You, my fellow Americans, have no reason to feel intellectually inferior to our cousins across the pond. Having a British accent no longer signifies a greater intelligence, at least if the UK version of the Apprentice is anything to go by.
As evidence I offer last night’s episode which saw contestants challenged with setting up a fast food restaurant that would please the taste buds and, hypothetically, the pocketbooks of industry “experts”.
Tom and Helen chose a British-themed mini-pie eatery while Jim, Susan and Natasha went for trendy Mexican.
Lord Sugar says he wants to go into business with someone “with a brain”. Perhaps, after this recent display, he should consider forfeiting the final show while there is still time and send all four remaining candidates back to grammar school.
Below are just some of the factual whoppers that transpired last night. Obviously a failure to know some or all of this information is not an indication of how well a person will perform in business. But I certainly wouldn’t want any of these people as a Trivial Pursuit partner.
Tom and Helen: Believing Columbus was British.
Tom: Believing Columbus discovered potatoes in America.
Tom and Helen: Believing Shakespeare and Byron were contemporaries.
Tom: Mistaking the first name of navigator Sir Francis Drake with William Drake, who was actually a baseball player in the American Negro Leauge.
Jim, Susan and Natasha: Naming a Mexican restaurant Caraca’s.
Jim, Susan and Natasha: Coming up with the most basic Mexican stereotypes for their Mexican restaurant.
Jim: Stumbling repeatedly on the 60×7 multiplication equation.
Susan and Natasha: Not knowing what “el” stands for in Spanish. (OK, I realize Susan is only 21 and an immigrant from China, but still.)
Jim, Susan and Natasha: Characterizing maracas as a Mexican instrument when it is prevalent throughout other regions of Latin America.
In the end it was Natasha who found herself at the receiving end of Lord Sugar’s firing finger. Not to gloat too much, but we knew before the show even aired that this would be the result.
Does Wikipedia know something?
Is there a mole in the Apprentice boardroom leaking information to
Wikipedia? Today’s featured article on the front page of the people-powered encyclopedia is an entry about
Somerset.
Taunton, the county seat of Somerset, is the hometown of Natasha Scribbins, one of five remaining candidates to be Alan Sugar’s future 50-50 business partner, yeah. Is this Wikipedia’s way of letting us know she will be the one taking the lonely cab ride home tonight? Is Wikipedia trying to persuade us to go out to the pub on a summer night rather than witness the inevitable snafus on tonight’s fast food task.
Somerset is a county in South West England. The county town is Taunton, which is in the south of the county. The ceremonial county of Somerset borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the River Severn. Somerset is a rural county of rolling hills, such as the Mendips, Quantocks and Exmoor, and large, flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels.
Actor Stephen Fry is among a long list of longshots to be the first head of an independent Sky News on a novelty wager currently taking place at Irish oddsmaker Paddy Power. The noted thespian stands at 200/1.
Other big names with a distant chance of bringing in a lot of money are Tony Blair (66/1), Jimmy Wales (200/1), Alan Sugar (80/1), Alistair Campbell (200/1), Julian Assange (200/1), James Murdoch (80/1), Rebekah Brooks (66/1) and Andy Coulson (200/1).
The bet “applies to the first appointed Chair of Sky News post separation/partial separation from BSkyB. Must be Chair of a board independent from BSkyB board.”
Betting ends on July 17.
One could be forgiven for thinking that as we head into Week 11 of the series, some clues might be presented as to what any of the prospective ventures may be. All we know thus far is that one contestant makes a wicked biscuit and another gives fantastic massages. In the meantime, some of Britain’s “entrepreneurial elite” have shown they literally cannot run a fruit stand or spot a dog when they see one.
Read more...
The News of the World may have parted ways with traditional newsstands, but its website is doing quite well, thank you very much.
According to Alexa, viewership of NOTW’s website have increased by 328 percent in the past week.
Its domains — notw.co.uk, thenewsoftheworld.co.uk, newsoftheworld.com and newsoftheworld.co.uk — are still fully under the control of News International. None shall expire for some time: notw.co.uk on April 11, 2012, thenewswsoftheworld.co.uk on August 2, 2012, newsoftheworld.com on June 2, 2013 and newsoftheworld.co.uk on May 14, 2013, according to who.is.
NI’s online properties may change hands before these dates if reports about a potential rescue bid for The News of the World launched by a former Sunday Express editor are true.
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