Apprentice Jedi Jim shows his “Darth” side

Former apprentice frontrunner, Jim Eastwood (also nicknamed Jedi Jim by Dara O’Briain), demonstrated his darker side on last night’s The Apprentice. His controlling charm was described as passive aggressive by one of the show’s contributors, Karen Brady. And it did appear at one stage that Jim was not the droid Alan Sugar was looking for.

Jim lost his way. His inability to realise that he should negotiate with an advertising agency on the rate card of a new “freemium” magazine contributed to his team loosing the task whilst he was project manager.

This week the audience clearly saw a darker side to Jim. His smooth Irish charm, which had worked for him so well in previous episodes, now seemed to have a darker side. It was evident that he was now using his “ skills” in a Machiavellian way. This was especially noticeable in the boardroom, where Jim narrowly escaped being fired; this week it was Glen’s turn to leave.

On the task itself, the contestants this week were asked to develop a concept for a free magazine and pre-sell the advertising space to advertising agencies. In fairness, neither side did a particularly good job. Team Venture’s publication, with their tongue in cheek title “Hip Replacement” shocked the agencies with their irreverent name. However, team Logic’s lad’s mag was seen as dated. In the end the dated publication pulled in more revenue and won the task.

Jim’s team could have averted this disaster if the master salesman had spotted that his no negotiation tactics on his first pitch were way off the mark for an untried and newly launched product. Perhaps what was even more surprising is that none of the teams seemed to do much real research on their target demographic. Neither team provided the agencies with any information or projected distribution outlets, target circulation or readerships numbers.

In the after show programme, The Apprentice: You’re Fired, on BBC 2, it became increasing evident that Jim Eastwood had lost his popular support with the public. In a mock up donkey derby style race of the contestants, where the audience was encouraged to cheer or boo to show where the candidates should be placed, Jim was very definitely positioned last. It remains to be seen if Jim can win them over again with his famed mind contol in the coming weeks.