The Apprentice (Irish TV series)
The Apprentice is an Irish reality television series, in which a group of aspiring young businessmen and women compete for the chance to win a job as "apprentice" to Bill Cullen, an Irish businessman.
The first series of the show aired on TV3 on 22 September 2008, and finished on 8 December 2008, with Brenda Shanahan as the winner. Shanahan worked at Cullen's company, Renault Ireland, on a 12-month contract worth €100,000. Steve Rayner, a Business Development Manager, won the second series in 2009. That series also featured Breffny Morgan. Michelle Massey won the job in the 2010 series, while Eugene Heary won in 2011. It was announced in May 2012 that the programme would not be renewed for a new series.
The Apprentice is modelled on the American series of the same name, which starred entrepreneur Donald Trump, but is styled more closely around the British series starring business magnate Alan, Lord Sugar.
Bill Cullen's assistants in the Irish version of The Apprentice were his partner, and former model, Jackie Lavin and PR "guru", Brian Purcell.
Celebrity version
Due to the success and growth of the series in 2009, it was announced that a Celebrity version of the show was being sought by the producers and TV3. The producers began the task of finding the main sponsor for the show, celebrities to take part and finally smaller sponsors of each individual task. The producers were able to find a main sponsor for the launch of the spring show and would have started production in January or February 2010, however, they were unable to find sponsors of each individual task. The producers also ran into trouble finding different personalities for the show and for them to give up a month of their lives for the show. The production of the celebrity version of the show was postponed until the third series finished production in August 2010.As part of TV3's 2013 Autumn Schedule, the Celebrity Apprentice Ireland launched in September 2013.
2011 series
The Apprentice Series 4 began airing on 3 October 2011. The Apprentice: You're Fired presented by Anton Savage also returned.Candidates
The fourth series consists of sixteen candidates in total again this year. In the three previous series, the candidates were initially separated into two teams based on gender. This year, however, Bill split the teams into 'youth' and 'experience'. Four male and four female candidates made up the teams.| Candidate | Background | Original team | Age | Result |
| Eugene Heary | Property Developer | Zest | 30 | Hired by Cullen |
| Noel Rowland | Company Director | Zest | 30 | Fired in week 12 |
| Joanne Sweeney-Burke | Multimedia Company Owner | Zest | 33 | Fired in week 12 |
| Maurice O'Callaghan | Hospitality Manager | Zest | 32 | Fired in week 12 |
| Conor Browne | Company Owner | Spirit | 20 | Fired in week 11 |
| Sandra Murphy | Restaurateur | Zest | 30 | Fired in week 10 |
| Christopher Harold | Marketing Manager with Cadpo Software Solutions | Spirit | 28 | Fired in week 9 |
| Brian Kirwan | Sales & Marketing | Spirit | 29 | Fired in Week 8 |
| Susanne Short | Marketing Graduate | Spirit | 22 | Fired in week 7 |
| Peter Nielsen | Senior Channel Account Manager | Spirit | 29 | Fired in week 6 |
| Louise O'Hara | Graduate, Masters in Marketing | Spirit | 29 | Fired in week 5 |
| Claire Crone | Self Employed | Zest | 35 | Fired in week 4 |
| Ruth Leggett | Construction Design Manager | Zest | 40 | Fired in week 3 |
| Eoin Hamdam | I.T. Consultant | Zest | 38 | Quit in week 3 |
| Yinka Rahman | Owns and runs www.hairweavon.com | Spirit | 25 | Fired in week 2 |
| Aisling Smith | Marketing and Event Manager | Spirit | 26 | Fired in week 1 |
Weekly results
Challenges
Week 1
- Task scope: To create and name two healthy sandwiches from the Spar deli menu and select two flavours from the Vit Hit drinks to complement your diet meal and the team that achieves the most sales wins.
- Zest project manager: Maurice
- Spirit project manager: Aisling
- Results: Zest won the task, as they made the most sales. They made a profit of €266, compared to Team Spirit who made a measly profit of only €19.
