The Apprentice: season 11, episode 3 recap: "Negotiations are Merde-er"

Bonjour mes amis! Je m'appelle Becky! J'habite a pres de Londres, avec ma petit cheval, Phillipe. La disk-jockey Sash est de retour. Encore une fois. Frere Jacques.

This week, the hapless contenders are shipped off to France, hence my amazing parlez. Also this week, the Apprentices/potential business partners are literally shovelling shit. Someone at the BBC's got a wry sense of humour.

The task

I can't figure out why they're frontloading all the good tasks in this season. If it's the treasure hunt episode already, then what other treats do we have in store? Going by the shit-fit Charleine throws in the opening tease, at one point I'm hoping we're going to eventually see a tops-off bloody battle to the death. It's the least we're owed.

Making full use of someone's National Trust membership, everyone is called to Dover Castle, where rumour has it Claude came first ashore in the guise of a black dog, and wreaked havoc upon the town. Lord Sugar gets a nosebleed if he ventures too far away from Amstrad towers, so informs the contestants via a satellite link-up it's the dreaded negotiation task. Half of the teams will trot around Canterbury, whilst the others will go to Calais. Sacre bleu.

It's still boys vs girls, so at the moment I have no idea which is Team Waffley Versatile and which is Team Corporate Bants. On the ladies' side, Vana speaks French, which trumps Elle's bid for Project Manager, despite her name being literally being a French word. Vana cattily informs her team they mustn't act catty towards each other, so we all know how this is going to end.

Joseph – who the internet now agrees is in fact a young Dick Dastardly from The Wacky Races – cannot speak French, but manages to lead the boys into France. Like Henry V's victory in Agincourt? We shall see. According to his wisdom, "selling is like negotiation, but flipped the other way round". You know, like how being "fired" is like being "hired", but flipped on its head.

The unwritten rule in every Apprentice negotiation task is that the contestants must eschew any technological advances from the last 20 years: they deny the existence of Google, 4G, translation apps etc, although they are still permitted to use mobile phones. Because reasons.

It is probably for those "reasons" that both teams think there is only one cheese shop in the whole of Calais. Both the French factions go in and attempt to "source" some knock-down fromage from a typically louche shopkeeper, who can't understand why these rosbif-eating, suit-wearing wankers are so desperate to smell his cheese.

For the next half an hour, we are witness to people haggling over the price of anchors, mussels and inflatable boats, and shovelling kilos of manure. At no point does anyone question why Lord Sugar needs all these things so desperately, or indeed why would any business, ever. The girls revisit the same shop in Kent four times deliberating over whether to buy a dinghy, where the boys just steam in and buy a toy one; could this be 2015's cardboard skeleton, or nigella seeds, even? Nothing is likely to boil Sugar's piss more than not reading the instruction leaflet properly.

The boardroom

Sugar has an absolute field day, not only laying into the Frenchies' love of striking, but getting a "Jimmy Choo/Jimmy Poo" pun in as well for good measure. Richard, who was happy to pretend to be a "typical bumbling Englishman" to aid his negotiations, ie be exactly that, laments that Glen was not PM over Dick Dastardly. I have no idea who Glen is.

The girls are pulled up for flirting to assist them with their negotiations. Claude is appalled; he didn't get where he is by using his feminine charms, you know.

Team Girl lose out due to the fines that are accrued over missing items. NOTHING is said about the toy dinghy, which just goes to show you can never second-guess The Apprentice. The boys' prize is a copy of Tricolore signed by Madame and Monsieur Dhome.

Over at the café of broken dreams, which doesn't even have proper cups anymore, Charleine calls Selina a morale vacuum, which I am totally making the centre of my business pitch when I audition for The Apprentice next year.

Who got fired?

Everyone fucking hates Vana, who in turn hates everyone else, but she drags back Elle (Nigella Lite) who couldn't decide whether to buy the dinghy, and Jenny, who bought nothing at all. There's still too many to give personal horrible nicknames to.

Despite Vana being the obvious culprit, it's Jenny who gets the finger. I think it's because she's the least interesting of the three.
Does she thank him?

Yes, at the end of a completely rehearsed breathless monologue. Jenny thought she was going to be a global phenomenon. Pourquoi, Jenny?

Next week: bunnies! Cute, floppy, cuddly bunnies! And someone makes a small child cry. Could this be the best season of The Apprentice yet?