Before the final even began it was clear that Jim was a great salesman, Helen was a fantastic organiser, Susan was very young and entrepreneurial and Tom was creative, but nice.

The final turned out to be an exhaustive and exhausting interview for the candidates feedback from which gave Lord Sugar an unbiased view of the candidates.

The interviewers were joined with a very welcome return by Margaret Mountford. The full line-up of interviewers/advisers was Claude Littner, Mike Soutar and Matthew Riley and of course Margaret.

The interviewers soon had the candidates on the ropes. Susan because she’d optimistically forecast a profit of over £1 million in the first year. To be fair to Susan her plan did show costings, but didn’t appear to include the cost of testing for the creams that she wanted to launch. She had put a line in her costings for legal and Patent of £6,000 which would probably cover the majority of the testing costs. However, the testing costs weren’t explicit. Personally I’d have asked her what she meant by the line: “Product research and expertise – £4,000.” After all isn’t she the expert and didn’t she say that she’d already got 4 products in mind?

Margaret made short work of Jim when she said she’d never seen a longer application form She also pointed out that clichés were spread out all over his (long) business plan. And when asked to summarise what he was about without a cliché, Jim marvellously said that he was what it said on the tin! Jim was pulled up about his business name “AMSmart. And as Nick Hewer later points out the business plan is basically “one long seduction letter” set out to charm Lord Sugar.  And when asked how many head teachers Jim had interviewed to see whether they would sign up for the business Jim said. “Direct delivery of this is time consuming, it’s labour intensive.” Jim is asked the question again and replies, “In Northern Ireland the uptake on direct delivery is very high.” Then when asked for numbers, Jim says, “I haven’t divulged the nature of eLearning.” The bottom line is that he hasn’t done any research about eLearning in schools.

Meanwhile Tom was hit over the head with fact that he’d not mentioned the word “chair” in his plan when that was pretty much what it was all about. He also managed to make a complete mess of his figures so they just didn’t add up. Tom admitted that he’d created a prototype so he an idea of probable costs. To which Claude retorted that he hadn’t mentioned the prototype and apologising for the lack was pointless! Later Tom is asked about a previous employer who said Tom wasn’t a starter/finisher.

And then the interviewers got to Helen. Helen is marvellously professional. I’m not sure whether that makes for good TV because you can’t always gauge what she’s thinking. Anyway, the advisers weren’t overly impressed by Helens business plan. As they pointed out to run a concierge service for people you need contacts. Helen’s business sector is food and really she needed to address exactly how she would get the contacts she needed in the business plan. She wanted to be the market leader, which is going to be tough against the raft of already established concierge services. Helen was also aiming at the mass market and I’d argue whether there would be enough people in a mass market to afford a concierge service. One example Helen gave was a reminder for dentist appointments. My dentist also texts me reminders. An obvious way to ensure that they reduce no-shows. So I, and probably many others, don’t need such a service. Then Helen’s asked to show her human side by telling a joke. When she eventually thinks her joke it did actually make me laugh. The joke? Simply, “A fish is swimming along. And he swims straight into something. He goes, ‘oh, dam!’”

Jim summed it up when he said that being interviewed was like a “walk in the park” with people shooting at you and throwing hand grenades at you too. Looking at the other candidates you could see they probably felt that way too!

The advisors consensus was that Jim was “slippery” and trying to get details from him was like “trying to nail custard to the ceiling” and clichés “cascaded from his lips” like “there was no tomorrow.”

Lord Sugar points out the impracticality of offering a back checking service to businesses. After all who would pay for it?

Pretty quickly Lord Sugar fires Jim, recognising him as a good salesman, but ultimately not as a business partner.

When Lord Sugar turns to Helen he expresses his disappointment, as she hasn’t come up with a business plan which doesn’t play to her own industry knowledge.

Then he points out that Susan hasn’t really looked at the real costs of the business she wanted to go into Lord Sugar with. So he fires her. Although he notes that Susan is one to watch.

There is further discussion, including Helen dumping her original business plan and saying she had a backup plan that is in her industry relating to  chain of bakery stores.

Lord Sugar appears to be impressed by Tom’s story of how he got into Walmart.

Finally, Lord Sugar hires Tom.

Was the hiring fair?

As Lord Sugar said Helen would have definitely won the original format of The Apprentice. However, in the new format he was looking for an entrepreneur and preferably someone with the ability to think of new products. And so in reality the two that had shown the most entrepreneurial flair were Tom and Susan. With Susan out of the picture Tom is an obvious winner.

I think that there’s a good chance that the business Lord Sugar set-up could be successful. However, I think it would be even more successful if they had Helen as the manager because things would get organised and done. Helen would also make sure that Tom finished things!

The candidates get to see a range of treatments and then choose two they would like to provide to the poor old unsuspecting paying punter. Lord Sugar hastily points out that they will receive professional training – hears hoping they take it all in!

The first thing to do is to choose the location where the teams will sell products and deliver treatments. Interestingly Venture, with their PM Felicity Jackson,  chooses the Bull Ring with their one and only treatment room a long way from the main selling area – a massive mistake, surely? Meanwhile Logic (PM Zoe Beresford) chooses the better location at an out of town shopping centre with a great number of shops and most importantly a treatment centre with more than one room and literally next door to the sales area.

The next thing the candidates do is to sit through presentations on 8 treatments they can offer to the unwary shopper. These are as follows:

1. Chocolate facials, and yes it’s real chocolate
2. weight reduction programme, which involves wrapping the poor client so they look like an Egyptian mummy
3. Winges, these are awful looking false hair fringes
4. A heated curler treatment
5. Men’s cosmetics
6. Lava shells, self-heating “massage tool”
7. Revitalising cold stone massage for the feet
8. …and of course the spray tan

Unfortunately Zoe sets Suzy up to fail by asking her to comment on her own experience in her skin care company. And Suzy is off and telling everyone that she has set-up and run her own company so she is uniquely placed to help them win the task. We’ll see then won’t we?

Like bulls into the Bullring

Venture piles into the Bullring and project manager Felicity is thrilled by the fact that they’re in a main thoroughfare with lots of footfall and plenty of swanky shops around.However, as Nick Hewer points out the treatments (up on the third floor) make a massive margin but the sales team on the ground floor aren’t even mentioning them.

