Triangulating your resilience is like watching a swan.

Today's post (which is in a holiday mood) is proudly dedicated to the Baron, who after this afternoon is giving up exciting opportunities in a go-getting organisation in order to muck about with covenant re-sets for the rest of his career.

This week's lesson from Sralan on 'The Apprentice': "When I sell, I sell to people like Dixons". Maybe if they hadn't carried so much Amstrad stock, Dixons 106 closed stores might still be open.

Well, a very Happy Easter to you all, I'm out of town for a while. And remember - in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Please don’t think, we've done all of the thinking for you

Back in the office after training. Today's title is a memorable quote from one of the partners running the course. Makes you think, dunnit?

And now for those of you who missed it, an executive summary of this week’s Apprentice (sponsored by the Amstrad E3 Superphone).

• Act I – Candidates boast about themselves: "I can be very offensive if I need to be…Life isn’t always biscuits and sandwiches…This is what I deserve"
• Act II – Candidates pretend to like each other: "If it goes Pete Tong, I’m in the boys’ room with you mate…We work on every deal as if it’s the last day of the last year…we work until we bleed…I could not be happier"
• Act III – Candidates got stressed doing a bad job: "If everyone just shuts up - let me talk, yeah…it’s ground it’s ground it’s ground it’s okay it’s ground…no it isn’t ground"
• Act IV – Pre-boardroom blame gathering: "You’re really beginning to p*ss me off…don’t try to pin this sh*t on me…f*ckin’ idiot… He’s nice, but not outstanding in any way…not really cut out for the business world…We bought? No – you bought…He was weak"
• Act V – Enter Sralan, the pantomime bad guy, repeatedly mangling the present tense of the verb 'to be': "I tell yer sumfink wot’s definite, Certus is gonna bleedin’ ‘urt us…Let’s get down to the business of the task… is we usin’ the ‘we’ ‘ere? the proverbial ‘we’? … You went off nilly-willy…Was you in charge of the purchasin’?...This weren’t exactly the Man’attan project…It’s no good talkin’ after the ‘ors ‘as bolted"
• Act VI – Denouement: "Nice enuff fella as you are…yer fired…Please Sralan, don’t fire me, I’ll give you 110% (etc)"
• Act VI – Epilogue: Ruth bloody Badger (who’s lost some weight, but only around her face, somehow) completes the ritual humiliation of the loser on live TV, using a series of mixed up metaphors involving plates - “Stepping up to the plate is a poisoned chalice”; “You were forced up to the plate, and you were forced to eat” (wrong sort of plate, dufus, it’s a baseball analogy ). Crestfallen loser then gives insightful analysis of the reasons for their failure (“I should have made some decisive decisions”)

~The End~