Flanked by henchmen Nick and Margaret, Siralan greeted the contestants at dawn at Ally Pally with the menacing demeanour of a mafia boss from a Guy Ritchie movie, about to punish some people who owed him a lot of money.
The punishment was not delivered as a nasty beating round the head with a golf club.
It was something far worse...
Not in a million years would we wish "presenter of a home shopping channel" on our worst enemy. Not even if they kicked puppies for pleasure. A thankless, difficult, nerve-wracking - and frankly humiliating - task, and therefore the perfect challenge for the put-upon contestants at this stage of the game.
And sure enough, the moment the cameras started to roll, things began to fall apart. Lorraine's "car crash" demo had us gnawing our knuckles up to the wrist.
But it was the discussion between Lorraine and Howard that gave us at OPP Towers the most pause for thought. Lorraine reckoned the products chosen should "reflect our personalities", whereas Howard said they should "reflect the target audience".
This represents the classic MBTI "Feeling" (F) versus "Thinking" (T) preference dichotomy. And in a way, they were both right: while it would be absurd to traipse around Newcastle knocking on doors and trying to flog a lump of coal, if you are going to do sell anything face-to-face, you really need to be behind the product. In most businesseses, sales and marketing people may not truly believe in the products and services they sell; yet they are usually able to enter a strange half-world where they have convinced themselves of a fundamental validity, and their professionalism allows them to go along with this minor delusion.
In front of the camera, however, it's something of a different story. Unless you're a seasoned professional, it is very difficult to convince others of the utility of a product that you personally think of as a dreadful bag of crap - as evidenced by the contrast between Kate's woeful attempt to flog a polystyrene kitten, and her air guitar heroics. This is where Lorraine's "F" preference would have helped: products that are commercially sound, but about which the presenters can actually enthuse.
Howard also had a point, however, in terms of demanding structured pitches that each product must receive. In a good presentation, while the presenter's personality should shine through, the background knowledge must be there to facilitate this. Research and a solid grounding in your subject cannot be faked. And it was this lack of knowledge of the products that led to Lorraine and Howard abandoning any USPs, calls to action, or benefits of their expensive deep fat frier, in favour of stuffing their faces with chips.
"You can have them with beef." Really, Howard? We never would have guessed. I always eat mine with chocolate mousse.
What a mistake, too, to go for high volume sales. Howard was been characterised by Siralan as "risk averse", which something the 16PF instrument could reveal in a recruitment situation (in 16PF terms, a risk-taker would score highly on the 'Social Boldness' and 'Liveliness' scales, whereas Howard would probably score low on 'Liveliness' - indicating caution). However, he inadvertantly took a gigantic risk by attempting a large number of sales in an untried medium, rather than one or two high value wins. Since the winning team was to be decided by revenue, not margin, this should have tipped him off to such a strategy: there are always going to be one or two mugs out there in TV land who'll buy any old tat - not hundreds of them.
The teams should have also tried harder to fit the message to the medium. It's television, and there was nothing more telegenic in that warehouse than the affectionate dinosaur (though we were pleasantly surprised to see how well both Deborah and Yasmina came over in front of the red blinking light!). Despite its high ticket price, two or three sales of something that packed the punch of novelty would have made all the difference.
What a shame that as team leader, Howard couldn't have combined both the T and the F components of the team (together with some strategic thinking).
Thence to the boardroom! While his being given concrete boots and sent to sleep with the fishes at the bottom of the Thames may have been debatable in some quarters, it did seem inevitable, given the level playing field that projected his head above the parapet, willingly or no.
There's no real muppet of the week - it would be too cruel on people who have suffered a terrible ignominy - but we will allow Siralan a "plonker of the week": the bumbling and bungling James spouting the wrong price on live TV, in direct contradiction of the on-screen numbers. Ouch.
OPP(You don't mess with the Don. But when Siralan declaimed to Lorraine that "It's not a game show," we felt like risking the loss of a finger or two by whispering: "er... yes it is.")
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