The sales team are happy to bullshit clients about how lovely they look with the weird fringe wigs but seem reluctant to mention the treatments. Felicity should have made it a competition to see who could get the most treatment sales. Then we’d have seen a bit of profitable action. When Ellie (in the treatment room) rings to flag up lack of customers Felicity pulls Tom away from the treatments! And also notes that they’ve told lots of people to go to the third floor for treatments. Come on, people are going to forget as they go past all the shops on the way. Or maybe aren’t persuaded of the treatment in the first place?

Meanwhile when Tom (or Mr Notebook-calculator as Nick has christened him) immediately forgets to sell treatments and starts to sell products. Because obviously intangibles are more difficult to sell.

When Ellie and Melody trot downstairs to point out that no treatments have occurred Felicity wonders why! She then attempts to point the finger of blame at Ellie by saying she doesn’t think she’s a good salesperson. Baffling beyond belief. How can somebody  sell or do any treatments if no customer actually arrives where they’re sent?

Then Melody at last starts getting customers to the treatment room. However, stupidly she gives them 3 minutes free to try the massage out. So how many customers then want to pay for it…

Westfield is the place for scapegoats

Logic really start to motor with their treatments selling spray tans and foot massage to harassed and tired shoppers.

Leon’s concerns with the unmanly aspect of beauty treatments seem to have disappeared and although he can’t match Suzy’s predicted sales of 6 per hour he is making 3 sales per hour of the products. And he appears to be using some sort of Vulcan mind trick with prospects little fingers to draw them over to his sales area!

And Suzy appears to be selling no products at all. Well down on her confident predictions of the previous night. And of course Zoe uses Suzy’s lack of sales to emphasise the weak point – ready for if they fail the task. A lovely bit of scapegoating, well done Zoe!

Logic has obviously understood the importance of selling treatments in this task and sell quite a number, although Zoe who does the foot massages does seem to take too much time over them.

Back to the beast in the boardroom

Lord Sugar (aka the beast) got down to the figures fairly quickly…

Venture spent £734 and sold £937 which was a profit of £203.

Logic spent £924 and made £677 which created a loss of £246.28.

And of course Zoe was dismissive about Suzy, although luckily for Suzy the team she was in (Venture) won.

Logic loses yet again

So, Logic return to the boardroom, ready to explain, or find excuses as to why they lost.

And in reality the main reason they lost was down to doing so few treatments. Because even when Tom went down to start selling treatments but got sucked into selling the products.

As Tom pointed out the treatments weren’t happening because the treatment rooms were so far from the sales area.

The two people who Felicity selects to go back into the boardroom with her are Natasha, who really doesn’t seem to be making much impact, and Ellie.

Then when the trio get back Felicity is blasted from both sides. By Ellie saying that the sales team were sending freebie seeking students and therefore no money and from Natasha saying that there was no selling strategy.

And the sheer weight of Felicity’s errors means she is fired.

Was the right Apprentice fired?

There was no doubt that Felicity was the right person to be fired. Although to be honest I’m surprised she didn’t bring Tom back in with her as Tom should have told her exactly what was happening with treatment room sales. However, Felicity’s cardinal errors were as follows:

• Not listening to Tom when he suggested the treatment room so far from the sales area was wrong
• Not putting enough emphasis on getting people to have treatments
• Allowing free 3 minute massage with the possibility of further time if the client liked it!
• Assuming that Ellie wasn’t converting the clients the sales area sent up to the treatment room

Table of contents for The Apprentice - Series 7

1. The Apprentice: Soupman cannot rescue the reluctant accountant, Edward Hunter
2. The Apprentice: Mobile apps that annoy and prolong stereotypes
3. The Apprentice: Savoy Hotels Top Hats, Cloches and Crushed Ice defeat Lord Sugar’s Apprentices

The Savoy Hotel has been closed for 3 years and “need” 10 items before they open and the candidates are asked to get them. And as the task is about negotiation the winner is the team that comes back having paid the least for the items. And of course there are penalties for not getting items. They’re given £2,000 to buy the items, a map of London and business directories.

This time Lord Sugar mixes the teams up and the teams choose their project leader. Susan Ma is chosen for the Venture team leader because she’s run a market trader stall. Gavin is chosen as the team leader for Logic.

The items the teams needed to get were:

• Fillet Steak: Aberdeen Angus, 7 kilos, minimum of 21 days matured, kept chilled
• ice: 120 kilos, crushed
• Cloche: stainless steel, 10 inches
• Top Hat: Black, Fur felt, Size 7 1/8, New or used in pristine condition
• Chandelier bulbs: 50 clear candle bulbs
• Chamomile flowers tea: 10 kilos, loose
• Signage: wording to be machine engraved in capitals with black paint “Wine Cellar” Brass plaque 12″(w) x 7.5″(h) Font- Helvetica Regular. Size 1.5 inches tall
• Physalis: 100g, Fresh
• Organza silk: 10 metres,
• Toilet paper, 500 rolls, 3 ply

Apprentices Venture to East London

As Venture team leader Susan points out that they need to source items moving out towards the East of London as things get cheaper as you move East. She give each team member one or two of the items to source. And quickly gets locations for 8 of the 10 items. At that point she splits the team into 2 with Soupman leading one sub-team and they rush off to get the items.

The first thing they go for is a top hat, from the top hatter in London. Don’t they realise that will make it rather pricey? I would have thought going for a top end hire company and buying it from them might have been a good option. Round the corner Soupman’s sub-team is rushing to buy the fillet steak – in Mayfair! So much for Susan’s direction to go eastwards because prices are cheaper the further East you go in London. Although Jim does manage to get the butchers down to almost where he was suggesting, in the end he gets the fillet for £170!

Susan’s team also manages to source extremely expensive tea which is a jaw dropping £990. Luckily for them the supplier drops the price massively, still expensive though.

There’s No Logic to Logic’s Approach

Over at Logic Gavin’s team struggle identify and to source the items. Amazingly Vincent appears to have a problem locating fillet steak in London!

And then horrors!

Natasha has a brainwave that other luxury hotels will send her their supplier list! Why on earth would they do that? I mean they’ve spent time building up relationships and getting good deals with their suppliers. They’re not going to want anyone to mix it up, are they? Get a grip Natasha! But, no she goes ahead and makes the call. Everyone else looked embarrassed and yet no one (particularly Gavin) stops her wasting time and making a fool of herself.

And as the minutes tick by Gavin keeps bleating about making a decision, if that’s ok with you guys…

Eventually (after 3 hours) they set off. Vincent leads the sub-team to find the wine cellar signage and lets Natasha demonstrate exactly how not to negotiate. For a start they’re on a loser because the engraver knows they really need to buy from him anyway.

