This first thing I noticed about this week’s edition of The Apprentice (apart from the soul-sapping opening five minutes, obviously) was that Michael’s voice has slowed to virtual standstill. I remember, in the first few weeks when he was rather in the background, that when we did hear from him he seemed to be rather sensible and level-headed. Not so now; instead he simply veers from the odd incredible outburst (remember when he won a task as team leader) to wandering about the place looking for all the world like a broken man. He’d be going this week for sure, right? Wrong.

This week, Sir Alan took the candidates to the National Theatre complex on the Southbank in London. “What they do here”, he ever-so-helpfully explained, “is put on plays.” Thanks for that. The task for this week was that the teams had to come up with a new brand of tissue, and come up with a box design, paper ad and TV commercial for it. Raef, as leader of Renaissance with Helene, Claire and Michael, was well up for this – “I’ve done a lot of theatre” he said. Not as much as Michael, it would seem, however, how has played Fagin, and gave us a performance of “Reviewing The Situation”, which was full of gusto, if perhaps borderline-offensive. Hasn’t he learnt to stay away from the Jewish thing…?

Alex was in charge of Lucinda and Lee for Alpha. Or at least, he was meant to be. Lucinda has certainly come out of her shell these last few weeks, and really shown her worth, but this week she went from confident to domineering. Don’t become one of *them* Lucinda! Nevertheless, the team had a productive brainstormimg session, and came up with the really-rather-good name Atishu!

Renaissance, on the other hand, had decided to start coming up with their story before naming the brand – which is why they ended up with the name “I Love My Tissues.” You love what now? Wonders never cease. Helene and Claire quickly became concerned that Michael and Raef were becoming a little too precious about the cinematic integrity of the piece, and with good reason: on a locations reccy Raef walked into a classroom and said “I want it to say school!” Michael – in a rare instance of him being the voice of reason – just replied “It is a school.” Oh, and Raef and Michael at one point were rehearsing “Act 1, Scene 1″. Now scenes I can understand, but acts? When Doctor Theatre works his magic on someone who’s already well, bad things happen, clearly.

Over with Alpha, Lucinda continued to be contrary a little longer before eventually falling into line for the filming of the advert – she let Alex direct, and everything! He became a whole lot more calm at this point, and the advert, while pretty horrible in most senses, got filmed and edited without too much stress. Raef and Michael, of course, agonised over every precious second – and even cut out the one close up of the product because they felt it didn’t fit in with their overall, subtle theme. Because that’s what advertising’s all about isn’t it – subtlety. Ahem.

Claire pitched for Renaissance, and while she didn’t like the advert the auteurs had come up with all that much, she delivered a great, chatty pitch to a big audience. She has said before that that it her comfort zone, and this week she proved it. Lee didn’t have such a great time of it, fumbling with his papers and tripping over his words – but then they had all been trying to edit and rearrange it right up until the last second, which is never a good idea.

With the pitches pitched, and discussed by industry experts with Sir Alan, who had sat through them himself, it was back to the boardroom. They watched each other’s adverts, and Raef’s team could barely hide the sniggers when Atishu’s garish commercial came on the screen. But they were hasty – the ad men liked it. It may not have been Citizen Kane, but at least the product was at the centre of the campaign. The same could not have been said for Renaissance’s “subtle” offering. So they lost. Raef brought Michael and Claire back into the boardroom with him – the latter being a mistake in the first place, as Sir Alan had already praised her pitch. In the cafe, Raef had said “I will not cheapen myself by starting to lie and make false accusations” – and knowing what we do about him, I assumed he would stick to it… but he didn’t really, and he and Michael quickly turned on each other after being such luvvies throughout the task.

Again, again Michael escaped being fired, and instead Sir Alan turned the finger of doom onto Raef, for becoming too attached to the creative side, for failing to see what the ad men really wanted, and, you’ve gotta say, probably a bit for being posh, too. Surely it’ll be Michael’s turn next week…?