Monday, 18 July 2011

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The Apprentice: Tom Pellereau wins in exciting and slightly bonkers final

The nerds strike back as Tom Pellereau beats off stiff competition from Helen Milligan to bag Sir Alan's investment

Tom Pellereau was announced the winner of The Apprentice 2011 and Lord Sugar's new business partner

Finally it's happened.

The geeks have taken over the asylum and someone lovely has won The Apprentice.

Tom Pellereau did it and made it possibly the most exciting and slightly bonkers final in Apprentice history.
 
The Apprentice final was a tour de force of reality show finals that kept its pace from start to finish.

It was a stroke of genius to combine the interviews into the grand final.
 
To say I was surprised by some of their business plans and how completely rubbish they were is an understatement, but at least the torture meted out by the interviewers was worth every squirm filled minute.

Also Margaret Mountford was back.

Hooray!

Don't get me wrong, I've loved Karren Brady who has come into her own this series, but nothing beats Margaret for the withering looks she can inflict.

Claude Littner was as cutting as ever and new judges Mike Soutar and David Riley were pretty good at cutting them down in their prime too.

Jim best summed it up by saying it was like a walk in the park, with people shooting at you and throwing hand grenades.
 
Anyway, let's go through the final four one by one.

First up and first to be fired is Jim Eastwood... I want a cliché counter next to Jim at all times.

If I was playing a game of cliché bingo [which I have been known to do] and had to drink an alcoholic beverage every time he uttered a cliché, I'd be giving Oliver Reed a run for his money right now.

Jim's idea of e-learning wasn't actually a bad one, but he was just too full of, well, it!

Bye, bye Jim your Jedi mind control didn't work this time.

This isn't the job you're looking for, Jim.
 
Next out was Susan Ma.

Bless her, while she was highly annoying throughout the series and very naive, she wasn't entirely stupid and had some high points.

What I'm most disappointed in is her amazing business she had built up when it turned out she sold cosmetics at market stalls.

On a personal note I make and sell at markets and therefore know tons of people who did it as a business and none of them are like Susan.

Almost nothing could get her down.

She said she was ‘pumped', but sadly she wasn't locked or loaded.
 
The fight between the final two was impressive and the volley between Helen Milligan and Tom was epic to say the least.

Helen Milligan had always been the front runner.

She won the most tasks, sold the most and was always calm in a crisis.

If it was last year she would have wiped the floor with the competition.

Her business plan wasn't rubbish (I actually already know of two small companies doing exactly the same thing) but wouldn't have worked.

She then revealed she had another plan related directly to her ‘bakery business' experience.

It was too late.

Sadly the killer blow was dealt by Tom who told a brilliant story about how he secured Walmart to stock his nail file.

Smackdown!
 
So the geek did it!

Tom won and thoroughly deserved it.

You wouldn't have guessed it half way through.

He was nice and had good ideas, but no one listened to him and she just seemed to bob along in the background.

Ideally you would have wanted to get Tom and Helen to run his business based on chairs, which prevent back problems.

He was rubbish with his business plan (which didn't even mention the word chair), but he actually had some good ideas.
 
My only complaint is Lord Sugar isn't actually going to invest in his chair, only his old business of nail files, which seems a bit of a cheat somehow to me.

However, it's not against the rules and I don't want to face the wrath of Sir Alan.

Even the thought of it makes me nearly wee my pants.

Anyway who's complaining, Tom won.

Nerds everywhere rejoice!