But, and worse than anything else…

Natasha doesn’t ask him what his best price is. And as soon as he says he can’t do it for the price she names she just ups the price! At that rate he could keep saying he couldn’t do it for that price and the team could end up paying more than the real price! Vincent breaks in to try and stop the price escalation, by suggesting another price, £80, all in. Which the engraver agrees to but says lets add on VAT too, giving a price of £96. Afterwards Natasha claims that if Vincent had just left her alone she could have driven the price down further! Didn’t she hear herself increasing the price then?

When desperate Gavin starts to negotiate for the organza his need to buy almost screams out of his pores.

Back to the boardroom

Lord Sugar pointed out that Venture had been going to a lot of expensive places for their items. Places like Mayfair! And as an example the tea, that had originally been priced at £990 was sold to them for £410 whilst Logic got the tea for £223. A massive difference.

And despite the fact that Logic missed out on 4 items the amount paid, including fines, was almost identical.

So venture got 9 items, were fined £202.75 whilst Logic got 6 items, were fined £312.68

In total that meant the amount paid by Venture was £1,381.69 whilst Logic paid £,1389.20.

Leaving Venture the winners by less than £10.  As Lord Sugar points out to Gavin and Logic, it was only right they lost anyway, because they had got only a pathetic 6 items.

So Gavin chooses Zoe Beresford and Vincent Disneur to go back into the firing line with him.

Finally, Lord Sugar decides that Gavin should be fired. And at the same time he warns Zoe that she needs to show him what she can do.

Was The Apprentice Firing Fair?

Gavin appeared completely incapable of running his team. He let Natasha eat up time trying to get a rival hotels supplier list. He didn’t listen to the rest of the team, in particular Melody who was telling him about the cloche and how they were running out of time. When they were in the car Gavin just clutched his head and seemed to be losing. Equally, having Vincent as a team leader was a definite mistake from Gavin. Simply putting he who shouts loudest as the leader doesn’t work. Plus Gavin needed to have a good negotiator on his own team. As part of the team he was completely unable to conceal the despair and desperation he felt during the Organza negotiation.

So, Lord Sugar did the right thing firing Gavin, although with only a £7.51 difference between the teams it could have easily been someone from the other team!

Table of contents for The Apprentice - Series 7

1. The Apprentice: Soupman cannot rescue the reluctant accountant, Edward Hunter
2. The Apprentice: Mobile apps that annoy and prolong stereotypes
3. The Apprentice: Savoy Hotels Top Hats, Cloches and Crushed Ice defeat Lord Sugar’s Apprentices

So the candidates are woken at stupid o’clock to be told about their next task: developing a new mobile phone app. They have 2 days to design, launch and promote the new mobile app. And the winner is the one with the most downloads in 24 hours.

Unfortunately the boys “appsolutely” can’t resist making lots of puns using the word app. Then Vincent Disneur demonstrates why he’s a salesman by asking if they’d had an apple. Not quite a pun now is it?

When the teams arrive they’re briefed at leading app developer Grapple by chairman John Clayden. He tells them that something like 10 billion downloads for apps are likely this year.

When it comes to choosing the boys project manager the obvious choice seems to be Leon as he’s already been looking at developing an app for his own business. And then Soupman (Jim Eastwood) weighs in and gives him his vote, which looks to persuade everyone else! So Leon gets the job!

Over with the girls there’s a distinct lack on people putting themselves forward as Edna Agbarha makes it clear that she want the role.

The teams will be pitching to a group of geeks at a convention at Earls Court Exhibition centre and 3 technology web sites (Wired, Pocketlint, Techcrunch (Europe))  to encourage people to download their app.

The girls go to the market

Sensibly Edna gets a sub-team out on the road very quickly to do some market research. Given the history of previous project managers what’s the betting she ignores it?

Felicity Jackson discovers early on her interviews that any app they create needs to be very easy to use, “idiot friendly.” I’d have also asked the people to show me the apps they use the most on their phone, after all actions speak louder than words.

When the girls get together with their friendly app developers Susan Ma breaks cover and discovers she can’t get her point across, even though she confesses she’s just thought of it and it’s a brilliant idea!

Felicity and the market research sub-team return to Edna, who has been struggling in an ideas desert. Felicity immediately suggests an interesting, although annoying app, where you have noises on your phone to annoy other people. So the app is sorted, all we need is a rubbish name – Ampiapp! The girls widen the sounds their app will provide to include celebrations and animal noises, including a cat’s meow done by Melody Hossaini.

After the app is developed each team will do a pitch at a conference where a load of geeks will be located.

Despite a reasonable suggestion from her team that as Melody sells to teenagers she should do the pitch Edna decides the one to do it will be… herself! Melody tries to help Edna by telling her that for 13 years she’s been giving presentation to upwards of 3,000 teenagers at a time. Now if it was me it would seem that the pitch should be done with someone with that vast amount of experience. But apparently Edna has weighed up her teams strengths and decided it’s better if she does it. A strange decision and if Edna doesn’t go this time she wont make it to the final.

When Edna does her pitch to 500 of the conference attendees she really does an extremely confident but strangely unappealing and weak  presentation and without telling people how to download the app.

The boys don’t need market research

They certainly don’t seem to need market research as they have inventor Tom Pellereau coming up with a raft of ideas for apps. Even if one or two seem strange, like why would you be interested in the temperature a year ago?

Finally Glenn Ward comes up with an uninspiring insults with a regional accent app…ok, but I suspect whilst it appeals to boys/men women wont be particularly impressed by it, so cutting its download potential by 50% at a stroke.

Leon should really have squashed this idea at its birth as it was uninspiring and they should have all thought about whether everyone they knew would download it.

Soupman (aka Jim Eastwood) comes up with Slangatang as the name for the app. The slang they record doesn’t really sound particularly funny, yet the boys fall about laughing.

When they pitch Vincent comes unglued and makes what is probably the worst presentation I’ve seen for quite a while.  Soupman managed to resurrect the dying pitch until Vincent actually thought it had gone down well.

Soupman takes over to do the pitch to the team from Wired who seem quite underwhelmed by the app that is presented and point out that it could be quite offensive because of the stereotypes it portrays.

When the boys do the pitch to the geek-fest there are a number of them involved and they really seem to get a good buzz developing about their app.

