Throng

After last week's firing in which the removal of human rod of pure rage Philip, seducer of Kate and creator of Pantsman, led to spontaneous street parties across the nation, this week's episode has a lot to live up to. Thankfully the contestants face a task that can only lead to abject and total failure - trying to rebrand Margate as a must visit modern holiday destination. 

I'm sure the seaside town has a lot going for it (besides being the former home of Brit Art's ex-enfant terrible and bedmaking refusenik Tracy Emin) but everyone's favourite suited suckers are unlikely to discover what that might be. Expect sandcastles, stand-offs and an ill-advised attempt to turn the traditional seaside resort into a fantabulous gay mecca to rival Brighton. 

Follow the carnage here from 21.00. Fingers crossed once again that Ben "son of Sandhurst" Clarke gets the boot this week. 

21:00 Announcer: "Now, after Philip's shock exit..." Was he not watching the previous episodes. Perhaps he has a good book with him in his little booth. 

The montage of boardroom bollockings now includes Sir Alan telling Debra to shut her mouth which is truly a beautiful sight to behold. Meanwhile a glance at the sofa reveals my house's resident grump is already getting irritated. 

21:03 5am - the call instructs the contestants to meet Sir Alan at the O2 Arena and bring an overnight bag.  They'll expect glamour, not Margate. 

"Here we are at what was once known as the Millenium Dome." Ah, Sir Alan's on about the Dome's transformation from great white elephant to great white hope. "You're task is to help the town of Margate. It's become a little tired, it needs livening up." In that respect, a little bit like Sir Alan's beard. 

21:05 The team's have two days to give Margate a makeover. Howard aka Nosferatu Prince Of The Night wants to be project manager but Debra brow beats him into letting her lead the team. 

Meanwhile Yasmina takes on the PM (that never sounds very pleasant does it?) role again for the other team. 

On Debra's team, Mona feels they should target the family market. James reckons the pink pound's a better bet. Mona's not comfortable. "I don't think it's suitable for Kent." Gay people of Kent, Mona wants you to move out immediately. 

Yasmina's team is going with the family market because of "the economic downturn". 

Lorraine: "We need to show that it's good value for money." 

21:09 Mona and James are off to research Margate, presumably the town's hidden gay haunts. 

Meanwhile back in London, Howard is having a whole heap of fun casting male models for the team's poster campaign. It's like a kid playing inappropriately with Ken dolls. 

21:11 Ben and Lorraine are strolling along Margate seafront. "This isn't my idea of a holiday destination," smarms Ben, "I'm much more used to St Tropez." The nearest he's got to that in reality is a bottle of the stuff.

James and Mona are asking the locals about their view on introducing the town to the gay market. "There is a bit of a gay scene," says a cool looking young woman. 

An older guy seems pretty chilled out about the town's recent gay pride march. Mona desperately wants him to say something bigoted: "Don't people have misconceptions about the whole...gay..thing." He doesn't think so: "They might have in the olden days."

21:12 Kate and Yasmina are auditioning models for their campaign. Margaret sits in the corner looking shocked like an aunt who's walked in to find her nephew experimenting with the Freeman's catalogue.  

21:13 Ben is seemingly convinced that he's David Bailey. He keeps framing shots with his hands.  

21:14 Now he's devising slogans. His first suggestion: "Shell-abrate family fun." Puntastic. 

21:15 Mona and James are in the local gay bar interviewing a transexual. "Are you a boy or a girl?" asks Mona with the sensitivity of a woman walking through a minefield in iron boots.

21:16 Howard's latched onto a slogan: Things are changing. How boring? Why not Get Bent In Kent or Margate: Homos Are Where The Heart Is? 

21:17 The next day: As Ben and Lorraine prepare to shoot the photos, fog falls over Margate. That's going to look summery isn't it? 

21:18 Mona and James are trying to "gay up" their models. Mona asks them to dance "sexily" with in a voice that sounds like she's just been force fed cod liver oil. Then she decides that actually they'd better just stand still. The scene looks less like a gay club and more like a bad wedding reception (as long as you discounted the slightly incongrous stripper's pole just out of shot). 

