Everyone seems to be so obsessed with keeping trim these days it was only a matter of time before the mini-tycoons of The Apprentice turned their attention to turning our desire for toned bodies into gold.
As such they were dragged off to York Hall in Bethnal Green and told to design a fitness class to sell to the nation’s gyms using a DVD and sales pitches to convince gym managers to inflict their creations on the rest of us.
Team Phoenix, under Stephen opted to go back to the 1980s with a retro routine called Groove Train, using space hoppers and hula hoops with Azhar reluctantly donning some revealing shorts for their fitness video.
Sadly the workout didn't include quaffing retro treats like angel delight, arctic rolls and advocaat, and largely consisted of Azhar jigging about looking like John McEnroe cast in a bad remake of 'Flashdance'.
Yet despite a slick production they’d made one major error; they’d forgotten that space hoppers and hula hoops are entities that take up space, and as such require storage and looking after, something gyms who would actually have to put the classes on were concerned about.
We’d also find out later that Stephen hadn’t a clue how much all this retro equipment would cost, meaning that Phoenix's plan to get us fit had a huge hole in it, a hole that could've meant it lost buckets of money.
Sterling under Ricky Martin decided that what the public wants is dancing mixed with martial arts. To anyone familiar with late nights in town centres it seems a safe assumption. Ricky invited us to “witness the fitness” of his routine 'Beat Battle', as his team got on with turning his vision of a fight dance into something the grannies of Milton Keynes would enjoy on a Saturday morning.
Tasks which require candidates to direct a video are always a recipe for bickering on a grand scale, with everyone seeing it as their chance to show Lord Sugar that they’re the next Martin Scorsese.
Here it was Duane and Laura who were at each other’s throats, their enmity showed through in the video, which managed the remarkable feat of making fighting and dancing seem dull.
In the end it was this that cost Team Sterling, as despite their fitness class making infinitely more sense than Phoenix's space hopper extravaganza, they couldn't get the orders to overhaul the orders Groove Train gained from Virgin Active.
It was a strange result, especially as Stephen had entirely made up the cost of his routine. He might as well have diamond encrusted hula hoops and filled the space hoppers with caviar to get a few more orders. yet it was his team who won.
Ricky then took Duane and Laura into the boardroom, making an error by taking through those who’d done very little through. Gabrielle who couldn’t even remember the name of the class surely dodged a bullet.
It could’ve cost him, as Laura’s hard work on the video was rewarded with a reprieve, before Ricky tied to convince Lord Sugar that their video had in fact been better. “I don’t like cheese” said Ricky about Phoenix’s effort. That’s a man called Ricky Martin who’s a wrestler in his spare time declaring cheesiness a crime.
Yet despite Ricky's moments of madness it was Duane not him who got his marching orders, paying the price for a dull video that turned a promising concept into just another slightly naff exercise routine.
A harsh result as Duane had hardly been incompetent, but in the end he just didn't have quite enough spark this week to avoid being in a perilous position.
What did you think of tonight's episode?
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