivated by the differences and uncertainty of what the candidates have to offer and say; from throwing out the idea of calling their team ‘Sugar Babes’ to the amusing claims and egotistical one liners we all know and love as to why Lord Sugar should hire them, examples such as “I’m a Swiss army knife of bouncy skills, business skills, enthusiasm: I’ve got everything highly tuned and highly chiselled” to “me and Lord Sugar will work together because you’ve got age and beauty and those two go hand in hand all the time. Sugar’s got the age and I certainly am beautiful”.
Meet the Candidates here and leave us a comment or send us a tweet to let us know your prediction as to who will be the one to survive and ultimately be hired as Lord Sugar’s Apprentice….
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