Back to the boardroom and firing

After welcoming the teams back Lord Sugar quickly asked for the results, which were:

• 3,951 Slangatang were downloaded for team Logic
• 10, 667 Ampiapps were downloaded for team Venture

Lord Sugar made the point that the boys app wasn’t good enough for the world. And zeroed in on the poor app description that Soupman had written but all the team had loved.  Soupman stood up for himself and pointed out that everyone (including Leon) had loved his description.

When Leon selects two others to go into the boardroom with him, he includes Soupman.  Soupman immediately argues with Leon that someone else should go into the boardroom instead. And weakly Leon agrees with him! Even though Superman’s description had contributed to the poor downloads. So Leon ends up with Alex Britez Cabral and Glenn Ward.

In the end Alex has the finger pointed at him and is fired, because Lord Sugar thinks Alex would be a passenger.

Was the right apprentice candidate fired?

Leon did show weak decision making as demonstrated by the choice of the app in the first place and then by changing his mind on who should go into the boardroom with him. However, Alex was the right person to be fired as he didn’t really seem to do that much and yet was very happy to fight his corner on the basis of no results, both in the soup and orange selling last week and the contribution this week.

Having said that Leon hasn’t done himself any favours and he needs to be doing something right next time to make sure the team he’s in doesn’t end up losing, otherwise he’ll get to face Lord Sugar again!

Table of contents for The Apprentice - Series 7

1. The Apprentice: Soupman cannot rescue the reluctant accountant, Edward Hunter
2. The Apprentice: Mobile apps that annoy and prolong stereotypes
3. The Apprentice: Savoy Hotels Top Hats, Cloches and Crushed Ice defeat Lord Sugar’s Apprentices

Lord Sugar points out that unlike a load of moaners out there anyone can do business, although it needs to be something you can deliver to your customers.

Task 1: £250 start-up business

The first task is to take £250, buy some produce, “add value” and sell to the unsuspecting public. And guess what Lord Sugar is looking for a return on his investment!

And of course the first 5 minutes is taken up with the candidates boasting about their abilities and job titles.  And you start to see those people you feel you’d rather avoid in business.

The candidates are put under pressure because they need to create their team names and elect a leader. Come on, how difficult can that be you may ask?

Melody Hossaini is made the leader of the girls team: Venture. She’s been taught by the great and good, including the Dali Lama? Over at Logic Edward Hunter is voted in as the team leader. Don’t these two realise that the first week the team leader always goes?

The Girls Team

One of the girls suggests that they should use as little money as possible! They obviously haven’t considered that when you invest you expect a  bigger return than your original stake. Whatever happens Edna is given the task of managing the cash and is very strict about it.

In the girls kitchen Melody exhorts her team to “cut like you’ve never cut in your life before.” Are the boys and girls using the same script?

The girls chop and slice and create little plastic bowls of fruit. Which they intend to sell at £2 per pack. They had wanted to create 500 of them, which would be a nice return. However, they only got enough stock for around 300. Could that be an issue for them as the most they can make from the fruit is £600, rather than the planned £1,000?

The girls have a permanent pitch at Euston station where there are a lot of people travelling into London. And their fruit salads seem to go down very well with the commuters. Unfortunately the vegetable pasta that the girls made just doesn’t hit the spot. Mainly because they don’t start selling it until well after lunchtime! Rather than do the salad first they should have made the pasta and set it to stew whilst they made the fruit salad – organisation lacking a little I fear.

The Boys Team

Back with the boys, Edward suggests soup, “keep it simple and although they may not come back they won’t be sick! Like an idiot Edward says he doesn’t need to talk about margins all he needs is to spend the £250, mash up the stuff and sell it! The boys decide on orange juice and tomato soup. They buy 1,400 oranges (16 boxes at £9.50 per box). Which leaves £40 to buy the soup ingredients and means Jim Eastwood (who looks a definite finalist) has to go off and charm the vegetable suppliers. Finally Jim manages to do a very good deal on tomatoes, peppers and onions and then tells the lads he’s with that they’re “going to make soup like they’ve never made soup before!”

In the taxi going to the kitchens where they will make their products Glenn Ward suggests to Edward that they need to set up a production line: “cut, squeeze, sieve and into the bottle”. My hopes for the boys begin to rise, but are dashed by their idiotic project leader who ignores poor Glenn.

Jim draws the short straw to manage the soup makers but organises them pretty well. Leon Doyle is put in charge of pressing the orange juice with two industrial strength juicers. Then one breaks down. It’s pretty clear that the bottleneck in the “production line” is the juice extraction. So everyone gets squeezing oranges, by hand! And because of the bottleneck the boys manage to miss the breakfast trade, when fresh orange juice would have gone down a storm. Finally after Glenn points out that they should be out selling Edward says that they need a team selling in 5 minutes!

Finally, the boys get out selling and their permanent pitch is Liverpool Street station, led by Jim and they manage to sell very well. The other boys, in theory led by Edward, go out and sell to offices. Although you don’t actually see much of Edward selling. Presumably he’s doing what he does best: “rolling with the punches.” It’s also very, very clear that for some reason Edward doesn’t believe in having any plan.

Into the boardroom

When Edward says he appointed Jim to the soup supremo role Lord Sugar immediately christens Jim the “Soupman.”

Edward has a strange strategy, that just doesn’t make any sense. When Lord Sugar said that Edward was trained at a leading accountancy firm Edward bafflingly said “Don’t fit the mould.” What on earth does he mean? Are all accountants the same? Certainly not from experience.

Melody for the girls and she told us that she had a style of leadership which definitely takes into account other peoples opinions. Lord Sugar pulls the girls up for only spending £170 when he’d invested £250. The girls praised Melody’s team leading, however she didn’t look that brilliant to me. She certainly managed to annoy Edna several times. Plus she didn’t use all the money when she could have sold many more fruit pots.

The Results of the £250 Task

And so to the results…

Boys made £339.20 on the juices and £92.93 on the soup giving a grand total of £432.13.

The girls made £37.28 on vegetable pasta and £555.05 on their fruit pots. So the girls were clear winners of the task.

The Firing

As Lord Sugar points out the boys could have made 470 bottles of orange juice with the oranges they bought, instead they made 156.  Edward chooses Gavin and Leon to return to the boardroom with him. I really couldn’t see the logic of his choice of Gavin.

In fact when he explains the reason he chose Gavin it was because he had weakly put himself forward as the project manager. How on earth did that impact on the task? The answer obviously, was that it didn’t.

As Lord Sugar pointed out Edward hadn’t used his important accounting skills. So it’s bye, bye Edward.

