http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s108/...-dewberry.html

Not really surprising, but this bit was interesting:
"[Picking Michelle over Ruth] is the only one where you could say that there is some regret," he said. "And the regrets really were very much that she decided that what my company had to offer was not for her. The reason Ruth wasn't chosen is another private issue."

It triggered numerous conspiracy theories in my brain, although it could just have been his way of stopping the person asking him about it further.

Hey Meggles, if I may be so bold

I believe the private issue is that he was shit scared of her and knew she'd have his job within a year

Hello rossy , yeah that could be it. She was pretty scary, though if someone was to ask me who the strongest candidate in UK Apprentice history I would probably say Ruth Badger.

Margaret has said since then that Ruth should have won, but I get the feeling that Lord Sugar won't say it because it would slightly question the credibility of the show. Saying HE made a mistake will just allow people to question his other decisions in the past and in the future.

It looked more like the hiring of Michelle was a 'private' issue, as he seemed smitten with her. Don't think I've seen sir Alan behave like that before or since.

Yes, he did seem to admire her a little too much.

Was it true that she got up the duff by Syed Ahmed and left only months into her employment on maternity leave?

Yep. I heard she was only employed by his company 6 months, but she spent most of that time on maternity leave.

When Siralun/Lord Sugar found out that she was leaving a higher paid job to come work for him he almost wet himself with glee.

It seems she miscarried so there is no little Syed running around.

I think he fell for the 'poor background, hard working, looking after her family' thing and became very protective of her.

After it all went tits up, he kept on saying things like 'don't think you can charm me with your humble background stories, you are NOT like me'...

I think he may have been referring just as much to Syed as well as Michelle when he said that in later series.

I think the fact that Michelle had already been very successful in her previous, self-employed job meant she felt she wasn't able to get much out of working for somebody else for a lower salary. Also, the "PC environmental disposal" company she was put in charge with wasn't profitable or practical anyway, so Sir Alan was also at fault for giving her a bad prize.

Whether Ruth would have been able to get more out of that prize, and would have been more comfortable in the company, is an open question. Sir Alan was concerned that she may have just been an exceptionally good salesperson, and thought Michelle had a wider range of skills.

And most of Michelle's other fellow contestants weren't too impressive, so she largely won because she was up against weak competition, with the exception of Ruth.

The general vibe from Alan Sugar since Michelle left is that he was very dissapointed with Series 2 - so it's no surprise that he would say he regrets hiring her.

I bet there is lots of things Sugar regrets that he didn't get to do with Michelle.

I'd say Michelle was stronger. As I am fond of pointing out, Ruth only won when she was paired with Michelle. When they were on opposite teams, Michelle's team always won.


Except he has admitted his mistakes in the past. Most famously Miriam in the first series. He let her go and kept Paul instead, but then phoned her up to apologise and fired Paul at the next opportunity.

Notice what he is saying here is that the "regrets really were very much that she decided that what my company had to offer was not for her." So not sorry she won, but sorry his company couldn't offer her enough to keep her.

Generally, the reason he doesn't cop to a lot of mistakes is that he doesn't think he makes them. Most of the time, even if I don't agree, I can understand and respect the reasons for his firings.

Michelle may have been very competent, but in my opinion as a viewer Ruth made much more of an impression.
Alot of people have said that Michelle seemed invisible until the last few weeks of the series.

Ruth's problem was that she wasn't really a team-player. She would generally outperform anyone on a one-to-one basis, but she couldn't drag her team along with her.


Well he may see a difference between one firing and choosing the actual winner at the end of the show.

Though I wasn't originally questioning his decision to hire Michelle, I was just curious as to why not choosing Ruth was 'a private issue' as he worded it.

Definetly agree about Ruth not being a good team player while being an exceptional candidate. It's often forgotten that in the same tasks she sold her best in, her team also lost - though that, again, was partly because the majority of the other S2 candidates were pretty weak. In the car selling task, even Ruth's sales skills couldn't save the team losing due to Samuel and Jo's non-performances.

He may have called her not being hired a private issue because he felt her indpendent nature would not have fit well in his organisation. Maybe he thought she would do better starting up on her own (which she has). Or maybe something happened during her trial run at work with AS that we don't know about.

Michelle certainly didn't seem like the more noticeable candidate, but she did perform solidly (apart from on week7), so performance-wise she was a sound choice.

In one of the apprentice specials (motormouths I think it was),while Margaret thought the Badger should have won, Nick said he thought that the best other alternative winner to Michelle would have been Paul Tulip, which I was surprised to hear. I suppose you could argue he might have got further If he hadn't screwed up his interviews and subsequent boardroom .

Although I think Ruth was better than Michelle, I think it's fair to say that Michelle did better than Ruth in the final task. I guess that was one of the things that influenced his decision.

Sorry. I have to say, I find that posts like this are way to often carted out on here. People make out Michelle spent the whole series milking her tough life for all it was worth, and that SAS gave her special treatment as a result. I know your post isnt the worst for it, but so many times people make out Michelle desperatly mentioned it at every chance she got to get a leg-up.

In reality, Michelle said or did nothing about it until asked in the penultimate boardroom, and even then was rather coy about her answer. He asks her if she treats her family, to which she replies "they get what they want" hardly desperatly flaunting her background like people suggest.

Michelle was a perfectly competent contestant, and got on with the job without being overly flashy or showboating. Ruth was probably superior to her, and based on ten weeks work deserved to win, but I totally understand the decision to hire Michelle. I'd much rather have someone like Michelle working for me than someone like Ruth, even if she was a bloody fantastic candidate.