 "From what I can see says," Nick with his customary understatement, "There's not a lot of direction going on." 

21:19 Yasmina and Kate are laying out their leaflet. They've not seen Margate and have opted for Lorraine's slightly loopy slogan: "See Margate through a child's eyes." 

22:20 Howard wants to simplify the poster down to four words. This seems sensible but Debra, wild eyed and drunk with words is stuffing them in like an evil version of Nigella Lawson attacking a goose. 

It's lucky Howard wasn't sent up to Margate to shoot the publicity, it's now sunny. The undead don't do so well in those conditions. 

James has given his male models icecreams: "Not too much suggestive licking please guys we're not shooting a porno." 

21:21 Ben aka The Maestro is still framing shots with his fingers and trying to create his beautiful vision. The shots are static and dull. Lorraine suggest adding some movement. Perhaps they could change the slogan: See Margate...through Ben's pudgy little fingers. It's very nearly as catchy. 

21:22 Back in London, Kate and Yasmina are not happy with the shots: "There's not enough space for text." Lorraine cannot understand what this means (that'll be that slowness she talked about last week): "I'll have to see it to get what you're on about." 

21:23 Debra and Howard's new approach: "Thought you knew Margate?" Um...no. "Think again." Alright, if you say so. 

21:24 Yasmina asks Lorraine what she thinks of the posters. She isn't keen. Yasmina immediately flies at her. "We can have this discussion when the deadline's gone." Yasmina doesn't seem to realise that a deadline means you can't make anymore changes. 

"Can you stop shouting at me," shouts Yasmina branding Lorraine - who once again is talking sense - as a crazy person. While Lorraine is actually right, week-in-week out she gets ignored because she has the communication skills of a nun forced to stare at a wall for forty years. 

21:26 Debra and Mona are confusing the poor graphic designer and while simultaneously making their leaflet look like an explosion in Clipart hell have left part of the design unfinished.

"What's that hole there?" asks Nick.

"That would be a white space." says Debra. 

I'm suddenly getting a flashback of the Pantsman cereal which included absolutely no nutritional information.  

21:28 Kate is presenting her team's campaign to the tourism experts. She has no idea what she's talking about. "We're saying don't let the weather spoil your fun." Decoded - it rains here all the time but, you know, don't let that make you think it's a shithole. 

One of the panel asks if the logo was removed, would the campaign still be uniquely Margate? "Well there's the blue," says Lorraine.

"That's the sky isn't it?" says the expert. 

21:29 Howard's opening question to the experts: "Do you know Margate?!" 

"Yes," they mutter hoping he's not hungry for blood. 

"Looking on the inside you'll see there's some white spaces, we want to offer members of the business community to advertise." Howard's spinning those half finished ads rather poorly there. 

"It just looks not finished to me." says one of the panel. 

"I would call it work in progress," says Mona. 

"Yes. Not finished." The expert replies. 

21:31 Now selling to the locals, including local grandees like the mayor, Kate is muttering some old guff about seeing Margate through children's eyes. The camera swings round to Lorraine. Probably best not to let your children see her, they'll have nightmares.

An audience member asks why the campaign doesn't have a different slant. Another says it looks far too solid and safe. He's right. I'm suprised he can supress his yawns. 

21:34 Howard is telling the audience that the town's "tired...dull...full of old people." An guy at the back of the crowd looks distinctly unimpressed with Howard's presentation which could be entitled Gay People: What Are They All About Then?. 

They crowd hate the team's advertising material. A local grandee asks about the mass market, Howard mumbles on about a long term strategy. Since Howard seems like the kind of bloke who struggles to what pants to put on in the morning, you wonder if he even knows how to spell the word strategy. 

21:36  In the boardroom. Sir Alan starts with Ignite. "The poster says see Margate through a child's eyes but I can't see a child on it." Ah ha, the campaign's not so hidden flaw. 

21:37 Sir Alan is confused by the other team's promotional materials - why the blanks? Sir Alan wonders why James was off buying icecreams. 