Was the right Apprentice Candidate fired?

Even after being fired Edward continued to roll with the punches. What did he do wrong? Firstly, he didn’t plan anything. He claimed it was in his head but I’m not convinced. Secondly, other people led the team at different points during the task, so he didn’t maintain a grip on the team. Plus he wasn’t evident during the selling part of the task.

As Edward rightly identified the task went wrong during manufacture.

They should have made much more orange juice.

If they’d made and sold 470 bottles of juice they would have been much more likely to have beaten the girls. After all if they’d sold 60% of 470 bottles at their original £2 they would have made £552. That leaves them to sell the rest of the orange juice at, say, £1 per bottle giving £188 which would comfortably beaten the girls without even including the soup takings.

However, the reason the task went wrong at the manufacturing stage was that Edward had failed to plan the production line. And had probably been instrumental in the juicers breaking down by asking Leon to get the maximum amount of juice out. Also, he demonstrated zero leadership ability throughout the course of the task. Simply telling people to get on with it is not leadership.

So, to my mind Edward was the right candidate to go.

Table of contents for The Apprentice - Series 6

1. The Apprentice: Bangers bring out the “wurst” in the boys
2. Apprentice bitching and beach accessories
3. The Apprentice bakers make a cake of themselves

The Apprentices swan off to Heathrow where Lord Sugar gives them their latest task.

To design, produce and pitch a new beach accessory.

Synergy get their towels on first

Stella English is put in charge of Synergy. And she has no problem whipping the team into shape.  Meanwhile over at Apollo Laura Moore bleats that she’s the best to lead the task.

Jamie Lester comes up with a towel with an integral cool box pillow. Which seems to be the only thing the team can think of. Later the designer points out the issue with this product – people will pick the towel up and everything will go flying.

Part of the boys team is despatched to Bognor, oops no, I mean a “beach in Southern England.” En-route Alex comes up with some ghastly names for their towel with integral cool box. And even spells the ridiculous brand name Cuuli he invents for the team!

When Alex gets to the beach rather than asking whether the product they’ve thought of is something that would interest people he goes off into asking about the name and the logo design! Branding, why on earth would that be important with a prototype product when you don’t even know whether the product is attractive to the market.

Marketing the Cuuli

Then Apollo get onto the poster design and the marketing.

Firstly, given a choice I’d change the name! Equally, I’d think of a better product.

Anyway, the boys snigger like little school boys and decide to railroad Stella into being the swim-suit clad model for the marketing for the towel-cool box.
The boys are disappointed that they don’t manage to find a bikini. They do discover a little top and shorts for Stella and she agrees to model the product wearing them.

The final poster is alright, the picture having been taken by Alex who’d taken great pains to make sure the towel branding was in-shot. Normally an essential thing, but I just find Alex annoying, so it annoyed me.

Presenting the Cuuli

When the boys present the Cuuli they go on about how “cool” the Cuuli is. And at the end of one of their  bland pitches a buyer points out it’s about as stylish as a rolled up towel on a beach can be. Which to put it bluntly has a zero coolness rating.

The boys follow the girls pitch to Kit2Fit. They claim to be thinking of the extension to the Cuuli brand – baby Cuuli – please, give me strength! Although Kit2Fit do express some interest.

Apollo bring a book to the beach

Laura amply demonstrates her abilities as a great leader by talking over her team members attempted contributions, like a beach book reader. Which, obviously, is the one they eventually choose.

When the girls sub-team descend on the beach everything they try and come up with as a product is met with disinterest.

At least Laura’s research team actually ask their subjects whether what they’re thinking of is something they’d use. Then they suggest a foot-glove to protect your foot from hot sand – hello? Isn’t that a shoe, or maybe a flip-flop!? Paloma Vivanco says that she’s worried they haven’t come up with an idea. Really? What a surprise, and they even have a product designer on their team.

Finally they decide to have lunch which is when Laura rings them in desperation as the design for whatever they’re coming up with is needed soon! No ideas, of course which seems to throw Laura into even more of a panic.

Creative product design is missing

Initially Laura’s team suggest the “done before idea” of a waterproof case for valuables. When the designer points out it’s been done before, Laura and her team start struggling to think of anything else.

Finally at the eleventh hour Laura plumps for the book reader suggested right at the start by Joanna. And as a consequence the team have minutes to actually design it.

And because they only had a few minutes to come up with the design when the product arrives the next day it looks very flimsy and worth about ten pence. The girls struggle to put it all together, because it has 8 parts!

Pitching the beach reader: Book-eeze

World Duty Free is the girls first pitch. Where they manfully place their box of sand on the table for the book stand to the bemused stares of the buyers. The buyers manage to get arguments going yet again in the team when they ask who thought of the idea for the Book-eeze And Joanna truthfully says she did.

Afterwards the girls decamp to Kit2Fit and manage to invent yet another new word: “comfortability”. Hurrah for the ultimate flexibility of the English language.

Finally and most amazingly of all at Boots Laura manages to side step getting an order for the beach reader by avoiding exclusivity with Boots. Think about it a major UK retail chain: major footfall for customers buying sun cream and beach stuff. Particularly as they’d said they’d like to help her make it better! Which looking at it anyone with half an eye can see it needs a re-think.

Back at the beach-ridden boardroom

So it’s back to the boardroom where Lord Sugar and Nick and Karren reveal the sales figures for the two teams:

World Duty Free didn’t place orders with either team. Kit2Fit ordered 100 Cuulis, for some weird reason! And finally Boots ordered nothing from either team.

It was highly probable that Boots would have ordered quite a few of the Book-eeze but as Laura had decided not to give them exclusivity they ordered none. That one decision lost Apollo the task and also gave them the dubious honour of being the first team to come back with zero sales for this type of task.

So Synergy won, almost by default as only Kit2Fit decided to go with their product.  The boys and Stella trot off to get golf coaching and then the arguments start at Apollo.

The girls get into a massive argument after Laura chooses Sandeesh and Joanna. Then after being called to order by Lord Sugar Laura changes her mind and asks

for Joy and Joanna to come in! Come on is she that wet that she changes her mind at the drop of a hat?

In due course, after pointing out that Joanna’s “passion” was disrupting the team Lord Sugar fired Joy for no contribution.

Was The Apprentice Firing Fair for Joy?

From what we saw during the task Laura came across as a completely incompetent project manager who couldn’t actually take decisions. So in reality I would have sacked Laura.