Michelle was a better candidate than Ruth which is why he employed her over her rival. Sugar is basically now expressing regret because the decision didn't ultimately work out in his favour, both media and ego-wise...which is silly and childish on his part.:yawn:

totally agree with both posts

Paul Tulip? Sheesh, don't scare me. Couldn't stand him. I loved watching him get completely destroyed during the interviews. Thank heaven for Michelle if Paul was another option.

Ruth is my favourite candidate of all time, but even she has said that Michelle deserved to win. She's got her own career now anyway so she's not bothered.
That 'motormouths' show was a bit of a Ruth Badger love-fest Ruth had the closing words on it, and even the voiceover woman during the credits saying what the next programme would be said "Aw she's fantastic isn't she" or something like that lol

Well, people don't always pay attention. I noticed her in week 4, where she did the numbers on the food quantities. Specifically, I noticed (a) she had the numeracy skills to do the numbers; (b) she actually did the numbers, off her own bat; (c) she raised the issue in a timely way, while there was still opportunity to fix it; (d) she was tactful about it and didn't antagonise the PM. This was on the task where Alexa's team got the food quantities spectacularly wrong, with 100 chickens for 100 pizzas.

I also thought she did well in week 7. She looked bad, because she made a couple of mistakes and got stitched up by the editing, but if you look at the numbers you'll see she turned her team around: from being 25% behind in sales to nearly winning.


I'm curious too. I did notice Ruth did a lot of media work afterwards, appearing on BBLB, getting her own TV programme etc. But that's OK because she lost, and doesn't mean she was only in it for the media career.

I also felt that Ruth often wasn't that great at sales. Sometimes she did well, and sometimes she blew it. For example, in week 7, the boss turned up and wanted to buy something for £100, and she sold him something cheaper. A great salesperson would have sold him to something more expensive. As I recall, on the car sales task she sold more cars, but didn't sell the extras which was where the profit was.

I do think, although Tulip isn't remembered well (Like you and Claude I thought he was a puffed up ****), he was genuinely considered by the board to be a potential winner until the interviews - maybe even more so than Michelle. That was revealed when Sugar expressed surprise when the interviewers gave their verdicts on him, and when both Nick and Margaret defended him quite vigorously in the discussion afterwards. After all, he was the only S2 candidate to win twice as PM. His only downfall was that he couldn't handle himself in the boardroom. Sorry if I give you nightmares .

As for the Badger, I think while she was genuinely a strong candidate and worthy finalist, her mass appeal among the public tends to cause people to forget her failings as well as her strengths. Like you said, Motormouths didn't cover that side to her much, apart from the big cock-up she made right in front of Philip Green . So she probably wasn't a completely sound candidate for the job.

I think he went back on his word as I remember one idiot (think his name was Michael , not sure..) who kept surviving each week and the only reason was because Siralan warmed to him.

It's a shame that Dewberry was so useless! Yasmin became pregnant after only 18 months ish there I think. It's not the best advert for employing women of "child bearing age" but pregnancy is a part of life...

I think he didn't like Badger so couldn't see the point of hiring her. She was the best candidate that series , though. It's nice of him to acknowledge it

Whilst I agree with you about Micheal and partly about Ruth, no way can you say Michelle was useless. I, and probably many, would argue that she has shown herself to be very good indeed, prior, during and after The Apprentice. The main problem was she was offered a non starter of a job, which apparently she proved to the Amstrad board. Unfortunately there was nothing else available that suited her skills. Sugar has really now admitted that, by saying he regrets it didn't work out and was just one of those things.
He sounds like he wishes it had worked, but there you are.

As for Yasmina, why is everyone hung up on the idea that getting pregnant is the end of your career? To date, reading between the lines, Yasmina is doing very well there.
Ok, so she takes some time out. She's got a partner by all accounts so is he going to do nothing? Suddenly all that ambition is forgotten? Ok, Yasmina comes from a large family, and the extended one is huge, so children are to be expected. Yasmina is no hard case career only 'bitch', quite the opposite, soppy moo sometimes. But there are many women who manage a sucessful career and a family. Why pre-judge her?

You are right in that she did not flaunt, milk or even mention it and I nowhere in my post did I say she did.. But anyone who watched the episode where sir Alan asked her, could see that he was falling for her right then and because of it.
He then asked her again whether she was taking care of her family (as if he wanted to make sure that what he saw in her was as he wanted it to be to justify his feelings and diecision) and she said 'they get what they want' which could have been interpreted in another way than 'looking after them'.

I don't know if you notice body language, but Sir Alan almost seemed to fall in 'love' with her there, I don't think I had seen him llook quite as warm and caring towards someone else in all the series up to then.

When he was discussing the candidates with N and M, he said to Nick Ithat he had seen something special or potential (can't remember the exact words) in her from the beginning, which surprised me as up to that point I had not seen her do anything remotely interesting (low point was the special treatment in the ladies dressing room) and I had never seen him show any interest in her before as well.

In the last episode and when he presented her as his apprentice he looked almost infatuated with her, maybe in a fatherly kind of way.

I don't know how anyone could have missed this strange development.

Don't know if Ruth was the best all-round candidate of that series, but Michelle certainly wasn't!

He hasn't acknowledged it, at least not here. You are projecting something he didn't say, and which he probably doesn't believe.

Contrary to general opinion, and even LAS's own statements that he's not a touch feely type, I suspect he's quite a warm hearted and considerate boss. I'm not saying it's a case of simply scratching the surface, but there's no doubt that he likes to feel he is helping someone up the ladder, especially those who both need it and are up to it.