Tycoon (Week 2)

 

This week, the disputably humanoid Peter Jones and his motley crue of shameless arse-kissers carry on where they left off last week in attempting to turn their mainly shoddy business ideas into something so astoundingly brilliant that they will knock baby-faced beanstalk Peter Jones’ socks off.

Something tells me it ain’t gonna happen. Ever. Well, not for most of the so-called entrepreneurs on this programme anyway. Among those expected to fail miserably are camp Tom (and his teen newspaper) and Elizabeth – that snotty-faced bint whose feeble brainwaves have materialised themselves in the form of fruity vodka smoothies, while the chances of success for the others still hang in the balance.

If you need a recap as to who the rest of the contenders are, then here you go: Eco-bag man Justin, whose invention is simply a bag to keep plastic shopping bags in,  former glamour model Lauren, with her hair extension business, (who, by the way, is quite attractive but resembles a waxwork dummy) and toy-fancier Ian, who came up with the remote-controlled-crash-proof-indoor helicopter concept, which is just what the world has been waiting for, clearly.

Also in the running are Cathy and Helen and their gardening for women thing (Sod), which isn’t just for women anymore, it’s now for everyone, though what it is that they are specifically offering still evades me.

The six competitors have so far been trying to market their respective products, attempting to sell as much of their wares to whoever will take them as they can, with the goal obviously being to make as much money as possible.

In this episode, Jones has supplied each set of entrepreneurs with their own individual targets to try to complete in time for the next meeting, where they will be scrutinised, resulting in the weakest of the six businesses being shut down. The meeting also being the point at which each business gets to double any money they have made, as Jones had arranged to personally equal any profit gained. As it turned out, only Sod and Helicopter boy had made anything substantial anyway, Sod making around £3,500 and ‘Copter boy with approximately £4,000. None of the others made any profit at all, aside from bag man Justin who had raised the princely sum of £80.
Before this meeting however, Peter Jones had set up a press launch to see how the soulless drones manage to cope with the media. The most memorable point of which seemed to feature camp Tom, who, after managing to get several top newspapers interested in the possibility of adopting his free student rag as a weekly supplement, delivered such a life-draining presentation that all interest swiftly died on it’s arse, leaving the wilted boy pondering the many errors of his approach as well as his product.

The next best thing in this sequence was hearing Elizabeth, who looks like Gillian McKeith’s slightly less evil twin, claim that her drink is “as refreshing as a cup of tea would be if you were in the desert”. Now I don’t know about you, but the last thing I would want if I was traipsing through a desert would be a hot drink of any description.

Sod hardly featured at all in this episode for some reason, and neither did the eagerly anticipated Paul McKenna. In fact McKenna only got one scene in which he semi- successfully brainwashed Eco-bag man into becoming a good speaker. To be fair it did seem to work, but fortunately it wore off later; halfway through a presentation to Peter Jones.

Elizabeth, who cried last week, cried again this time. Partly because she really can’t hack it and partly because she didn’t get to meet McKenna. I noticed from the trailer at the end of the show that she weeps again next week too. So that’s something to look forward to. If only she were not so nauseating and contemptible, I really would feel a bit sorry for her.

When it came to crunch time after the meeting, Jones narrowed the worst of the bunch down to two, waxy Lauren and paperboy Tom. Lauren, who so far seems quite sound, despite her plastic dimensions, got Peter well and truly riled when she revealed some sensitive information about her business over the phone to a stranger. She was blabbing, it turns out, to Sir Phillip Green, who was pretending to be a journalist. This was something Jones had arranged in a bid to get Green interested in her business. Jones considered the blunder to be catastrophic though, as for all she knew she was sharing compromising details with a potential rival. Aside from being almost entirely pointless, drippy Tom found himself on the chopping board for hiring an ex-editor of OK! magazine to basically create his product for him. A product by the way, which went from originally being a newspaper to becoming yet another celebrity gossip mag.
In the end, Lauren was saved and it was Tom who got his marching orders, which is probably for the best, as everything he said sounded like a double entendre, which I found unnecessarily disturbing.

Peter Jones lacks both the straight-talking manner and killer lines delivered by Alan Sugar which contribute to The Apprentice being such an entertaining show, but this is still pretty watchable, especially as it seems to be livening up a bit now with some bitching creeping in between the contestants. I will say this though, I’m already absolutely sick of hearing the word ‘tycoon’ and it’s only the second episode. Last week the word was uttered so frequently that it completely wore out it’s own sense of meaning.