That said, I can also see why he fired Joy. After all you really don’t want to have people who don’t say much, or sit back and don’t contribute.

So whilst I can see the point about firing Joy, Laura should have gone as she appeared totally incapable of making decisions quickly enough or even controlling a team.

Table of contents for The Apprentice - Series 6

1. The Apprentice: Bangers bring out the “wurst” in the boys
2. Apprentice bitching and beach accessories
3. The Apprentice bakers make a cake of themselves

The Apprentice music wafted to my ears and I ran to the TV to watch my first fix of The Apprentice.

Every time the a new series begins I seem to be asked whether I think it’s a valid business programme or simply entertainment . And at last I’ve found the answer.

Everyone is different. Some will see valid business points in it, some will think it’s entertainment, some will hate it and others will be disinterested. And I know for me it does have valid business lessons and is also massively entertaining. And yet, everyone needs to decide for themselves.

Anyway, onto the first episode of series 6 Apprentice!

Firstly we have to sit through candidates telling us how supremely gifted, charismatic and super intelligent they are. Good news because you absolutely know that they are going to be shown wanting in each of those departments.

The greasiest words come from  Stuart Baggs (Isle of Man telecoms company owner) who claims that “everything I touch turns to sold.” It might be useful for him to consider the fate of King Midas who had a similar touch.

Investment banker Stella English has the look of someone who will succeed at this extended job interview. Let’s see, eh?

The item of the day is to meet Lord Sugar at midnight. Timed so they have the privilege of staying awake all night and well into the next day as they’re assigned the “make and sell your own sausages” task.

On the face of it how difficult can this task be? Well of course the candidates proceed to make it difficult…

Before they get started there’s the angst of deciding team names and dancing around trying to avoid being the project manager. The boys decide to call themselves Synergy and the girls quickly decide on Fusion. Joanna Riley (cleaning company owner) puts herself forward to take the poisoned chalice as the first team manager for Apollo. Dan Harris (sales director) slams his palm down on the table and claims and wins the leadership of team Synergy.  And the first thing Dan does is jocularly place himself in a very bad position by saying he’ll run the team and the rest will do all the work. Talk about setting yourself up for a fall!

For regular students of the apprentice you’ll have noticed that buy it as cheap as possible and sell as much as possible really works well in this sort of task. So the boys decide to do exactly that. The girls also plan to make low meat sausages. Then the girls sensibly consult the butchers at Smithfield meat market to see what they think. It makes them decide to significantly up their meat content. Especially as one of their number points out that they really should listen to what the experts are telling them. Poor Nick Hewer is baffled that they change their minds and moved from keeping it to the simple banger to the gourmet sausage.

Anyway, the girls buy more meat and within short order leave Smithfields. Meanwhile as Dan hovers in the background the boys are chasing the prices for their meat.

Apollo gourmet sausages sell

The girls pay a lot of money  for their meat and come up with their 3 different sausages: Pork and cider, lamb and mint and chicken and chilli.Joanna allocates the tasks to her team and supports them as they learn to operate the sausage maker.

Unfortunately their lack of experience means they make sausages that are too big. The result is that the cost of a tray of sausages is something like £2 more than it should be, as our two bankers Stella and Katie correctly point out.

With their inside knowledge of bankers and now gourmet sausages the girls choose the city and Leadenhall Market for the sale of their products.

Unfortunately the girls didn’t seem to think to cook some sausages firstly to try themselves, so they could talk honestly about their wares and secondly to attract the punters with the lovely smell of frying bangers.

Once one of their prospects ask if they’ve tried their own sausages they decide to get the griddle going to cook some. A miracle occurs, they start selling some!

After a while Joanna sends some of her team to local restaurants to get some bulk deals. However, rather than sending hot sausage samples she sends the uncooked articles that nobody can try. No chef will buy something they haven’t tried.

The team capture a chef and bring him back to  sample the sausages. This a cue for Joanna and the Blonde Bristler to have a set-to about who should close the deal! As Joanna says, it’s been noted who got the chef to come in and she really wants the team to go back out and sell more sausages as soon as they can. The Blonde-Bristler hisses that it’s all about “PROFESSIONALISM.”

Lovely, pointless and makes you wonder about some of the people who end up on the Apprentice.

The Blonde Bristler manages to negotiate the sale of 20 packs of sausages, nominally priced at £6 per pack (total £120) for £45 even though she’d kept asking for a higher price! Those sausages were actually sold well below cost. Which is a danger you can face if you desperately want the sale.

The net result is that the girls did manage to sell al their sausages.

Dan is a hard taskmaster at Synergy

The Synergy team gets a lot of flack from Dan, with his constants calls to work faster!

The boys  chose the cheapest possible banger, possibly a good strategy. The downside is that they need lots of rusk and as a consequence lots more liquid. Liquid they fail to add in. Despite requests for people to check the mix consistency.The end result is they manage to jam up the sausage extruder with dried mixture.

It’s almost enough to put you off sausages for life!

Once the mix is corrected the white, limp sausages start churning out. That’s it I’m off sausage for life.

All this time Dan works by wandering around, arms folded doing nothing but interfere.

With the sausages are sorted they’re loaded up and the lads head off to Portobello Market. They start by selling their wares at £3.99 per pack and £10 for three packs. At least they have the sense to cook some of the sausages to get a nice smell drifting towards their potential victims.

Baggs of sales psychology

Stuart Baggs demonstrates the psychology of selling, badly. Plus he’s a sore loser if someone doesn’t want his wares. When’s he’s rightly pulled up by Jamie Lester over his selling style he simply says he’s sold the most, with the unvoiced point “if you can’t do better yourself you can’t tell me anything.” Not a very useful attitude in being part of a team or running a team. Interestingly team leader Dan didn’t pull Stuart up, in fact he was conspicuous by his absence.

Random sales attempts

Part way through the day Dan suddenly decides to split his team into two and take one half with him to search for other nearby outlets for his sausages. Does he have a clue as to who to sell to? Of course not, this is “idiot project manager” mode on the Apprentice. He goes to flats and pushes bell to see if people want to buy! However, for some reason Dan decides to start charging 90p per sausage. Is he mad? Rubbish looking sausages and paying 90p for the privilege, unlikely I feel. Certainly the publican he tries to get to buy some is slightly flabbergasted by the price.

Finally Dan returns to the market and in true army style decides to do a stock take – because, that’s doing something!

All the way through the day we keep cutting back to Alex Epstein forlornly trying to think up marketing phrases to encourage people to buy their bangers. He looks like someone who’s going to fail big time as project manager.

