So, yeah, Ruth of the manic stare got her marching orders last night, not that she was at all ruffled. She seemed quite placid on The Apprentice: You're Fired, 'n stuff... That was a cardboard cutout?! Mental, and I thought she was playing a blinder with the people skills. She even went so far as to crack a smile.

I could regurgitate the happenings of last night's episode (they're all eejits who can't speak in cohesive sentences, let alone add, etc etc. Isn't that Breffny a card, imagine he forgot who he was doing a presentation for, and so on) but you might prefer to learn why Ruth opted not to appear on You're Fired. We thought we'd get the lowdown as to why last night, what with the continuity presenter saying there was "a twist" and Brendan would fill us in, but that didn't quite happen. Instead we got Ray Foley, Brenda Power and some lady from Diageo Ireland.

The following comes from a TV3 source talking to the Irish Daily Mail: "There are two separate contracts, one for The Apprentice and one for You're Fired. Ruth refused to sign the contract for You're Fired. Every contestant signs the latter after The Apprentice, as it took a little longer to get You're Fired up and running, so the details weren't finalised at the time of the signing of the initial Apprentice contracts. But the producers weren't too disheartened. They decided to include a cardboard cut-out of her in You're Fired instead and to have a little bit of fun with that idea." 'Little' being the operative word.

The article then continues to say that the real reason Ruth declined to appear was down to money: "Believed to be miffed at being given the boot, the Cavan woman, who has proved anything but a team player, did show an interest (in being on You're Fired), it seems. However, she is said to have stunned TV3 bosses with her demands. A source said: 'She wanted a lot of money and the producers just had enough. They decided that the show would go on without her.'"

Ruth probably only really wanted a fraction of what she was asking, and added on an additional zero by mistake. Numbers weren't exactly her forte. 

Quote of the night is a toss up between Geraldine and Breffny. Aww. They are meant to be together. When pitching CuChulainn's alcohol unit measure (the 'Alco Measure'. Cause what alco doesn't want to measure what they're lurrying into themselves?), she said something along the lines of: "If people use this product you'll get  more bang for your buck for every bottle of whiskey or wine bought. So if a young lad is at home mixing up cocktails, he knows if he uses one of these, he'll get cocktails for everybody in the house, he won't mess it all up and probably only two or three of them end up getting hammered."

Breffny's pitch to SuperValu, meanwhile, went a little like this: "We're here on behalf of Diageo to launch a new product for... the, ehh, for, eeeh, for eeeh... (Aoiffe whispers something about responsible drinking) responsible drinking, OK?.... It's very portable, very suitable if you were going out to do some drink driving - sorry, having a glass of wine at a meal." 

The quote which tickled us most however was Breffny's:  "This was a mess. And I didn't make the biggest mess of the mess makers (says his while making an unfortunately frenetic hand gesture)... Ruth was the messiest mess."