Thats true but Debra, the competition, made a bigger mistake not correcting the price.

I think SAS has mucked up the task element of the show by picking the weaker people to be project manager in too many weeks to see who should go - it may be mathematical nonsense but I think the number of candidates means there are simply not enough tasks to test the weak and retest the stronger. The result is that I agree he/we havn't actually seen Kate or for that matter Debra managing enough and he knows more about Yasmina in that role although she might not have bothered as she managed last night with hardly a camera on her.

The standing out thing is relative - Debra has stood out for the wrong reasons rather often. Lorraine has stood out for the wrong reasons more often. Yasmina has made some big mistakes and doesn't seem to get Brownie points when she does do well. He has marked all their cards too - Lord Knows what James's card says he stands out for .

Kate's problem may be the other way around?She does stand out but standing out raises expectations and SAS expected her to sell in Liverpool and look great selling on TV. He looked disapointed to me that his obvious choice isn't shining rather than someone who is marking other people necessarily higher.

He's getting himself a very interesting problem. James could be company morale officer and Lorraine demoralising officer - but thats about all. He's got an interesting choice betwen Yasmina and Kate and hasn't really got a convincing argument to get rid of either so far.He may claim one lacks passion or a wide enough range of abilities but its not clear how his argument will hold up. Kate keeps on getting the big business calls right and would get along with anyone and actually has only failed when trying to sell Lorraine's choice of rubbish . Not sure that Debra has made any great business calls. Debra though wins on looking more determined and has passed Kate on selling and is improving on getting on with people. Ideally he should take both and Kate should manage Debra for him.

If Yasmina doesn't make it, he's also getting a choice of the two alternatives he has always backed off in the past - the obviously very bright female candidate and the obviously tough female.The interviews should be about each of them trying to be more like the other but the difference remains. He's thrown away his safety option of Howard so he has to jump one way or the other. Luckily he gets the period when they work for him after the interviews to work out which one he wants because frankly, as you say, there's not that much to decide on so far.

After a bit of number crunching:

Ignite made a total of £1376.73, rounded up to £1377 to make things easier.

Kate sold a total of £277, of the lower priced items. If she sold one cat/dog set, that means she sold around £260 worth of the guitars. That means she shifted around 17 units of them.

With Kate's numbers taken away from the others, they sold £1100 between them. I don't think there's any info anywhere to know how many they sold of each item, but it means they either sold just 7 jackets or 8 fryers. Of course it was probably a combination of the two. I'm sure with a bit more patience I could fathom out the most likely combo (!) but I haven't, I'm afraid.

So although Kate brought in less money, relatively considering she was selling the lower priced products (around 10-15% of the other products' prices), she shifted more units than Howard and Lorraine combined. In unit terms, she shifted more than double of the other pair.

Of course, we can't say that she would have sold more of the other items and vice versa, but in further consideration of the others having the best-seller items of their categories for the channel, I really don't think the blame for this task lies with Kate.

Mr Bojangles. You are right to say that Kate didn't fail the task.

Infact it was nobody's fault IMO - it wasn't about failing - it was about winning. And the reason Ignite lost was that Debra was a star at selling in that environment.

That's not the way I saw it. To me Lorraine made a fair comment about Howard being better, and Kate didn't much like it but kept her peace. I don't have a problem with that - I know I don't enjoy criticism either.

Then Lorraine started rubbing it in, and went on and on about it. About how Kate was going to kill Lorraine, was looking daggers etc. Kate says half jokingly that she will give dagger eyes if Lorraine keeps saying it, but Lorraine won't let it drop. Eventually Kate says Lorraine's comments about being disruptive, and by now it's hard to tell which comments she means. She probably doesn't mean the praise of Howard; I think she means how Lorraine exaggerated Kate's animosity.

Often using the internet is against the rules, so it could have been cheating. And there's no reason to think she did. Anyone who paid attention during the first series would know the jacket was a surprisingly good pick, and she could have got the fryer out of shear ability.

Also, I doubt they had the whole warehouse to choose from. Howard mentions that they had to pick a craft item, and that the cat was the only item available that was easy to demonstrate. So it sounded like they had a limited list of products to pick from.

Don't they ever get any new products?

"Sir Alan" cleverly planted the idea that it had gone to her head.


That was not taking the piss.

It make them seem cute and even suggested that you might want to buy both.

Actually, it was only Howard that said that. As I've said before, I don't see anything wrong with it anyway. They are on the same team, and should work together to win, but in the event of failure they will be rivals, fighting for survival in the boardroom. I'm sure they probably all note other team members mistakes for raising should it be necessary.

I thought Kate did well on this task, and I'm not sure why some people have had their opinion of her lowered. Her selected items didn't sell well, but Sir Alan plainly put this down to Howard and Lorraine's poor presentation, whereas the items she presented he put down to Howard and Lorraine's poor selection (and certainly I can't credit that even one person bought that awful cat!) This may have been unfair of Sir Alan but he does have access to the figures of how many these items would have been expected to sell.

On the subject of Kate's contretemps with Lorraine, this looked to me like Lorraine making a barbed remark about Kate's looks and Kate mentioning, not particularly unpleasantly, that she found this irritating. (I wouldn't mind betting that Lorraine has made quite a few comments of this kind),