The Apprentice (UK)

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The Apprentice
Genre	Reality television series
Creator(s)	Mark Burnett
Theme music composer	Dru Masters
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	24
Production
Producer(s)	talkbackTHAMES Mark Burnett Productions
Running time	60 minute episodes
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC Two (Series 1&2) / BBC One (Series 3)
Picture format	720x576 (anamorphic 16:9)
Original run	2005 – Present
Chronology
Related shows	The Apprentice (US version)
Links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

The Apprentice is a British reality television series in which a group of aspiring young businessmen and women compete for a £100,000-a-year job as so-called "apprentice" to British business magnate Sir Alan Sugar. It is modelled on the US show of the same name.

The first series aired in 2005 and ran for twelve episodes, and a second series commenced in February 2006. A third series started airing on BBC One on 28 March 2007.^[1]

In May 2006 The Apprentice won the BAFTA for "Best Feature", beating Top Gear, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and Dragons' Den.

Contents 1 Format 2 The Board 2.1 Nick Hewer 2.2 Margaret Mountford 3 Seasons 3.1 Series One 3.2 Series Two 3.3 Series Three 3.4 Comic Relief Does The Apprentice 4 Music 5 Trivia 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Format

Over the course of seven weeks of filming, the candidates are assigned a series of business tasks which test their skills in selling, negotiation, requisitioning, leadership, teamwork and organisation. The candidates are initially split into two teams, usually men vs women. Each team elects a project manager to act for the duration of a task. The teams are followed in the execution of their tasks by Sir Alan Sugar's advisers Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford.

At the end of each episode the teams report back to the "boardroom" where Sugar, with the help of his advisers, dissects their performance, exposing flaws in the candidates' strategies and personalities. The team that loses the task (usually the one that makes the least profit) is then subjected to a detailed dressing down by Sugar. The losing team's project manager is required to choose two team members to accompany him or her into a further round of interrogation by Sugar. Finally Sugar tells one of the three "You're fired", and that candidate is eliminated from the competition. In exceptional circumstances two candidates may be fired in a single episode.

As candidate numbers are whittled down, the team compositions are shuffled from time to time in order to even up the numbers or just shake things up. When only four candidates remain they undergo individual interviews, resulting in the selection of two finalists. These two proceed to the Grand Finale, after which one is told "You're hired" and wins the high-paid executive job working with Sugar.

[edit] The Board

The Apprentice UK

The Boss

Sir Alan Sugar

Series 3

Hired: TBA Runner-up: TBA Candidates: Simon, Ghazal, Tre, Gerri, Paul, Kristina, Katie, Adam, Jadine, Sophie, Lohit, Naomi, Natalie. Fired: Andy, Ifti, Rory.

Comic Relief Does The Apprentice

Fired: Piers Morgan Other Candidates: Danny Baker, Piers Morgan, Ross Kemp, Timothy Campbell, Trinny Woodall, Karren Brady, Maureen Lipman, Jo Brand, Cheryl Cole, Rupert Everett.

Series 2

Hired: Michelle Dewberry Runner-up: Ruth Badger Other Candidates: Ansell, Paul, Syed, Tuan, Sharon, Samuel, Jo, Mani, Alexa, Karen, Nargis, Ben.

Series 1

Hired: Timothy Campbell Runner-up: Saira Khan Other Candidates: Paul, James, Miriam, Raj, Benjamin, Sebastian, Rachel, Matthew, Adele, Miranda, Lindsay, Adenike.

Along with "the boss", Sir Alan Sugar, two advisors follow the contestants during their weekly activities: Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford.

[edit] Nick Hewer

Nick Hewer is a former public relations officer. He first came across Sir Alan when his company was chosen to represent Amstrad in 1983. Nick’s role was as a PR manager, working with the media and press. He also became an integral part of Amstrad’s company management.

[edit] Margaret Mountford

Margaret Mountford has worked with Sugar one of his main advisors for 20 years. She is a non-executive director of Amstrad plc and one of the jury in every episode of the United Kingdom version of the television show The Apprentice. She was appointed to the Board on 22 September 1999. She has many years’ corporate law experience as a partner in the law firm, Herbert Smith, from which she retired in March 1999, and where she met Sugar when working on Amstrad's flotation. She is also a non-executive Director at Georgica Plc.

[edit] Seasons

[edit] Series One

Main article: The Apprentice (UK series 1)

The first series of the UK's version of The Apprentice began on 16 February 2005. It lasted for twelve episodes and was produced by the BBC and shown on BBC Two in the United Kingdom on Wednesday nights at 9:00pm.

