Why did he interfere with proceedings? He's never done that before!

The show would have been a lot better had they only found out the mistake in the boardroom

I think he was just shocked that they had made such a stupid , basic mistake-ignoring manufacturing costs. It wouls have been better if they hadn't have been told until the end , maybe they found out when paying for the oil and the scene was staged?

Yeah, I wondered this as well. Would have been riots in the streets if their team had have won tonight I think...

You're quite right to be surprised about that. He broke one of the rules about filming, and what is revealed to the apprentices.

Want some proof?

Watch this clip from 1 minute in!

And the rules are shown where???

2 points: Nick didn't tell them until AFTER the process was irrecoverable, and - neither you nor I know what the rules are governing Nick!!!

JJ

Quite agree ^^^^^

He didnt say anything until it was too late to do anything about it - the only thing he may have done was flag up that they couldn't afford to give the product away..... as it was they did very well to only lose £68 or so at the end - they went a very long way towards recovering from the mistake.

The rules regarding Nick? Yes, you're right, we don't know. But that leaves us with the uncomfortable situation where Nick or Margaret are able to intervene by highlighing to the teams that they have made a mistake, which is assistance.
Nick pointed out the fault, and whilst it was too late for the team to stop the mistake being made, this certainly was not irrecoverable, as the team was then in a position to attempt to do something about it. Whether they adjust their prices, selling technique or whatever, they were made aware of a mistake before the task was over, which is wrong. Otherwise, where do you draw the line?

You've just given two answers to your flawed logic, all within a single paragraph!!

B-B

The clip is excellent, BTW - gives a good hint as to how they manage the production/design of the product. The Lush girl says the Prod Team were there for 2 months before the recording.

JJ

Precisely, when Nick flagged it up, I was thinking WTF? Without his input, they would have sold the product at a cheaper price and made an even bigger loss

And has anyone seen this product which already exists? Not exactly original afterall!

I know, but seeing Yasmina's face when she realised her clanger, and her classic 'sh**!!' was a great TV moment - followed by Nick's 'well, I'll leave that with you then!' Great to watch, but yes, it did seem odd that he gave input at that point.

I guess so, but I think an ever better reaction would have been gained by keeping quiet, letting them sell at whatever price, make good sales and think they have walked it, then to be told in the boardroom about their mistake.

By which time their losses would probably have gone into the high hundreds as they wouldn't have been aware of the error and adjusted their price to try and recoup - yes, it would have been good to see, but Yasmina's face at that point - and Kate's slack jaw was highly amusing! They would have had to rein in their reactions in the boardroom. This way, we saw their natural reactions, which I found highly entertaining!

I almost get the feeling that Nick was instructed to tell them. Part of their test will be to see how they react to adversity, and that was a huge hurdle to overcome, knowing that they were already around a grand in the red before they started selling! They didn't overcome it in the end, but the team's attitude was commendable - it would have been so easy to give up yet they didn't.

Also agree with the point made by others that, why, when they realised their error, didn't they bump up the prices of the soap to ensure they covered costs and made a decent profit? Good product to sell - clearly made with quality ingredients - I think they could have sold it for a much higher price. I think that was part of their test that they failed.

I wonder when they first produced it. The resemblances are remarkable (lol)

JJ

The thing with Nick ... they had to have him intervene. The task went badly wrong in production - either they had a choice to halt filming and go back, restart the tasks and lie to the viewer ... or they had to have Nick jump in and make the mistake obvious. The reason? The show is edited so there is a lot of dramatic tension, so if the winning team was so obvious from just a few minutes into the episode then the whole flow and format of the show would have been wrecked.

Very good point and probably the best explanation for Nick's actions. If they hadn't known, they wouldn't have had a chance to try and rectify and we would have known form the beginning that they were going to lose badly. And it was clear they were editing it to make us believe Nooral would lose and therefore be fired for being the worst PM since time began.

Plus it was the issue - either they really went for it and won or they lost because of this error. Also, there are some simple business points in thes eprogs and this was obviously one of them - watch the costs. You can see from James "stating the obvious" early on. Interesting (and typical) that the public sector person did not have a clue about costing - and why think that a salesman like Ben would know about costings? It was actually Yasmina's fault, but she had shown more potential in the earlier tasks.

The exact same thing happened with the 100 Chicken Pizzas, it was the quote of that series and did nothing to sway the result.

I think in all it made for a great entertaining clip, surely he deserves a massive wooden spoon for stirring that one up.

Thing is, maybe he has done it before and we just haven't seen it.
The other times just didn't make good telly.

I think this is true - I can't remember such a blantant tip off, but I do recall Margret pointing out how much time had been spent on discussion and that the team needed to get a move on in a previous series.

And on Radio 5 this morning they had people complaining that he should have intervened sooner and stopped them making the mistake in the first place!

Telling them also meant that Ben had plenty of time to think of what he was going to say viz a viz wriggling out of the costing issue. Had they not have been told they would have gone into the boardroom really chipper rather than defensive.

OK Smart Alec - I'll put my hands up to that one.... but as someone else said - we haven't really got any idea whether or not he and Margaret do alert them to mistakes because of the editing which goes on to create "good telly". Without him sayiing his piece - the viewers would have known that Paula & Co were on a hiding to nothing from that point on and there would have been no tension. Wasn't Margaret as good as yelling "NO! NO! NO!" duing Yasmina's task when she was sitting in the sales puitch with her head in her hands??

But just imagine what would have happened if that had been Noorul's team???

Paula's bunch had the get up and go to go out and sell like fury to try and recoup the losses - and it was a shame they didn't try to up the prices a bit earlier than they did.

I can't remember what the actual sales figures were but I'm pretty sure thay made more than Noorul's lot, and came close to getting into the black...

That's an excellent point, as it was we really weren't sure if they'd pulled it back or not, especially with James's deal at the end