The Apprentice: luxury awaydays in Dubai, plus a shock departure

You can’t polish a turd, but you can spend hundreds of thousands of pounds flying it halfway across the world to Dubai in a desperate attempt to make it more interesting. Enter week 6 of The Apprentice.

This week the remaining 12 candidates were flown out to Dubai to organise a corporate awayday for two international clients based there. During the task, it was up to each of the teams to try and make as much profit as possible with their luxurious awaydays, but naturally it was not plain sailing.

Team Affinity, led by Rochelle, decided to focus more on the traditional side of Dubai, taking their client to the desert – while Team Apex, led by Victoria, decided to veer in a different direction, showing off the glitz and glamour that the city has to offer by hosting a DJ masterclass on a private boat.

Team Affinity left their client very disappointed after limiting the amount people could drink (in the desert!) and choosing to announce this to them, only accounting for one juice and two small glasses of water per person, while overpromising and underdelivering on the ‘luxury’ part of the experience.

Victoria’s team – Team Apex – won the challenge after making the most profit despite their team not delivering everything they promised to their client, leading to them asking for a partial refund.

South African safari guide Joe was brought back into the boardroom by project manager Rochelle, along with Simba, for their disastrous ‘contributions’ during the task.  As Joe was sub team leader and ultimately responsible for the kitchen and what came out of it – which included undercooked/burnt food and limited drinks, he found himself in the firing line of Lord Sugar.

Strangely, during the task there was no sign of candidate and Scottish theatre school owner Reece – with no explanation until the boardroom at the very end of the episode – and that was brief at best. Lord Sugar simply said: “so, as you know, Reece wasn’t able to take part in the task and has subsequently left the process.”

Despite Reece telling the press he had to leave due to ‘health issues’, I find it very strange that he did not appear on BBC Two spin-off show You’re Fired, to give his side of the story. This feels an awful lot like the final taping of ‘You’re Fired’ during the series I was in, where the production banned me from attending and claimed it was because I’d broken the rules regarding talking about other candidates on social media, which is laughable considering all of the candidates on this series – and on mine – openly discuss the show and share their thoughts on their social channels. Why weren’t these candidates banned as well from the taping if that was their reason for banning me?

The production is clearly very good at justifying (at least in their minds) any old reason to support unfair, unjustified decisions and choices in order to support their narrative.

I also thought that Reece’s ‘highlights’ video shown on You’re Fired was definitely not a showcase of his best moments.  Clearly another choice by the producers. As usual, the show has the last word and clearly does its best to control the narrative.

I had really high hopes for Reece, and he was one of my favourite candidates on this series, so I’m sad to see him leave prematurely as I think he had a lot more to give and would have made it a lot further in the process.

I cannot wait to find out who loses less during next week’s task as losing less rather than winning the task seems to be what the show is all about now. So sad. Hopefully this one won’t cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds, and rather than showcasing another part of the world, it will showcase the UK – benefitting our own economy instead.