The Apprentice 2012, episode eight, as it happened 22.29 The You're Fired audience vote that Laura was rightly fired. She returns to her Glasgow bridal hire shop, where her ambition is to be "Scotland's next big import" and "the next Michelle Mone." 22.25 Dara is poking some fun at Stephen "outside the box" Brady now. Rightly so. He's a gerbil-mouthed irritant. Some quick factoids about the artists featured on tonight's show. Pure Evil's real ame is Charles Uzzell-Edwards and he's descended from medieval royalty and eight saints, apparently. James Jessop was born in Bletchley, trained at The Royal College of Art and his patron is Charles Saatchi. 22.23 Overall verdict on tonight's episode? I thought it was one of the strongest so far this series. The fish-out-of-water factor, with the besuited, managementspeak-spouting candidates forced to venture into the art world, is always entertaining. Adam was great value, Gabrielle's mistakes were car crash stuff, the task was nip-and-tuck and ice-cool Tom's first meltdown was strangely compelling. My sources also tell me that next week's task, the champagne branding one, is EVEN BETTER. Great news. 22.15 The You're Fired panel are discussing defeated team leader Tom Gearing coming across as arrogant and getting ahead of himself for someone who's just 23. The last thing an artist wants to hear are the names of lots of other artists. Very true. He was my pick to win the competition until tonight. Still a strong candidate but I feel he has to win over Lord Sugar again. Posh Nick and possibly even Annoying Adam (this year's Stuart Baggs The Brand?) are looking like strong candidates now. 22.14 And some of your comments now... alfietwist This is one task where the normal people featured (ie the artists) are just as mad and self-deluded as the candidates evilchicken8 Gutted. I was looking for the Waterloo Road liveblog vicwardian "Writing on the wall" present and correct. Surprised there were no "brushes with disaster." The Apprentice is my favourite programme. It's my ONLY programme 22.06 Good tweets there, so let's do some more... @nitsohara Serious recession treats. @robinparker55 "If we had Pure Evil, I don't think we'd be in the position we are today" - a mantra for the ages @richneville "I put all my eggs in the basket of Pure Evil" 22.04 Laura's had the traditional You're Fired makeover and is looking hot in a strapless pink top and new hairdo. Time for a few of your Tweets... @jonesvision I wouldn't trust Adam to choose me a tie, let alone a piece of art @pundamentalism What kind of parents call their kid Pure Evil? @MrBButterfield My faovurite graffiti artists are Banksy, Building Societsy and the French artist, Bureau De Changesy 21.59 Laura is "gutted" in the back of the Black Cab Of Failure. Tom and Jade return to the house. Eight candidates remain. The preview of next week's task looks like another good one: creating a new image for English sparkling wine. Stay with me for a round-up of your thoughts, some post-match analysis and You're Fired with Dara on BBC Two. 21.56 Lord Sugar says Laura would win a "prize for talking but it's talking too late." Tom made two big errors. Jade's indecisive. Laura sold poorly. And... Tom looked gone there for a movement. He even went all red and started doing his stressy face-rubbing thing. Lucky boy. 21.54 Tom is playing this cleverly now, sitting back and letting the other two attack each other. 21.52 Lord Sugar doesn't want to fire Tom, that's the impression I'm getting. Rightly so, he's been possibly the strongest candidate so far and I predicted two weeks ago that him and Posh Nick would be the finalists. However, the Baron of the boardroom is suddenly suspcious that Tom's "not there for the right reasons." 21.49 More cross-examination from Sugar Of The Bailey. Laura's application says she's a great salesperson and has won awards for selling, but she didn't "work smart" last night. Tom sees his chance and pounces, sticking the boot in. He also says Jade aka Marge Simpson wasn't objective enough and didn't help him make decisions. Lord Sugar's turn to pounce now and he says she was indecisive last week too. 21.48 Tom is bringing back Jade and Laura. Smart decision. Somehow Adam has come put of this task smelling of roses, despite being a unreconstructed doofus who thinks artists paint using Doris Stokes as a brush. 