Throng

After last week when big baby Ben got the boot after much pratting about with prams, today the contestants are off to the shopping channel to attempt to shift all sorts of tat to some of the least discerning viewers known to man. I suspect they'll still struggle. Debra is bound to be in the firing line after her clashes with Sir Alan. 

21:03 Lorraine slumps down to the phone - it's not a pretty sight. The teams must meet him at Alexandra Palace. 

"I think Sir Alan sees me in the final," confides Howard. I think he sees you in his vampire themed nightmares Howard but well done for being optimistic. 

Home shopping is worth £1bn a year. The teams need to select products and flog them to the viewers at home. 

21:06 Howard is leading Ignite. "I think we should chose products that suit our personalities," says Lorraine. So...something wet then. An aquarium. 

21:07 After an hour in the car, Yasmina, James and Debra have been arguing about who should be project manager the whole time. "Be project manager if you want," says Debra snarling like a dog with its tail stuck in a mangle. Yasmina gets the role but the displeasure is all over Debra's substantial face. 

21:09 Yasmina decides her team need to go for low-price products. She's split the team - she's off with James while Debra's off on her own - the lunatic lone wolf. 

21:11 "You can get polyester that's man made?" James illustrates his brilliant general knowledge once again. 

Lorraine is in the studio practicing. She's gabbling like a maniac. Demonstrating a GPS device she manages to say all the wrong things: "Don't have a crash. If you're speeding it's got a safety camera." 

"She can't scare them"" bellows one of the channel's producers. I think that might be a given. 

21:13 Howard has to decide which member of his team should present alone. Kate stumbles nearly as much as Lorraine. Meanwhile Howard, prince of the night, with his cheeky redcoat manner is made for the job. 

Expect to see him presenting a late night quiz show any time now. 

The fur starts to fly with Kate and Lorraine. "She's giving me daggers," says Lorraine. "I am not, " says Kate, giving Lorraine daggers. 

Howard opts to go with Kate presenting alone meaning he has to work with 

21:15 Yasmina: "I would employ Debra to work in my organisation but in a job where you didn't have to work with anyone else." The compliments are really flying. 

Debra will be presenting alone while Yasmina and James have put together an incredibly awkward pretend couple double act. 

21:16 Howard and Lorraine are searching for products -  an air guitar device and a frightening foot scraper that looks like a torture device. 

Kate's flying solo - she's seen a super-expensive chip fryer and a silver leather coat that looks like it broke free from Sir Elton John's cupboards. 

21:17 Howard and Lorraine are being shown Pleo the dinosaur. Lorraine loves him but Howard doesn't - you could get a Wii for that price, he points out reasonably. "Howard doesn't take risks," says Lorraine. He may well be right this time though. 

21:18 Team members can't sell their own selections. Lorraine and Debra have to try and shift the super-expensive Liberracci alike jacket and the ridiculously pricey chip fryer. 

Yasmina and James have lumbered Debra with the Grab-o-saurus (£24.99), a leaf picking device, and the Polo Panchp neckwarmer which looks like something you might wear to cover an embarassing rash. 

Debra's gone for elasticated hair clips. "I wouldn't wear these," she grumbles "but..." the missing words? The bunch of numpties at home probably would. 

21:20 Kate is lumbered with some hideous craft cats that you cover with sequins and the toy air guitar. She's a dab hand with the latter  but slightly bemused by the dodgy dogs.

21:23 Yasmina and James are first up to present. At home, Sir Alan is watching. 

Their first product is the remote control car. Yasmina is rabbiting on. In the control room, Debra wants her to talk about the price. She's not. Debra is getting ready to smash the control panel. Yasmina is now mentioning the price. 

They move over to the next product - the hair grips. They announce the price as £9.99 repeatedly. They're actually £17.99. At home, Sir Alan is incredibly irritated. He was going to buy some scrunchies for his salt and pepper do but he's put off now. What a shame, he won't get to look like "a Bond girl." 

21:26 The producer tells James and Yasmina that their sales figures were poor - £400 in the hour. Much less than they would ordinarily make.. 

Debra's trying to shift the odd scarf/hat hybrid. She's emphasising the style but she looks like a character from the Star Wars cantina. 

The Garden Grip is similarly low-priced and Sir Alan is not happy. "Cheap, that's the problem." He knows they need to shift real volume to make enough money to win. And with their pathetic pitches, they won;t. 

21:29 "I just hope Lorraine doesn't start gabbling," says Howard. Uh-oh. 

The first product - the jackets as seen in a mid-80s Michael Jackson video. 

"I'm going to wear this to my next party," say Lorraine. 

"I'd be proud to be seen with you," says Howard.. Liar. 

21:30 Next up, the deep fat fryer. "A killer product," says Sir Alan, who really knows something about shifting tat. "You just have to sell one of those and they've won." But he's not happy that the pair aren't pushing the website, price and phone number. 