[edit] Series Two

Main article: The Apprentice (UK series 2)

The second series of The Apprentice began airing on 22 February 2006, on BBC Two. Sir Alan Sugar continued to serve as the boss where he assigned the teams specifically designed tasks. Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford also returned as Sugar's advisers and observed the teams in action. The second series saw Sir Alan being driven in a new Rolls Royce Phantom. In order to keep the final winner a secret, Sir Alan does not make the decision on the winning candidate until the days before the final episode is screened. It has been reported that both Ruth Badger and Michelle Dewberry (the Series 2 finalists) were working for Sir Alan during the six months between the wrapping of filming and the screening of the final. Michelle Dewberry, the winner of Series Two, has quit working for Alan Sugar to run her own company (which she was doing before winning The Apprentice). Shortly before her resignation, she miscarried a pregnancy. The father was a fellow contestant, Syed Ahmed^[2].

[edit] Series Three

Main article: The Apprentice (UK series 3)

The third series of The Apprentice began on 28 March 2007 at 9:00pm on BBC One with 16 candidates. The first task was to sell coffee on the streets of Islington, London.^[1]

Although many of the tasks are unknown at the moment, it has been reported that filming for the series has been seen taking place outside the Lloyds of London building in Lime Street and at London Zoo where contestants were seen "dressed as gorillas and trying to sell sweets to children but inadvertently terrifying them instead."^[3] Series 3 of The Apprentice has 16 candidates instead of 14 which there were in Series 1 and 2. However two people, Ifti and Rory, were fired in the second episode.

[edit] Comic Relief Does The Apprentice

Main article: Comic Relief Does The Apprentice

As part of Comic Relief, the BBC aired a special celebrity version of The Apprentice. The show was broadcast on Thursday 15 March 2007 at 9pm on BBC One and concluded the following Friday as part of the main Comic Relief programme. The contestants were made up of two teams, one with five male celebrities and the other with five female celebrities. The celebrities who took part in the show were:^[4]

• Alastair Campbell
• Cheryl Cole
• Danny Baker
• Jo Brand
• Karren Brady
• Maureen Lipman
• Piers Morgan
• Ross Kemp
• Rupert Everett (replaced by Tim Campbell - see below)
• Trinny Woodall

However, Everett walked off the show during filming on the first day, as he did not like the "Big Brother" style experience.^[5] He was replaced by the first UK Apprentice winner, Tim Campbell.

Alistair Campbell was named team leader for the boys and Karen Brady for the girls. The girls won the task, which was to make the best fairground.

On 16 March 2007, the boardroom scenes were shown as part of the Comic Relief Red Nose Day telethon, which saw Piers Morgan fired by Alan Sugar.

[edit] Music

The Apprentice has used the following pieces of music amongst many others:

• Opening Theme - Dance of the Knights from Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev
• Incidental Theme - Black & White X 5 (from The Thomas Crown Affair) by Bill Conti
• Incidental Theme - The Gravel Road from The Village (Soundtrack) by James Newton Howard
• Incidental Theme - First Sleep from Solaris (Soundtrack) by Cliff Martinez
• Incidental Theme (first used in Series 2, Week 9) - Drive Away (End Theme) from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (Soundtrack) by Thomas Newman
• The Boardroom, You're Fired and Closing Credits - The Apprentice (Original Theme) by Dru Masters

[edit] Trivia

• The boardroom (and the reception area outside) is in fact a custom-built set in a television studio. Only when the fired candidate is filmed on their "walk of shame" back to the waiting taxi is the real Amstrad HQ building in Brentwood used.

• The receptionist outside the boardroom ("Jenny", or in series 3, "Frances") is not Sir Alan's real secretary. She is an employee of RTL, which produces the series under licence from Mark Burnett Productions.

• Although the audience is under the impression that the candidates have been living together for 12 weeks in the house, in fact shooting of the series is done over seven weeks.

• Although every show features clips of aerial footage over the skyscrapers of the Square Mile and Canary Wharf financial districts, Amstrad does not have offices in either - in fact the company's real location in Brentwood (on the eastern outskirts of London) is only mentioned a few times in passing in Series 1.^{Apprentice Ep.1.1}

• The taxi ride after being fired only takes the candidate round the block to allow the chance of filming their taxi interview. They are then taken to a local hotel to stay the night and finally leave after packing their belongings from the house.

• In early 2007, the show was mocked in the television programme Kombat Opera Presents The Applicants.^[6][7]

• All of the candidates film their "walk of shame" at the beginning of the series, at the same time as the scene where they are all seen walking into the Amstrad building at the beginning of the first episode. This explains why when their exit sequence is shown after having been fired, their clothes are sometimes different to those worn in the boardroom scene. In more noticeable cases, hair styles have also been different, namely in Episode 7 of Series 2 when Samuel was fired.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Apprentice at bbc.co.uk
• The Apprentice UK Blog at Blogger
• Discuss The Apprentice
• There's only one Apprentice — The Times online
• The Apprentice Fan
• Hanson's winners

	The Apprentice UK	This box: view • talk • edit
Series:1 | 2 | 3
Paul Torrisi | Ruth Badger | Saira Khan | Timothy Campbell | Michelle Dewberry
Sir Alan Sugar | Margaret Mountford | Dru Masters | Mark Burnett | Adrian Chiles
Amstrad | "You're fired!" | The candidates
The Apprentice | Comic Relief Does The Apprentice | The Apprentice USA