The Apprentice review: Can Bognor's Phil Turner break his losing streak?

After narrowly avoiding the sack in last week’s episode the BBC One reality show, the question on Sussex viewer’s lips this week was ‘how much longer can Phil Turner last?’

At least one more week, it turns out. Turner’s Pies fans desperate to see the local lad pull through will be happy to hear he’s still in The Apprentice boardroom this week and, what’s more, that he turned in his best performance so far.

This week’s challenge was perhaps the most exciting yet, as the remaining contestants flew off to historic Budapest, where they were tasked with designing a bespoke, luxury tour for small groups of tourists.

Headed up by Maura, who took on the mantle of project leader after clawing her way out of the bottom three last week, and after a team reshuffle by top dog Sugar himself, Team Nexus decided on a wine tour for her guests.

Over on Team Supreme, which included Phil, team leader Rachel settled on a Boat Tour – appointing pie man Phil to the sales team, under the experienced eye of sub-team leader Foluso Falade.

After securing a solid €350 deal on the use of a tour boat (down from a really rather cheekily expensive €960), Rachel’s negotiation seemed to be going well.

That same could not be said of Phil and the sales team. Overheads were low, but they needed to really secure the sales to be in with a chance of winning. Phil got off to a good start; he’s a high energy, enthusiastic sales person and he drove home a lucrative €105 price point per ticket which, if the others had followed suit, would have seen Team Supreme well on its way to victory. Unfortunately for him, the rest of the team weren’t quite so keen. Neither Foluso nor Virdi could sell without dropping the price point, and they spent far too much time trying to sell in an area which just wasn’t showing the interest they needed.

Meanwhile Team Nexus secured a similarly solid price of €416 on the use of a winery for their luxury tour. Sales go a bit better than for Team Supreme, despite a high price point and a pretty tough crowd of tourists, and they sell all sixteen tickets without dropping their prices too much.

In a twist that really hammers home what often feels like the bitter unfairness of The Apprentice as a format, Team Supreme shone bright when it came to the delivery of their product. Music producer Tre kept the energy high and the music blaring on an exciting boat trip through budapest, and Phil led the way with a strudel making workshop that went down a treat with the guests. It was nice to our man in his element for once, even if only briefly, and proudly flying the flag on an activity which should have won them out.

Team Nexus, on the other hand, seemed to flounder in the vineyard. A last minute decision by Maura to lead the tour, despite knowing as much about wine as I do about business, threw a spanner in the works. She knew almost nothing about wine and, desperate to fill the dead air, spent most of the tour forcing her guests to say ‘Sauvignon Blanc’ over and over again, regaling them with such tantalisingly rare facts as ‘if you didn’t know Sauvignon Blanc is a white wine’.

A wine-tasting masterclass led by the almost-terrifyingly conscientious Flo went much better, as she wowed guests with an encyclopaedic knowledge of wines she seemed to have digested overnight.

Despite Maura’s mess-up, Team Supreme just hadn’t made enough money to beat them to the punch. When the final totals came in, it was clear Foluso had failed to pursue sales at a high enough price to really turn a substantial profit, and Team Nexus made almost twice as much money.

It was refreshing to see Phil do so well after such a tough couple of weeks, and almost as frustrating to see him lose his seventh task in a row, despite putting his very best into the task. It’s hard to imagine that creeping doubt won’t affect him as the weeks wear on, and it’s going to make it even harder to advocate for himself if he ever finds himself in the bottom three again.

Indeed, this week, it was fellow serial loser Virdi who took that last walk out of the board-room. Not just because of his isolated failure to make good on his supposed sales acumen, but down to his repeated failure to impress time, and time again. If Phil isn’t careful, he could well meet the same fate.