Lorraine keeps slipping into her weird Irish accent. They told everyone how great the product was but not how to get hold of it.

21:32 Kate's trying to sell the sequin cat craft kit. "Dodgy product," mutters Sir Alan. If anyone knows what a dodgy product is, it's the creator of the Amstrad Emailer. 

Now Kate's on to showing the Infrared Air Guitar. She's really going for it. So much that the camera men are in stitches. Either that's brilliant or totally mad. Margaret looks amused, which is always a good sign. 

21:35 Time for the boardroom. "I don't have to rely on Nick and Margaret this time, I was watching you." says Sir Alan in his best big brother style. 

Kate and Lorraine sing Howard's praises. Lorraine is expressing her love for the fryer. "You spent too much time explaining the product and not enough ramming home the way to buy it. The target audience may not be hedge fund traders but they're not brain deads." 

Sir Alan badges the jackets "Benedorm specials" but does note that the high price products were a good bet. 

21:37 He's not so taken with Yasmina's cautious approach. "Going for high ticket items was the right approach." Sir Alan is talking to James as if he was his half-witted cousin. He's reading an email from a viewer that brands Yasmina and James's attempt at presenting as "the comedy hour". 

21:38 Yasmina's team has won and Debra managed to sell nearly as many ponchos as they would have expected a professional to. She's saved herself this week and set herself up with a good fall back for the future - obscure digital channels your next star is born. 

They're off for a private flying lesson while the other team are off to the most depressing cafe in Britain to crash and burn. "You picked the best product," says Sir Alan, "But you didn't blahdy sell it." 

21:40 Nick comes to a simple conclusion: "It was bad salesmanship." 

21:41 At the flying lesson, James makes the overalls look like a rompersuit. The three of them are clearly out of their usual habitat in what could be their only chance to ever to be real high flyers. 

21:43 At the catastrope cafe, Lorraine's face has fallen further than I thought was physically possible. She says she won't talk about anyone else's performance: "If I go, I'm going to go with some style and grace." I suspect she'll go mental once she's in there. 

21:44 "I know very little about the market," says Howard defending the sequinned cat. Well, there's logic. 

"If you don't like them and you think no one else will like 'em, you shouldn't try and sell 'em" says Sir Alan. 

The air guitar sold less than 10% of what the channel would have expected to shift. Kate says she gave it her all - based on the response of the studio team that seems right. 

21:45 Lorraine says they should have gone for the dinosaur. "I did like the product but I did go for the guitar," she says honestly. There's no room for that kind of honesty here you know. 

21:47 Kate's choices (the spangly jacket and the fryer) were the channel's two biggest sellers. Sir Alan wants to know why Lorraine and Howard struggled to sell them. 

Kate sold about £200 worth of goods vs devilish Debra brought in £900. Still Kate and Howard are teaming up to take down Lorraine. 

"When the chips were down, I stood up to the mark," she unintentionally puns. Sir Alan frowns - he does the funnies in this boardroom.

21:50 Margaret defends Howard. Nick thinks Sir Alan is underestimating Lorraine. Meanwhile, former golden girl Kate is coming out of it this well: "I think she thinks she's better than she is," says Sir Alan pulling out one of his trademark circuitous sentences. 

21:51 Sir Alan thinks Howard is risk adverse - I think the main one is being frightened of sunlight, mirrors and sharpened wooden stakes. 

Howard is defending himself well. "I think you're not a brave warrior," says Nick turning suddenly into an old shaolin kung-fu master. 

Lorraine says she's got natural business accumen. "What do you want to work for me for?" say Sir Alan. That's the question we've all been asking for the whole series. It's hardly the Bullseye speedboat. 

21:53 Kate is "not a one trick pony". Ah there's that old nag of a cliche. 

21:54 Sir Alan is "going to have to make a decision". He says this, as always, like it comes as a suprise to him. Does he never watch the tapes back? 

Howard is "a steady eddie." Lorraine "speaks a good game" but Sir Alan brings up her own words from a few weeks back "a slow-burner in the thought process". All three have come along way says Sir Alan  - out to Brentford in fact - but it's Howard who's off back to his crypt. 

"I haven't got time for just ordinary people," says Sir Alan. 

21:56 Howard takes his loss very well. He's going to take on Sir Alan's advice and be "more of a maverick in the future". If he holds up a Securicor van, I am going to hold Sir Alan personally responsible. 
21:57 As Lorraine and Kate slope back into the penthouse, everyone tries to pull their faces into grimaces of suprise.
21:59 Tune in next week, it'll be a humdinger as the candidates are put through a series of interviews with Sir Alan's buddies, a bunch of slavering business bulldogs who will rip their lie laden CVs to pieces. 
"Have you ever told someone at work to f-off?" "Yes" says Debra looking shocked that anyone might think that was a little bit out of order. 
See you next time for a series of sackings.