Once the stock-take is done Dan puts the doctor (Shibby Robati) in charge of selling to a chef. Who happily insists on paying £50 for 21 packs, despite the doctors’ insistence that she takes it at £60, “take it or leave it.” In reality that number of packs should bring in just over £80, so hanging out for more money was important . And he’s going to have to brush up on his sales technique as desperation doesn’t make it easy to sell and very easy to buy.

Back to the boardroom

Apollo took £860 and had costs of £538.84 which gave them a profit of £321.16. Synergy took £593.33 and spent £287.43 which meant a profit of £305.90. So the girls won by a whisker. So if the boys team had been slightly better at selling the “buy cheap meat” option would have worked for them, as their turnover was £266.67 less than the girls and their costs were £251.41 less.

Still despite the initial mistake of not using the griddle the girls deserved to win the task.

Once Lord Sugar brought the boys back in for an in-depth analysis Dan was trying to fight his corner. Lord Sugar kept musing that Dans day job was as a sales director. Yet he’d got precious little sales.

Old Baggy (Stuart Baggs) got knifed and his sales performance was called aggressive and Karen Brady definitely thought it put people off. It prompted one of his team to observe that what he did was “cringeable” ( a word I hadn’t realised existed before now).

Choosing the sacrificial apprentice lambs

When asked Dan chose to bring Alex and Stuart back to the boardroom. Both good choices.

Lord Sugar asked about the Old Baggy aggressive style and Stuart bleated that he would look to address criticism. Hmm, a bit late in the day after he’d already been pulled up by Jamie.

Alex just doesn’t appeal when he talks and I found his continual emphasis with gesticulations irritating. If he can’t learn how to sell he’s going to go fairly soon.

Finally Dan is pointed to and Lord Sugar fires him.

Was the sausage task firing fair?

In reality after the firing Lord Sugar pointed out that he’d probably preferred to have got rid of Stuart and Dan. So Stuart was lucky to stay. I felt the same way. And as Dan’s lack of ability to manage was the root cause of the project failure he was definitely the one to go.

He hadn’t picked up on the approach Stuart was using to sell. He hadn’t allocated tasks properly during the sausage making and he hadn’t checked the most important thing on the manufacture – the mix consistency. He also had no strategy for the roaming team to go out and sell sausages. Plus he’d acted in an arrogant and complacent manner all the way though the task and in the boardroom.

Whilst we enjoyed the Junior Apprentice I think there’s a little more depth to the adult version. Or, maybe I’ll be proved wrong over the next few weeks?

Just so you know I’ve shown the boys and girls teams, assuming of course that they start with single-sex teams. Who knows?

So ladies first, and they are from left to right, Laura Moore, Melissa Cohen, Paloma Vivanco, Liz Locke, Stella English, Joy Stefanicki, Sandeesh Samra and Joanna Riley.

And then the boys (from left to right) are Alex Epstein, Stuart Baggs, Chris Bates, Dan Harris, Raleigh Addington, Shibby Robati, Christopher Farrell and Jamie Lester.

I wish them all the best of luck and pray that one or two of them have the brains to remember that they don’t have to take action immediately without thinking a little about what they’re trying to achieve. Or is that a silly thought?

Table of contents for Junior Apprentice - Series 1

1. Junior Apprentice: Cheesy Without Sir Alan Sugar?
2. Junior Apprentice Highlights Commonsense As a Key Business Skill
3. Junior Apprentice Make A Cake of Themselves
4. Junior Apprentices “Arty Farty” Task
5. Junior Apprentice Goes To Amsterdam

The junior apprentices excitedly descend upon Amsterdam in their latest task: the choice of products to pitch to companies back in the UK.

The apprentices get to see 6 Amsterdam designers and choose the two designers products they want to pitch to 2 companies chosen by Lord Sugar.

The teams both make their choice of products and unfortunately they both choose the city bikes as one of the products they want to pitch. Then ensues an extended negotiation which ends with Instinct in the form of Kirsty (project manager) and Tim getting the bikes and the doggy products, a doggy stroller and upmarket doggy bed.

Arun as project manager with Revolution get the comforters, cutlery and lights. Which you may note are all relatively low value items. That means high sales volume is needed to win the task.

Note that the bikes and doggy products are all high value items – which usually is a high risk/high reward strategy.

Pitching to the chosen buyers

Lord Sugar sets up 2 appointments for each team and both teams needed to make further appointments for more pitches. The appointments are with top stores House of Fraser and Libertys.

Arjun asks Zoe to do the pitch. Which she accepts reluctantly. There seems to be a fair amount of back-biting about project manager Arjun by Zoe and Emma, which continues later in the boardroom.

House of Fraser is the first one that Zoe pitches the comforter and mood lights to. The buyers suggest that the cost prices are too high. The team hadn’t thought to ask the designers for price breaks and whether they had any negotiation room. Plus given the hard time Emma and Zoe gave the designers it was unlikely they’d have budged on price anyway.

Arjun takes over the pitch and does the one to Libertys where the buyers seem quite interested in the comforter.

Meanwhile Tim and Kirsty present to Libertys first and Tim is given the poison chalice of pitching. The buyers like the doggy bed. The pitch to Libertys does not go at well.

Getting More Sales

Initially project manager Kirsty struggles to find doggy product buyers.  Although she does manages to sell some of the doggy beds and doggy strollers in very small amounts as the day progresses.

Arjun seems to be able to rattle up the sales of his products, as do Zoe and Emma. Mind you they are a lot less expensive to buy than the products sold by Tim and Kirsty. In the end Tim manages to sell 6 bikes after all day of finding no buyers for them.

Junior Apprentices Clever Clogs Head Back To The boardroom

Emma and Zoe put the clog in with Arjun as project manager. Lord Sugar points out that Revolution hadn’t asked for price breaks. Which meant they had mouths flapping when asked questions about prices.

Lord Sugar points out to Kirsty that she and Tim were really railroaded into choosing the high value products. Kirsty pointed out that they’d really wanted the bikes because, yes, they were going for the high risk, yet high reward strategy.

And so to the result. As usual it was drawn out and then suddenly the final sales figure of more than £39,000 in sales was announced for Kirsty and Tim (Instinct) completely blowing Arjun’s team out of the water. In fact as Lord Sugar said it was probably the best amount of sales they’d ever had in the boardroom.

