I wasn’t going to mention the opening package of The Apprentice this week. Honestly, I wasn’t. But when I found myself getting visibly annoyed within a matter a seconds, I knew that I was going to have to renege on my promise. I suppose I’ve just got to hope that me going on about the opening is slightly less annoying than the opening itself. I think I’m still on the right side of that equation, but we’ll reconsider next week… Week Five then, and London’s looking as bright and glossy as ever in Apprenticeland. Sir Alan is on the doorstep, and Claire welcomes him in in her best business voice (and dressing gown): “I only wish I were more appropriately dressed, Sir Alan”.

Clearly Sir Alan couldn’t think of anywhere that has a tenuous link to his task this week, so he just turned up and looked slightly uncomfortable as he talked to the candidates in varying states of undress (them, not him). They would have to “innovate” new flavours of ice cream for two farm producers, and sell them to trade in London. Another food-based task then. As decreed last week, Claire was to be team leader of Renaissance, and Sir Alan put Lucinda in charge of Alpha.

In the first meeting, Claire agreed with Jennifer (the red-haired one) that cocktail-based ice-creams might be a good idea. Michael, level-headed as always, suggested that parents might not be entirely comfortable ordering two scoops of Sex On The Beach for their kids at the local cinema. Good point. Eventually they plumped for Blueberry Mania (which I think later changed to Very Berry), Chocolate Orange and Cider and Elderflower. All of which sounds quite nice to be honest. Over at Alpha’s initial meeting, Lucinda’s new-age sensibilities were coming to the fore with ingredient ideas. They decided to create ice creams in Toffee Apple, Cosmopolitan and Avocado flavour. New-age, see.

Tensions soon emerged in Claire’s team, as she, Michael and Jennifer popped out to get ingredients. I say popped out, in fact they took *hours*, meaning the kitchen team couldn’t get on with making the ice cream, and Claire rather disingenuously made out that they had got “held up at the cider place.” Well, sort of. Things were going surprisingly smoothly over with Alpha, though, and Margaret was obviously impressed with Lucinda’s leadership style: “She has a good manner without being dictatorial” she said, “I think she’s doing quite well.” That’s “wow, someone who doesn’t suck” in Margaret-speak, of course. Yup, the kitchen team of Lucinda, Lee and Helene were all doing well, and the sales team of Jen, Raef and their leader Lindi, appeared to be getting loads of meetings with potential buyers. It all seemed a little too good to be true… and we’d later find out that it was. At the time, though, it felt very much as though it was Renaissance who were struggling. They’d failed to get anyone to come to their tasting session, and so just asked two guys in a pub to see what they thought. Classy.

The second day was all about selling, and as I said, Alpha had plenty of leads, whereas Renaissance had the grand total of two. But Alpha’s sales team had clearly made a couple of errors when setting up appointments: three out of the six they had organised were with establishments that make their own ice cream. Not a great start, but Lindi was adamant that if the product’s good enough, they’ll buy it anyway. Hmmm… In the end, both teams got one big contract and several small ones, and it became clear that the competition would be very close.

Lee had been working with Lucinda all day, and when talking to the camera he had a revelation: “Lucinda is brilliant!” he said, as if shocked at the words tumbling out of his mouth. Lindi and her team, who hadn’t really worked with her at all, were less enthusiastic, and really didn’t seem to appreciate that it was she who had created the calm and creative environment that had allowed them all to get on with their jobs with very little drama. As for Claire, she had clearly moderated her management style after being shouted at by Sir Alan last week, and must be praised for that – even the usually inscrutable Nick was pleasantly surprised.

In the boardroom, it turned out that both teams had actually done really well, but Lucinda’s team were just squeezed out when it came down to the numbers. If this were any other week, I’d have been certain that I would have to watch through my fingers as Lucinda was bullied into submission, but this week she has, as Sir Alan himself said rather blossomed, and found that Lee and even Helene were ready to speak up in her defence. Sir Alan thought that she should have stuck to her guns when her idea of mixing up the teams was silently shouted down with negative body-language (from Jen, especially) but you never got the feeling she would be fired this week.

The problem was with sales, and two issues in particular: that half of the appointments set up were dead-ends, and that Jen and Lindi offered firms exclusivity without consulting the farms they were representing. I think Sir Alan knows that Jen is cold, unlikable, and rather manipulative, but we all know that he *never* makes decisions based on personalities (last week proved that for certain). He saw a problem with sales, and the person in charge of that was Lindi. In his mind, there was no doubt she had to go.