Obviously not practical as the editing takes some time and he would have to see exactly what we see or it would not give a fair indication of what he was basing his decision on.

But how different would orders of firings have been if he could have seen the loathsome and unhelpful behaviour of some of the contestants rather than basing his opinon on snippits of information from N & M and what he sees in the boardroom?

But then he would be completely at the mercy of the producers/editors, and I am sure he does see some footage.

I would have thought Nick would advise him to get rid of Ben, but Paula didn't have a reasonable grasp of the costings, and she should have done.

Nick Hewer was on GMTV last week, and he said that Sugar does not see any of the footage at all before he decides who goes, and that it is based purely on what Nick/Margaret tell him, and what happens in the boardroom.

That's because he's only got an AMSTRAD telly, and the picture has gone all purple and fuzzy and the power switch broke off as soon as it was out of warranty.

ROFLMAO!

Agreed, except I am sure he also gets feedback from other production crew. Generally the teams split into 4, and N&M are only 2 people, and it would be grossly unfair if whoever isn't with N or M got ignored.

And I think it would change the result if Sir Alan did get to see the footage we see. I think Jenny C would have gone instead of Shazia on the Laundry task last year, for example.

I don't know; he's never given any indication that he thought he got that wrong.

Sir Alan indicated on the You're Hired show at the end of Series 3 that if he'd seen then what he'd seen now, Katie Hopkins would have been out sooner. And at the end of Series 4 he admitted he didn't know what he'd ever seen in Michael Sophocles.

Siralun is going to end up with the Candidate that HE wants - bearing in mind that his Company has a certain amount of credibility at stake of he choses someone totally unsuitable - i.e. Katie or Michael S.

Remember, he doesn't pay the winner - that comes out of the production costs, but he DOES have credibility at stake.

It will be interesting to see if Lee keeps on with Siralun when his year is up. Those who do say get their salaries "adjusted" then.

JJ

We don't see everything that goes on though, thanks to editing.
Nick and Margaret do, so perhaps he feels that they can give him better feedback.
He would have to see all the footage, uncut, to make a fair decision.

I agree - we do not see everything that goes on - we only see what the producers want us to see and they edit it in a certain way to make us think certain things e.g. Noorul is a rubbish leader.

I think Alan probably has a lot more information than we do to make the right decision as Nick and Margaret get to see everything that goes on and report back.

He did see the footage from the QVC task a series or two back and that was quite funny, so it isn't neccasarily a bad thing. That seemed to be a one off tho because it fitted into the story.

Nick and Margaret don't necessarily see everything. In many tasks the teams split up, and Nick and Margaret can't be with both parts of the team all the time.

Does anyone really still believe that Sugar makes his decision unilaterally? The show is now so formulaic, with the panto villain kept in untill close to the end, with a blandly nice one winning, it just wreaks of producer intervention.

In the early days that would have been true, but now Sugar knows full well that these guys are wannabes, who see the experience as an exercise in self-promotion. They couldn't give a monkeys about the job. Any business person of decent calibre sees a £100,000 job as pretty mediocre. And this year's crop are essentially middle management fodder.

His reasons for firing people are often simplified versions of the synopsis someone has given him and usually are part of a bigger argument what went wrong. He jumps on reasons but isn't very good at gathering them or weighing them - bit like the student who understands two words in the question and writes what he knows about those 2 words. He then adds a heap of biases and gets rid of particular types before going for the safer and often duller person he ends up with.

Perhaps not, but they still see a damned sight more than we do.

I'm sure that's right (I was just responding to the question whether or not SAS gets to see any footage prior to the firing). I can't believe that anybody would think that the footage is not edited in a certain way. It is after all an entertainment show first and foremost.


I agree.

I really don't think anyone could call Lee (that's what I'm talking about) McQueen 'bland'.

Or particularly nice for that matter...

Oh no, quite a few people thought he was nice (or better).

Hmmm. The boardrooms take many hours, and I really see no reason to think that Sir Alan's take is more superficial than anyone else's. Quite the reverse. Nick and Margaret seem to have a lot of respect for him, and I don't think that's faked for the cameras. Whether or not you approve of him, he has achieved a lot, which he didn't do by being other people's puppet.


My belief is that he isn't always good at articulating them. As a boss, he doesn't usually have to explain himself. He can just go with a gut instinct, and he's usually right. In particular, when he has to boil down his decision into a single-sentence sound-bite for the firing itself, the result can be a bit random. Eg of Karen s2 he said something like: "I don't need another lawyer - you're fired." but she wasn't fired merely for being a lawyer.

(And I think Jo would have been fired instead had he seen what we saw.)


I agree he has biases away from certain types (including lawyers) and towards certain other types (people like himself, eg Michael s4, Paul s1)

I don't dispute that. I was just pointing out that they don't see everything.

I think if Michael reminded me of myself, I'd have to contemplate suicide.

I think if they don't already, they should set him up an encrypted feed for him to watch on his laptop in between working. Doubt it would make much difference though, he seems every year to pin it to the person who should go before realising that there's someone else less entertaining and then trying to twist it to make them look worse.