21.46 Sales figures show that Albino Adam sold the most. Laura sold the least. She calls Adam "a blagger" and is babbling away in an annoying manner. If Tom is smart, he'll start pointing the finger at her. Plus maybe Jade. Adam seems unassailable. 21.45 Back in the boardroom. Tom is shouldering lots of blame himself for not getting Pure Evil and taking a gamble on James Jessop. He needs to start shifting the blame here or he could be fired. Right on cue, he says the Bristol sub-team, ie Adam and Jade, didn't help him out with objective opinions. 21.43 While Gabrielle's lot pretend to have fun at their lame-looking treat, which is wearing boiler suits and pretending to be the Stone Roses, Team Tom sit in the Greasy Spoon Of Grief. Adam says Tom is "wet behind the ears," the patronising albino wally. 21.41 Numbers time. The gin company didn't buy anything off Gabrielle. Renault bought £5k off Team Tom. Gallery sales for Team Tom were just short of six grand. But gallery sales for Team Gabrielle were double that, £11k . Team Gabrielle won the task by a mere £137 worth of commission. Tom looks like a broken man at this point. He's gone all blotchy like a Jackson Pollock. 21.38 Onto Team Gabrielle. Good team leader? Tumbleweed. Karren says they did a good charm offensive on the artists. She didn't ask the gin distillery what their budget was and Gabrielle claims this was on purpose. Lord Nookie Bear barks in disbelief. 21.36 Lord Aslan is quizzing Team Tom over why he didn't land Pure Evil. Too interested in putting over himself as an expert, it seems. 21.35 Boardroom o'clock. Lord Sugar's straight in with a pre-scripted "writing on the wall" graffiti gag. Swiftly followed by a Turner Prize/Turnip one. He's a wag, that Sid James. 21.34 The traditional end-of-day sales scramble and that's it. Hard to know who's won there. Team Gabrielle look more likely. 21.32 Gabrielle's gin clients have turned up and no-one's talkng to them. Or getting them a drink. You'd think they could've got a bottle of gin in, just for charm's sake. Karren Brady says it's "a masterclass in how NOT to treat a corporate client." Karren is NOT happy. And when Karren's not happy, KARREN SMASH! Or am I thinking of the Hulk? Or even Grant Mitchell? 21.30 Ricky Martin is haggling with a silvery dude in a bowtie for a £3k sale. Living La Vida Loca (subject to negotiation). Tom is still trying to shift his expensive green monster (I don't mean his envy) and is starting to look stressed 21.29 Adam is playing the idiot. Well, I say playing. But he seems to be selling. He thinks "medium" means Doris Stokes. Scottish Laura is trying the softly-softly approach, which involves approaching punters and saying, "How you doing, guys?" 21.27 The exhibitions have opened. Tom's focusing on selling one of the big £10k James Jessop pieces. Meanwhile, Stephen is bothering people. See anything you like? 21.26 Gabrielle has had the rather nice idea of Nathan Bowen doing live art during the exhibition. Until team-mate Stephen phones up with the idea of, erm, him doing it out the back so no-one can see him. "Way outside the box," he says. Get back in your box, numpty. 21.25 The teams are hanging their collections in their Brick Lane exhibition spaces. Ricky Martin realises that he's now selling the artist whose work he hated in Bristol. 21.22 Tom's going for broke with James Jessop, hoping they can sell one of his £10,000 canvases, plus Copyright. He thinks Pure Evil is "mental" for not going with them. Clearly a man who takes rejection well. Gabrielle is going with Pure Evil and Nathan Bowen. 21.21 Tom's struggling to come up with a plan B. Does Plan B paint? 21.20 The teams are choosing their artists. They both want Pure Evil, so it's up to the artist. And he chooses... Team Gabrielle because she was more enthusiastic. Tom's gutted and looks like he might just cry. 21.19 James does big canvases with a spoof, horror B-movie feel. Tom's not sure he "wants to curate it." Get him. 21.18 Artist James Jessop now. He's got a strange monotone voice and offered them some cider. Stephen thinks he's a nutter. 