After their previous dawn summons to the V&A museum, the candidates were despatched this week to St Catherine’s Dock – Lord Sugar’s childhood playground – for fresh instructions: to concoct a condiment and “find themselves a niche in the market”.
After the girls’ cumulative failures in previous weeks, a swap-around of personnel kept it interesting - the Jane (Jane Candidate Profile here) and Duane (Duane Candidate Profile here) show - before they headed off to their respective factories and the chance to take part in the real competition – who looks best in a shower cap. Nick Hewer obviously won by a mile.
A comedy of errors ensued for both groups – it was like two different episodes of Only Fools … the Infusion crew were forced to go without a test bunch when their chutney was somewhat overspiced (to a factor of three, according to a disgusted Mr Hewer who later described it as “a dangerous and poisonous concoction”).
Meanwhile, the Belissimo brigade got as far as the pitch before their label let them down – no sign of a chilli picture on a chilli sauce (small problem) and the name spelt wrong (slightly bigger), at which point Karren Brady looked even more put out than Mr Hewer. Never mind that, don't judge a book by its cover and all that, it’s what’s inside the bottle that matters, yes? Errr… well, yes. As one grocer reflected when the enthusiastic Infusers turned up talking up their chutney,
“This is probably the first time in history that someone has turned up to sell us a product without that product.”
Despite having an actual batch of table sauce to sell, Phoenix (Katie and Co) had a real problem at the selling coal-face, and its name was Michael. He couldn't seem to shift anything, and his nerves began to tell - underpricing the product. Meanwhile, his colleagues were riding high, confidently selling upon sell. It was a vicious cycle, and Michael was on the wrong side of it.
Meanwhile, things went smoothly for Infusion, they sold tons of stuff, which meant they got to drive cars around Silverstone. There were no real signs of discontent, either for, although Duane and Jane were like two sleeping tigers, they weren't really tested. Cross fingers we get to see these two down to the final three one week soon with, say, Ricky Martin, for company.
Meet this year's contestants in the slideshow below...