I believe it’s fair to say that a star was born last night on Junior Apprentice. That Lord Sugar chose to save the completely inept 17-year-old Adam Eliaz from the chop proves that he must have something. It’s certainly not business acumen, leadership skills, great sales ideas or general cop-no. I think it can be best summed up by the word enthusiasm.
Put him on ‘The X Factor’ and he may not be able to dance or sing but somehow this boy would make it to the next round.
He was truly hilarious from start to finish last night starting out with his assertion that men are better than women in business (because they have more physical capabilities apparently), through his attempts to please everyone in the product selection, his inability to erect a tent and his boundless enthusiasm for what has to be the worst product in the history of products.
If I had to guess I would have suggested that Zoe would have been the person addicted to shoes in the team. Not so! Adam’s fondness for footwear meant he somehow shoehorned (pun intended) this addiction into a project to design a camping product. Several crap ideas emerged in their non-brainstorm so Adam in an effort to keep the incredibly pushy Hibah and Zoe on side as well as satisfying the less-in-your- face team members Emma and Kirsty sandwiched all their thoughts together. A reinforced cardboard unit (Emma) with some 1970s’ board games included (Hibah and Zoe) which acts as a storage unit (Kirsty) to store guess what - shoes!! How could they not be on to a winner?
You have to wonder how the designers who transformed this idea into a prototype kept a straight face during their meeting and seeing the finished product it looks like they didn’t exactly pull out all the stops in giving it a great look.
But Adam wasn’t finished yet. He threw in a spectacular marketing campaign to bring their invention to the mass audience it deserved. He was undeterred by the fact that they couldn’t erect the tent for their photoshoot. So much for his career as a camping equipment salesman! After initially telling Hibah that he went camping once or twice a year, when challenged he corrected himself by clarifying “well I used to go camping twice a year last year”.
Hats off to the lad he gave full credit to Zoe for her excellent (?) pitches both in and out of the boardroom. It was absolutely comical watching her with a straight face telling bemused potential customers about their dynamic product describing it as pleasing on the eye. She did however at one point refer to people who camp as “nature freaks”. Hardly the best terminology to use when pitching to people who sell camping products!
She’s not to be messed with that Zoe and it certainly did not go unnoticed that she turned on Hibah in the boardroom hoping to take out someone she perceived as a treat in the competition. As it turned out she need not have wasted her energy as the force of nature that is Adam put pay to Hibah’s ambitions.
Lord Sugar suggested to him that he has managed the team with a stick of celery rather than a fist of iron. Was he insulted? No! Did he turn on anyone in the boardroom? No! This boy got through last night purely on his own charm. He pleaded his case telling the boss that he left school to get ahead, never asked his parents for help and had put his life savings (he’s seventeen!) into starting his own business. You could see Lord Sugar saw something of himself in the lad.
He pulled of the ultimate great escape and good luck to him. I really hope he’s there until week six.
So who else impressed last night? Hannah (the inventor with no ideas) was okay in the PM role but it was Tim’s idea which led them to victory. Hannah and Tim should be paying much more attention to Arjun Rajyagor and Rhys Rosser as this pair came up with some of the best ideas of the project. Also Arjun played a stormer with his pitches. He had a bit of a wobble at the start but went for the honesty approach telling the customers that they didn’t know much about camping and eventually won them over. Note to the rest of the contestants – ignore these two guys at your peril!
All in all a great episode – I hope the regular Apprentice gets candidates as good as this gang when it returns later in the year .
Bree Treacy.