21.15 Tom has gone native and is frantically namedropping to the artist Pure Evil (probably not his real name), interspersed with the word "obviously" which seems to be his vocal tic. He's showing that he knows his stuff but not being enthusiastic about his work. Gabrielle's now turned up and is being much more engaging. Always schmooze the clients, people - don't they watch The Apprentice? 21.13 Gabrielle is going on about Union Jacks again. She's obsessed. She'll be painting chairs if we're not careful. Meanwhile, Ricky Martin the Latino singing wrestler doesn't know much about art, but he knows what he doesn't like. And that's art. 21.12 Team Tom were pretty slick in their meeting with corporate client Renault. He even used the phrase "joie de vivre," like an arty Delboy Trotter. Team Gabrielle not so good - she forgot to ask Beefeater Gin about their budget. Mother's ruin. Forgetful. What was I saying? Never mnd. Hic. That's nice, dear. 21.09 Market trader Adam has got the hang of this already. No-one knows who Banksy is. He's like the Stig isn't he? Now he's giving artists in Bristol his "unique opinion." Uniquely uninformed and inarticulate, in a voice like a Creature Comforts cow. That sort of unique. 21.07 Gabrielle is one team leader. She's arty, as you might remember from when she painted rubbish Union Jacks on cheap chairs. Tom leads the other team and says the word "graffiti" several dozen times. "Graffiti" is the new "strategy." 21.05 So there's the task briefing. They have five urban artists, must choose two, then sell their work to the public at a gallery sale tomorrow night. The Baron Of Clapton has also "laid on" (he loves laying thinogs on) a corporate client apiece. 21.04 A 6am alarm call at Apprentice Heights. Jade's dressed already, almost like she was expecting the call. They're meeting at Waterloo Station. Stephen and Nick are in the back of people carriers boasting that they've won five out of seven tasks. The voiceover man does a Waterloo//battle pun. Lord Sugar's on a screen like some sort of evil genus talking from his underground lair or from beyond the grave. 21.01 Recap of last week's task: wholesale goods, aka "smelling what's selling." Mops, fake tan and toy insects, mainly. Posh Nick, the brunette Boris Johnson, won both the task and the mayoral election within 24 hours of each other. Jade with the Marge Simpson voice led her team to defeat but survived. Azher was fired for saying the word "strategy" approximately 102 times. Wheely suitcases. Shiny skyscrapers. He's not looking for a friend, he's looking for a lover. Someone to hold him and stroke his angry wrinkly face. Hang on, that can't be right. 20.59 So let's play bingo with tonight's episode. It's a street art task, so there will be many mentions of Banksy. And just as I was typing that, the continuity announcer mentioned him. What else? Writing's on the wall. Watching paint dry. Business going to the wall. Canvassing opinion. Making an exhibition of yourself. 20.55 The end of Traffic Cops. It's no Waterloo Road. Talking of Waterloo, I think I recognised one of the underpass tunnels near Waterloo Station and the Old Vic theatre in last week's trailer, where the candidates gather for their task briefing. 20.50 Ten minutes to go. The art task has long been an Apprentice favorite. It's featured on Junior Apprentice and the US version before. And who else remembers series three, when gobby wideboy Tre Azam discovered his soulful side? One of my favourite ever Apprentice quotes was his lament after talking art appreciation with some ladies: "Deep souls but shallow pockets means no sale for Tre." Textbook use of the third person. 20.30 Half an hour until curtain up. Wonder if last week's fired candidate Azhar Siddique will be at home watching, wearing a pair of tiny red shorts, doing 80s aerobics moves, eating Tesco Value meatballs and shouting "STRATEGEH!" at his TV screen? 20.00 Good evening and welcome to week eight of our The Apprentice live blog. Nine candidates remain in Lord Sugar's search for a business partner. After last week's twits sold tat, tonight's task sees the would-be tycoons attempt to persuade street artists they can sell their work to the public. Who will follow Azhar Siddique, Katie Wright, Duane Bryan and the other fired candidates into the black taxi of tattered dreams? I'm not looking for a friend. If I wanted a friend, I'd get a blog.