- Winning team: Zest
- Losing team: Spirit
- Sent to boardroom: Aisling, Christopher and Conor.
- Fired: Aisling, for weak management and for allowing "chaos to take over".
Week 2
- Project managers: Joanne and Christopher
- Task scope: To produce a CD and design the newspaper ad campaign, the sleeve and poster. 100,000 copies of the winning CD would be given away free with the Irish Daily Mail. Each team had to pick 10 new Irish music acts to feature on the CD. The team whose CD impresses the panel of judges the most wins.
- Result: The judges were most impressed with Zest's CD and they won for the second week in a row.
- Winner: Zest
- Sent to boardroom: Christopher, Louise and Yinka
- Fired: Yinka, for making poor decisions that adversely affected Spirit's project, and for "overseeing a disaster" in her team's position despite having management experience.
Week 3
- Team reshuffle: Eugene and Joanne moved to Spirit, Conor moved to Zest.
- Project managers: Bill appointed: Eoin and Louise
- Task scope: To create an app for Uni Slim.
- Result: UniSlim found Team Spirit's app to be more suitable. And chose them as this week's winners.
- Winner: Spirit
- Quit: Eoin, after Zest's presentation, he left the competition claiming his teammates ruined everything and couldn't handle the stress anymore.
- Sent to boardroom: Sandra, Ruth, Claire. As deputy PM, Sandra had to choose two candidates to come back with her to the boardroom.
- Fired: Ruth, for lacking assertiveness within her team that could have changed the task's outcome, and only showing it at the most inappropriate moment: during the team's pitch itself. Bill also emphasised disappointment in the assertive issue as a result of Ruth's work background requiring those character traits.
Week 4
- Team reshuffle: Louise, Eugene and Peter move to Zest, Maurice and Claire move to Spirit.
- Project managers: Noel Claire
- Task scope: To demonstrate and design "A Show Your Business Event" for Bank of Ireland. To source local producers and their products and set up the event in Wexford and Galway.
- Result: Bank of Ireland was most impressed with Zest. They said there was "no comparison" between the two events. Zest made a profit of over €600 and won the task. This was the last time that Zest won a task.
- Winner: Zest
- Sent to boardroom: Claire, Christopher, Susanne
- Fired: Claire, for limiting the scope of her team's project, and therefore its chances of success, as a result of a desire to adhere to her self-admitted "nobler motives". It is worth mentioning that before the final boardroom scene, Claire had struggled to pick two people, saying she would go back in on her own. In addition, after Claire was fired, Bill said he "wasn't done yet" and strongly implied that a double firing would take place: but eventually allowed Christopher and Susanne to return to the house.
Week 5
- Project managers: Bill appointed: Conor Brian
- Task scope: To create an original advertising concept encouraging customers to make their homes more energy efficient with the help of B&Q. And to present the concept as a billboard, which must contain a slogan or tagline relevant to energy saving with B&Q.
- Result: Spirit won the task. Though their billboard was "simple" and Brian's management was quite poor, B&Q thought Zest's was too complicated and too old-fashioned.
- Winner: Spirit
- Sent to boardroom: Conor, Eugene and Louise
- Fired: Louise, for not showing the fighting spirit she brought to the boardroom scenarios within the tasks themselves, and for being on the losing team in the majority of the tasks involving marketing, despite her background.
Week 6
- Team reshuffle: Susanne and Joanne move to Zest, Noel and Sandra move to Spirit.
- Project managers: Eugene Sandra
- Task scope: To relaunch the Cadbury Dairymilk variant Caramello. To create a new packaging design for the Caramello wrapper and to develop a new print ad campaign to support the relaunch of the product.
- Result: Spirit won the task. This task was based on sales. Ultimately, the team with the most sales won. Zest sold €716 worth of bars and did not make any sales in the pre-arranged meetings set by Bill. Spirit sold €16,517 before the meetings and their total profit was over €53,000!.
- Winner: Spirit
- Sent to boardroom: Eugene, Conor and Peter
- Fired: Peter, for showing lack of attention to detail and making a tiny yet critical error that Bill believed led to the failure of the task.