Revolution Gets The Firing Finger

So Lord Sugar smiles benignly on Kirsty and Tim and they go back to the house. After much passing of blame by Emma in particular and also by Zoe onto Arjun Lord Sugar summarises:  Emma shirks responsibility for task success and shifts blame to anyone handy. Zoe on the other hand is very much of the “do it my way or it’s the highway” school of team membership. Arjun has been caught been a rock and a hard place with the two of them.

Arjun is told that he will make the final, I think over the last 5 weeks he’s shown he deserves to be there.

Finally Emma is told that whilst she is qualified and Lord Sugar is convinced she’ll do very well she’s fired.

That leaves Zoe as the last one for the final. And by the way that ridiculous red lipstick is really annoying me, so she has to go.

Was The Firing Right?

I’d wanted Emma to go for some time as I felt that she’d said a lot but hadn’t really appeared to contribute to the tasks. And certainly as she became more visible as the number of contestants reduced it was clear that she wasn’t acting as a good team player and not really contributing in the best way.

The fact that she treated the designers like idiots and was quite rude to them spoke volumes as to her currently developed social skills. Although I’m quite confident she’ll be much better as she matures. At the moment it’s a large mark against her.

So Lord Sugar was quite right to fire Emma.

The task really showed the ability of the teams to research the background and marketing for each of their products. Tim in particular seemed to have the right figures at his fingertips. It also exposed any inadequacies in the presentation areas for the people pitching, in particular lack of research to see whether the company would be a good fit for their products – obviously a “must” in the real world.

Table of contents for Junior Apprentice - Series 1

1. Junior Apprentice: Cheesy Without Sir Alan Sugar?
2. Junior Apprentice Highlights Commonsense As a Key Business Skill
3. Junior Apprentice Make A Cake of Themselves
4. Junior Apprentices “Arty Farty” Task
5. Junior Apprentice Goes To Amsterdam

Tim's PM and worried

After last time Lord Sugar sweetly allows Tim to be one project manager. The Revolution’s manager is obviously Emma, giving her the chance to shine, or dig her own grave.

This time the motley band of junior apprentices meet at the David Beckham Academy. And the task is not about football but about art. Given that the adults struggle with selling art the junior apprentices don’t really have much chance.

The teams have to decide which two of the six artists Lord Sugar has chosen they would like to represent. Tim notes that he’s not used to this “arty farty” stuff.

Over on team Instinct Zoe has art running through her veins because both parents are art teachers. Which means the team she’s on is going to have a problem…

Why? well because obviously she then tells everyone who’ll listen that she knows all about art.

The artists they get to choose are photographers abstract artists and others. They include:

• Mike Melven with his neon “Stammer” sculpture and what looks like an eye chart
• Andy Taylor-Smith, landscape photographer
• Sarah Kate-Wilson, abstract artist
• Tom Lewis, prints and originals
• Jessica Layton, more arty stuff
• someone else

Instinct Come Out All Guns Schmoozing

Back on Instinct Tim tells the team they must schmooze the artists so they’ll want to work with them so Instinct can take their pick.  Now I know they’re junior apprentices, and Tim is a simple sheep shearer but surely both he and Hannah realise that Kirsty is completely single-minded about business. That means art is a means to an end. So she has no interest in the artists or the art. Which, of course, doesn’t go down well with said artists.

Maybe Kirsty felt a bit isolated because she came across as very abrupt. In fact in one meeting she had I’m not sure she even looked at the artist – of course great editing tends to help there too!

The result is that when Instinct and Revolution want one of the same artists, Tom Lewis, you can predict that Revolution and Zoe (great schmoozer) will win out over Instinct and Kirsty (complete non-schmoozer).

Anyway, in the end Tim and team end up with Sarah Kate Wilson and Andy Taylor-Smith with an exhibition “space” in the East End in Brick Lane. So the team manfully set-up their artists paintings and photographs. Although Kirsty bitches about Hannah acting like a wet lettuce and unable to do anything without following other people around.

Interestingly Tim has managed to get a bit of wriggle room in negotiations with potential customers by persuading the artists to reduce prices by 10% if necessary to get the sale. Whereas Zoe managed to ensure that she closed off the potential to negotiate by saying something like, “I suppose a discount would be out of the question?” The simple answer to that being…YES!

Tim does manage to do something right by ringing round to find people to invite to the exhibition. However, he doesn’t allow the other team members to get involved in inviting people and so doesn’t get the numbers he could have got.

Revolution Win Tom Lewis

Team Revoloution and Emma have been given a nice gallery in Pall Mall to exhibit their selection of art.

As I mentioned before Tom Lewis wasn’t really happy with Kirstys no nonsense treatment of him and his art so he goes with Revolution. Luckily his art in really quite affordable. For example £60 for a small print. Although Revolution does also get to sell the original too – for a lot more money.

Emma’s team are very, very slow to ring people to invite them to their exhibition. And the whole day seems to start quite slowly.

During the exhibition Zoe floats around being really annoying telling everyone that her parents are professional artists and taking over sales left, right and centre. And like a bulldozer Zoe is completely unaware of her impact on the team.

Arjun who has quietly got on with every task manages to make a very good sale (£3,000), without any “backup” from the artistic one, Zoe.

Back to the Boardroom

In the boardroom there is praise for both project managers, although quite a bit of annoyance is vented about Zoe taking over the task.

Surprisingly Revoloution make sell £6,005 worth of art and as I mentioned previously Arjun sold one piece for nearly £3,000.

Meanwhile Instinct managed a pathetic £2,247.30, despite Tim negotiating a 30% discount for one artist, because his paintings would be hanging with other great artists. I bet that buyer was rubbing their hands with glee!

Tim’s reckoned that the “right people” didn’t come through the door so they didn’t get the sales they should have.

Lord Sugar Fires the Right Apprentice

There are only 3 members of Revolution. Hannah didn’t do that much but she didn’t actively sabotage the task by not being nice to the artists like Kirsty had. Tim was guilty of not sending Hannah and Kirsty together to find the best artists.

In reality once they lost Tom Lewis they were on a bit of a loser anyway.

Could Tim have pulled it round? Possibly.

Anyway, I would have fired Kirsty as she needs to work on her relationships with other people. And in business it is all about relationships: building and maintaining them. I’m quite sure she’ll be great with relationships when she matures.

This time Lord Sugar fires Hannah and you can see why he made the decision. As I said before, she didn’t do much so Lord Sugar probably thinks she hasn’t got the fire in the belly he’s looking for! But I still would have given Kirsty the push.