21:39 The campaigns will be scored by Margate's officials and residents and the branding experts. Ignite get 7/10 from both. Empire get 4/10. Look's like the ever vampiric Howard is in for a nightmare. Ben avoids the chop once again. 

21:41 Yasmina's team speed off to the race track for their treat. Ben's ego visibly swells while Kate asks "Anyone fancy a ride?" Somewhere Philip is fuming. 

21:42 In Britain's most depressing greasy spoon, the bloodbath gets started. Debra eyes have narrowed down to two black pin pricks. She is gearing up to go mental. 

James brands their leaflets "cod shit". That's a new one. 

21:43 Back in the boardroom and Sir Alan is starting off kindly. "You made a brave statement," says Sir Alan "But you whispered the message. I don't think the residents objected to the theme, I just think they thought there was no message at all." 

21:44 He says Debra and Howard's higgledy-piggedly posters as confusing. The marketing experts suggested their should have only been 10 words on a poster. Unfortunately, as an the long lost daughter of an evil alien overlord and a vampire, the pair are unfamiliar with modern human poster design. 

21:45 Sir Alan turns his attention to Mona. She lives in Kent. Why didn't she give them any advice? "But I went to look for a gay person in Margate," she wails. 

Mona is at the centre of the feeding frenzy, the rest of the team scent blood. 

21:46 Sir Alan is taking the team to task for their attempt to explain away the white space. "The experts said they didn't like being lied to" says Margaret. "We didn't," claims Debra before basically saying: we just tried to deliberately hide our mistakes from them with things that weren't really true. Oh well, that's alright then. 

21:48 Debra is bringing Mona and James back into the room. Howard gets some praise from Sir Alan. "I think he's done quite a lot on this." Quite a lot of what? 

21:29 Sir Alan's so confused about who's the worst that he's having to have a little chat with Nick and Margaret. 

"What we'll do is, I'm going to call them in and I'll decide which one is going to go." says Sir Alan. So...the same as every week then. Has no one told him that there's a format?  

21:50 They're back. James brands Debra "a bulldog" but she's consistent, so a consistent bulldog. In practice, I think this probably means you're consistently afraid she's going to cut off your head and shrink it to make an novelty keychain but hey, who doesn't like consistency? 

Debra accuses Mona of not being behind the gay theme. "If I wasn't then why did I go to Margate and speak to a gay person!" screams Mona. Oh well done Mona, you spoke to someone. How brave. Incidentally, said Transexual was wearing a nicer outfit than most of the Apprentices have managed this series. Appart from Our Lady Kate Of The Unholy Blondness. 

21:52 Debra's mouth is mesmerising, it's so big it looks like a blackhole ringed with lipgloss. Sir Alan deploys his prepared quip about the contestants fighting like Punch And Judy. 

Mona is claiming Nick and Margaret didn't notice the great things she did. "One of my great skills is listening." By listening she means standing around and doing nothing. 

21:53 Debra's turned her ire towards James. Sir Alan wonders if James is just a berk. "I'm not some knucklehhead who's going to gawp and nod his head everytime you open your mouth, " claims James nodding his head and gawping. If he doesn't win I think he may have a career as a Tommy Cooper impersonator. One second hand Fez and a pack of cards and he's set. 

Sir Alan again attacks Debra's big mouth, suggests James is a "court jester" and expresses his worries about Mona's lack of creativity. 

"It looks to me that you might be right at the end of the pier..." he says, setting up this week's tenuous metaphor "Mona. With regret. You're fired!" The regret means Sir Alan sort of likes you. Not enough to spend any longer looking at your face but enough that he isn't wishing he'd had the trapdoor installed. 

21:56 In the cab Mona is steely: "He was wrong to fire me. This is not the end of me." Expect to see Mona on an obscure digital channel any time now. It'll be a show about property or antiques. It will be shit. 

21:57 At the house, Ben, Machievelli in braces, reveals his thoughts: "For the weakest to come back is best for me." Smooth. Did they teach you that at Sandhurst? 

Next week: selling kit at the baby show. Good lord, wasn't Pantsman a big enough scourge to inflict on the country's innocents?