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The Apprentice: A North South Battle!

By Jim Symcox on Mar 18, 2009 in Lohit Kalburgi, Manchester United, Sir Alan Sugar, The Apprentice 2009, The Silent Assassin

Table of contents for The Apprentice - series 5

The Apprentice with Sir Alan Sugar starts on the 25th March. I can’t wait for the annual pressure cooker that is the BBC’s Apprentice programme.

From the moment you hear the Apprentice music to the introduction of the first task to the final boardroom show down it’s all fun and you can even pick up a few business lessons along the way.

And as well as splitting the teams into boys versus girls it looks as though it’s the North against the South too. The girls are mainly from the South and the boys mainly from the North.

Lovely!

And so who do we have? Well for a start we have a drop out. Someone didn’t want to be away from their family for a possible 12 weeks so retired before filming began.

The Apprentice Girls Team

The Apprentice 2009 girls team is made up as follows:

Who?	Age	Job	Location
Anita Shah	35	Business Strategist	Birmingham
Debra Barr	24	Senior sales consultant	Surrey
Kate Walsh	27	Licensing Development Manager	Hampshire
Kimberly Davis	33	Marketing consultant	London
Lorraine Tighe	36	National Accounts Manager	Kent
Mona Lewis	28	Senior Financial Manager	Kent
Paula Jones	29	Human Resource Consultant	Walsall
Yasmina Siadatan	27	Restaurateur	London

We’ve seen how marketing consultants and human resources people work on the Apprentice. Let’s hope these improve the batting average.

The Apprentice Boys Team

The Apprentice 2009 boys team is made up as follows:

Who?	Age	Job	Location
Ben Clarke	22	Trainee Stockbroker	Belfast
Howard Ebison	24	Retail Business Manager	Derby
James McQuillan	32	Senior Commercial Manager	Surrey
Majid Nagra	28	Business Development Manager	Coventry
Noorul Choudhury	33	Science Teacher	Rochdale
Phillip Taylor	29	Estate Agent	County Durham
Rocky Andrews	21	Sandwich chain owner	North Yokshire

Howard could be someone to watch as I laughed out loud when I saw the quote the BBC attributed to him:

I am a credible businessman who wants to go far. I’m incredibly ambitious. If I don’t go far down this route I shall go far down another route.

The favourite must surely be Rocky Andrews. After all with a name like Rocky you’ve got to live up to peoples expectations, just like in the Rocky films he’s going to come good in his final fight!. Plus he currently earns more than is being offered as Sir Alan’s apprentice running his chain of 15 sandwich shops! So presumably he knows something about the nitty gritty of real business.