The second week of The Apprentice featured not only our HR consultant Paula Jones dishing up rather dubious food items, masquerading as canapés, as part of her task with the girls’ team, Ignite, but also a former cover boy of Recruiter’s sister title, Resourcing.

The episode showed Charles Macleod, director of resourcing at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who was profiled in February 2008’s Resourcing, hosting an event at PwC’s HQ in London. Ignite pitched their menu as ‘Mediterranean themed… with good quality, wholesome food’. Charles sensibly treated this claim somewhat sceptically, stating that if the menu didn’t come up to scratch, he wasn’t going to pay all of the agreed £750.

Having ordered her team to buy the cheapest foodstuffs in the supermarket, team leader Yasmina’s cost-cutting plan had most of the TV audience cringing on their sofas. And after looking at the plates of food, ready to be served to the picky City party-goers, a straight-faced Paula
understatedly remarked: “I don’t think the food is up to scratch. It looks like it’s come from a funeral at a working men’s club.”

Unsurprisingly, our Charles didn’t cough up the full £750, but gave the Ignite team £500 — extremely generous considering what the food looked like, let alone what it must have tasted like. Unbelievably, the girls won, so you can just imagine what the boys’ team served up…