Tycoon

 

From the off, Tycoon unashamedly dresses itself up in The Apprentice’s still-warm clothing and embarks on an intro of sweeping cityscape shots, accompanied by exactly the kind of music you’d expect a show like this to have; a kind of power-percussion number with strings, culminating in a contrived attempt to present the show with some poise and sophistication early on. Then we see that gangly cash-bastard Peter Jones’s bonce getting out of a car and we are immediately reminded of Dragon’s Den, and then the picture is complete. It’s Dragon’s Den meets The Apprentice. On ITV. And it does seem slightly odd that this has ended up on ITV as it is so clearly a mish-mash of successful Beeb output.

ITV obviously want some of the action, but unfortunately, the action has already passed through the Beeb’s system, and all ITV can do is kneel down and drink the pissy wastes of the BBC’s success. Anyway, Peter Jones, who is either an expressionless cyborg or a friendly terminator, has selected six wannabe’s to pander before him to vie for the title of ‘the tycoon’.

Each candidate has been handed £10,000 by the lanky streak o’ piss himself, and they must dazzle him with their array of entrepreneurial skills in attempting to pitch a business plan and subsequently launch a product plucked from each of their own personal greed-fuelled daydreams.

When Jonesy is sufficiently aroused, he will then choose one of the grovelling muppets to donate yet more money to.

The contenders are as follows: A pair of green fingered ladies who have some kind of gardening ploy up their sleeves, only I can’t quite remember what exactly (I wish I’d paid more attention), some posh tart who dreams of mixing fruit and vodka together to make piss weak alco-pop-cum-smoothy drinks, and a real wet weekend of a man who used to be a bodyguard for the Sultan of Brunei no less, and a creation he calls the ‘Eco-bag’. Not sure of it’s exact function though (I wish I’d paid more attention and drunk less wine).

Also in the running are: A woman desperate to see her extra super-special hair extensions (apparently they’re better somehow) hit the shelves, a ridiculous camp little fellow who wants to launch his own free student newspaper and some dullard and his harebrained remote-controlled indoor helicopter concept – the helicopter will be crash proof so he claims and ideal for living rooms etc, although I can’t believe that it never occurred to anyone that everything else in the room would have to be fucking crash proof as well. Bizarre.

So, here is my interpretation of what happened next – The two gardeners wanted to call their business ‘Garden Girlies’. Peter said no. They changed their name to ‘Sod’, and surprisingly, Peter loved it, though personally, I prefer ‘Buggery’, or maybe even ‘Rape’ (that was not a confession). Posh tart ended up inventing a drink that already exists and floundered like a legless ape in trying to come up with a name for it. Her original idea was ‘Vopples’, an ingenius play on the words vodka and apples. That was rejected though as Jonesy pointed out that it wouldn’t work with the other flavours she planned on making. She then came up with a plethera of equally awful suggestions such as ‘Frusion’ before settling on ‘Fruka’, which was also rejected when Jonesy pointed out that saying “Do you want a Fruka?” sounds like “Do you want to fuck her?”. Fair point.

The camp paper boy failed to acknowledge that there was any competition for his impending student rag despite the fact that the pie-fingered Piers Morgan had already released a similar product, entitled ‘First News’ (I think). Paper boy later completely ballsed up during his pitch by presenting Jonesy with a mock-up of his newspaper, essentially a single sheet of A3 paper with the ‘news’ printed on each side. Jonesy was not amused and despatched a rather amusing bollocking the way of the boy.

After trying to sell their products, ‘Sod’ came out on top making just over a thousand pounds in profit, while Eco-bag man made £35. As far as I could tell no-one else made a bean. And for some strange reason, old lankypants decided to give the extra money (£20,000) to indoor helicopter boy, so he could swan off abroad to drum up some interest or some such nonsense. To be honest, by this time I had drunk far too much wine and was – am – a bit worse for wear.

Right at the end, Peter met the posh mother Fruka at the end of a pier and told her that he felt a bit like closing her business down. He should have just pushed her in the water though because she began to weep and beg and claimed to posses the ability to move mountains, at which point Peter got scared and walked away.

He really is a funny one, Peter Jones. There’s something other-worldly about the man. I could easily be convinced that he is just a puppet at the mercy of miniature creatures who control him by pulling levers in his brain. When he’s not being driven about in the back of a car wearing various pastel shades, he’s doing other amusing things like explaining how he lost a fortune in his 20’s, consequently having to “sleep on a floor”.

Still, can’t wait ’til next week when Paul McKenna tries to motivate the desperate fools with optimistic words and thoughts.