Firstly, I can't iterate enough what a thoroughly enjoyable hour of television this was. I had prepared for the occasion with a tender beef stroganoff and popped the top off of an ice cold beer at 8:59pm in anticipation...
Having eyed their profiles beforehand, the candidates weren't new to me but I was keen to see how the predictions in my earlier blog post would pan out. Immediately, Nicholas annoyed me, barking on about his qualifications and his disappointment at obtaining only a 'B' grade in one subject - check. Raef, in contrast, rather amused me with his bizarre haircut and his unashamed pomposity - check.
Onto the business end of things. The task this evening was to sell £600 worth of wholesale fish at one of four London Markets. Sir Alan divided the candidates by gender and both groups of eight set about choosing a team name and a project manager. The girls team, led by Claire, took the name Alpha and the boys team, lead by Alex, took the name Renaissance.
Both teams donned white wellington boots and chose, independently, to set up shop in Chapel Market, Islington. However, the girls arrived considerably earlier and bagged a prime spot leaving the tardy boys floundering (no pun intended).
The first task was simple in my view; identify the fish in each of the boxes... They were even given a large laminated booklet with named pictures of all of the fish, so it was something of a primary school exercise really - Raef managed to mess it up though and mis-identified 3 types of fish, although he only recalled mis-identifying one type of fish in the boardroom and was quickly corrected by the ever-vigilant Margaret Mountford.
Nicholas was charged with pricing, which, if I'm totally honest, I would be rather hopeless at as I rarely look at the prices of anything when I go supermarket shopping - I just buy things that look nice (M&S Cheese Knot Rolls) and ignore things that look nasty (Cheese and Onion Pasties). Having said that, surely all he had to do was add 50% to the wholesale price of everything to get into the right ball park? Also, if I saw whole Lobster on sale priced at £4.90... each, as the boys did, I would buy them all and move on somewhere else to sell the things myself!
After hours of chaotic, disorganised fishmongering - the highlight for me being Simon's efforts to bisect an eels head with repeated cleaver blows - the teams returned to the boardroom for the verdict. The profit margins were laughably low from both teams but the girls won by about £100 and were sent back to the (very large) house for a meal cooked by Jean Cristophe Novelli; the boys meanwhile were given a typically thorough dressing-down by Sir Alan before being sent to a local greasy spoon for a meal cooked by Lyndsey from Crystal Ski (See previous Alpe d'Huez posts).
In the end, Alex brought Nicholas and Raef back into the boardroom and after an embarrassingly paltry defence for somebody who is supposed to be a barrister, including some inane babble about enjoying the arts and not football, Nicholas was awarded a big 'F' grade by Sir Alan - Oh, the irony - and sent packing.