Celebrity Apprentice viewers were left utterly gobsmacked at a Christmas biscuit advert branded a ‘piece of crap’.
The two-part BBC Christmas special pitted 12 celebrities – including Angela Scanlon, JB Gill, Rob Rinder and AJ Odudu – against one another to prove who was the most savvy businessperson to the man himself, Lord Alan Sugar.
On Tuesday night’s episode, the two teams were tasked with selling as many festive-themed biscuits on behalf of Children in Need as possible, which, naturally, included making a 30-second advert.
Tenacious trio Matt Morsia, former Apprentice star Thomas Skinner and comedian Shazia Mirza pulled together a mind-bogglingly terrible advert for their Gary the Penguin biscuit.
In the clip, Shazia plays a strange Scrooge-like character who enters a shed looking for Gary the Penguin when Thomas bursts in as the titular Gary and shrieks as loud as he can.
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They then end up on a sleigh across the snow slopes as Scrooge thanks Gary for a great Christmas. And scene!
Yes, it is just as confusing and nonsensical as it sounds. An opinion echoed by every single person who watched the advert.
‘I have got nothing to say, because I’m in shock,’ Sarah Hadland declared, while Angela Scanlon said it ‘doesn’t really make any sense’.
Sarah, who is allergic to white fish, quipped to the camera: ‘I’m happy to eat a fish finger and suffer anaphylaxis rather than people watch that.’
Later in the episode, Rylan and the potential buyers (with representatives from major companies like Tesco and Amazon) were also utterly lost for words.
But Lord Sugar summed it up at the end, saying it was ‘hysterical’ and a ‘piece of crap’.
‘It’s unbelievable. I mean that is diabolical,’ he added. Although their jingle (Gary the Penguin, doo-doo-doo-doo) was considerably more of a hit.
All in all, however, fans were less than unimpressed by what they had witnessed.
On X, Roscoe Barnes called it ‘abysmal’, and WhoPottervian said: ‘Rylan just gave the best “What the heck is that?!” look I have ever seen.’
‘That Gary the Penguin advert was awful and embarrassing to watch,’ SamFarmer agreed.
Barandra34 echoed Lord Sugar in labelling it ‘diabolical’ while SabrinaJane simply wrote: ‘What in the name of Christmas was that Gary the Penguin advert.’
Despite everything working against them, in the end, their team rose from the ashes by selling the most biscuits and beating their adversaries, Jolly McTrouble, in a plot twist no one saw coming.
Speaking about their pitiful advert attempt to Metro, Angela did admit ‘it was sub-standard’.
Although reflecting on having Thomas on the team, she added: ‘We were plucky enough about that. We referred to him as our golden goose from the get-go.’
Celebrity Apprentice is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
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