I’m not entirely sure why I’m sticking with The Apprentice. I’m sure everyone else gave up on this show years ago. And this series is trying its hardest to repel me – first with an episode about teeth (boak) and now an episode about gutting fish (double boak). But hey, I’ve been home for six straight days now and I certainly don’t have anything outside-worldy to blog about. So instead I’m watching The Apprentice and thinking about times when we actually left the house.
It was triggered by the opening scenes in the National Maritime Museum, where the besuited ones stood on the giant world map that a toddler Eva scooted around in March 2013:
The year before that we had, apparently taken an Apprentice-inspired trip to Regent’s Park after watching an episode where hapless candidates failed to realise how big the park was. I don’t really remember this day but, reading back, it seemed that I was pregnant and hangry so it’s not surprising I blanked it out. More surprising is that I ate a hotdog that day and thought it was good. Definitely pregnant.
I do remember an encounter with some real-life Apprentice candidates, though at the time it took me a while to make the connection. We were in a pub for Bob’s birthday, after a trip to Spitalfields City Farm and I noticed someone dressed as a life-size hotdog. Weeks later, when we were watching someone traipising round Shoreditch in a hotdog costume, something sparked in my weary brain. I asked the group mind on Facebook and it turned out that yes, we had been on the scene as they’d been filming. There’s a bit of a hotdog theme. I didn’t buy a hotdog that day though because I wasn’t pregnant then and had regained my former mistrust of them from my cinema days. If you only knew what I knew….
Talking of cinemas, there was that one time we met another Apprentice candidate at a cinema. We were there for a CBeebies Premiere and Luisa from Series 9 was there. And very nice she was too. I think I was a bit preoccupied by the lovely Sid from Beebies at the time though
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That’s not the most notable Apprentice encounter though. I’ll save that till last. First, here’s a picture of the notoriously awful “Relationship Guru” game from Series 10 that I spotted in the wild in the window of Zest, Broadwick Street. I even considered buying it for a brief moment, as a funny Christmas present for Nathan. But that was a very, very brief moment.
And then there was the time my whole belief system fell apart as I realised that the conversations in The Apprentice were staged. Yes, really. The candidates were in a taxi, passing through Kennington, which is where we lived at the time. In the first line of the scene you could see the Lobster Pot, as it was then, and the car was heading towards Elephant & Castle. In the second line of the scene, the car is heading the opposite way down Kennington Lane, with our local Tesco in the background. Two shots, half a mile apart and in opposite directions. I was outraged.
But I promised you something notable to finish on and this, honestly, boggles my mind to this day as it’s one of the weirdest things that’s ever happened to me. A Eva and I needed to travel to Milton Keynes one Monday and, on the Sunday night, my mind was full of the logistics of it because previous trips to Euston with a two-year-old had not gone well. So when I fell asleep, I had a typical-for-Kate anxiety dream about the next day’s travel. In it, we were at Euston and Nick from the Apprentice walked past and demanded a snack from Eva’s snackbox. On the Monday morning, when we got to Euston who do you think walked right past us?
Correct, Nick from the Apprentice. I told you this was weird. He didn’t ask us for a snack but I darn near offered it to him in case that’s what I was meant to do.
So there you go, my #1 all-time Apprentice-related memory. I hope you enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the fish episode….