He makes very few mistakes in my opinion. With a couple of exceptions, the best candidates end up as finalists and he usually picks the right one of them. (Michelle over Ruth being an example.)


Trump is vastly worse. He Mostly just fires whoever the team tells him to fire. He'll also fire someone who commits some tactical error in front of him, such as refusing immunity because of wanting to be judged on your performance. He's very poor at digging into what really went on. He fires the team leader so often, they now have to be bribed with immunity before they'll take it on.

Where the US Apprentice scores is in having better tasks, a better job at the end of it, and therefore better candidates. Trump is the weak point who spoils what could have been a great show.

Margaret is welcome to her opinion, but let's not assume she is right just because she's a woman. Let's also remember that by the time (the then) Sir Alan chose the winner, she and Ruth had been working for him for 8 months. His choice wasn't a moment of madness in the boardroom, it was long and considered and informed by seeing them both perform over an extended period.


There was no question of "preferring Syed to the job" since she could have had both. The job promised her turned out to be unworkable and they didn't have anything else. She hung around for 3 months, but by then she had worked for Sugar for 11 months, so she knew him and his company pretty well. And let's not forget she had the personal tragedy of a miscarriage in all this.


Kristina was evil. No comparison. I don't think anyone would employ her after seeing her at work.

That's true. I remember thinking he would win it.

Really?
I thought fans of the show considered her one of the 'good guys' of the series. Certainly compared to arch-villain Katie, which I suppose is no huge task.

I was rooting for Simon though so I was glad he won. Plus I didn't like how Kristina was very anti-Katie, but then suddenly teamed up with her hoping to gang up on Adam to ensure his departure.

Not saying Margaret is right for being a woman, but she has the vantage point of a woman, i.e. comparative immunity from the evolutionary attraction of a pretty woman for a man, so that in a borderline situation a man may give the candidate the benefit of a doubt.

Not questioning the competence of Michelle as proven in 8 months actually working in Sugarama (aware that she was one of 2 finalists on probation). The situation with Michelle was that Sugar believed she was dead keen to grow with Sugarama, but Michelle basically used Sugar to further her own ends. I think that was Margaret's point, not questioning Michelle's competence but her true agenda even as Michelle declared true dedication. Katie also had sworn unlimited dedication, until she suddenly said, well not really......

A clue of this was shown when Michelle was asked to choose her colleagues for the final. Without hesitation she immediately nominated the confrontational Syed who lived up to his reputation in Final week. So did she want the job more than she wanted Syed? Outsiders will not know the true details of her eventual termination and both sides are unlikely to let on so as to protect their own reputations. It was Michelle's stated belief that Sugar was better than sliced bread, and her decision that Sugar was not right for her or vice versa. Did she know that all the time? She was earning £160K before the Apprentice. She said she did not want the money, but the experience inside Sugarama. Perhaps she did get what she wanted, then goodbye Sugar.

The in-depth interview by 3 middle-aged men did not spot this fundamental mismatch. Maybe Margaret understood intuitively.

Nick pointed it out very clearly to Sugar at the interview round that Michelle wasn't right for the job. I think Nick is far more savvy than Sugar.

Tut tut.... I'm usually impressed with your voice of reason brangdon, but what exactly are you basing that opinion on? Selling lollipops after putting it in childrens hands? It wasn't very ethical, but evil?

When you look back at the show now with hindsight, you actually realise Paul had a better chance of winning than most of the others. He may have been younger and with less experience than Michelle, but he could have been the more mouldable. He probably did have a wider range of skills than Ruth did - he was a good PM and as well as a good salesman. Had he played his cards right in the interviews, it could all well have been a different story. And it would have been satisfying for some to see that cocky little **** slaving away in computer disposal!

I do think Michelle was a credible candidate - but another thing you realise with hindsight is that her competition for the job wasn't as strong as it seemed at the time - that helped in winning. Just have a look at the rest of the S2 final five.

Ruth Badger - 2nd. I liked her, at the time and now, but even back then there were concerns that she wasn't a team player and was too focused on selling. That certainly affected the final decision, and watching the series back you realise that because of that she didn't really have a great chance of winning.

Ansell Henry - 3rd. Very nice guy, good salesman, rubbish PM (the car sales manager certainly thought so) and somewhat out of his depth now and then. Not a bad candidate, but not a good one either. Couldn't and didn't win.

Paul Tulip - 4th. See above. Screwed up big time in interviews.

And Syed - 5th. Way too unpredictable and unmanageable. Flashes of brilliance, but there was never any way he could win.

Other S2 candidates - Rubbish to Average.

Comparing that to the Final Five in other series, I actually think that if the other semi-finalists had been of a better standard, Michelle would probably have been dismissed as James Max was - as someone already having a decent salary and a lot of experience who would not have got much out of the job on offer. Imho, at least.

Sheila Graham the Hollywood columnist who in her own time as glamour girl had been through the rounds, said she was astounded how otherwise highly intelligent men get twisted round a pretty woman's little finger. Sheila said she could not understand it, she said she wanted to scream.

Sugar, Lady Sugar and Nick all conceded that the Sugar venture into Tottenham chairmanship was a failure which backfired badly. Could it be that Sugar's business savvy was overruled by his boyhood blindspot about leading a soccer club as if it was a business? By the way how is Karen doing now with Birmingham FC?

OK, I used some hyperbole for brevity because I didn't want to turn this into a thread about Kristina. Her machinations with Adam and Katie were another factor. (Ie she allied with Adam to bring down Katie, kept it secret from Katie that she'd done so, then allied with Katie to bring down Adam. She seemed to have few scruples.)

Ruth wasn't even that great at selling. On the TopShop task, when the boss turned up and wanted to spend £100, she sold him something cheaper. She should have tried to sell him something more expensive instead - he'd probably have gone for it. On the car task, she sold a lot of cars, but didn't push the extras which is where most of the profit was.

She wasn't really a one-trick pony, but she did make mistakes in other areas too. On the advert task, she didn't pay attention to the client brief and ended up making a very good advert for the wrong product. Huge mistake.

It's hard to assess her beyond that, because she was usually on the same team as Michelle, and it was hard to tell which of them was more responsible. When they were on different teams, Ruth invariable lost. So Ruth had 3 wins to Michelle's 7, excluding the final.

I don't get why people rate her so highly. She was good, but not that good, and Michelle was better. Ruth's post-show activities were not especially edifying either. She appeared on Big Brother's Little Brother, got her own TV programme, and generally went the media route.

In a funny sort of way I think Ansell might have been a better choice than either Michelle and Ruth as the apprentice. He wasn't nearly as good as either of them but much like Lee he was willing to work and was good with people whilst not being the sharpest tool in the box and therefore more likely to stay on with Sugar longer term than either of the girls who both obviously saw it as a stepping stone.

My own impressions of that series was the Michelle made fewer mistakes than Ruth overall. Reading a blog written at the time, he rated Michelle and Paul above Ruth for most of the time. Ruth being loud and complaining, probably got more airtime than the quieter Michelle. That might account for the lasting impression she made on the audience.
http://www.greaterprofitsguaranteed.com/apprentice.html
The quality of the candidates don't impress him much either, something Sugar moaned about later. I think the latter saw the whole thing as a bit of a failure/mockery and prefers to put that one, and so Michelle too, behind him. Pity he can't do it in a more gracious way, but he's not like that is he?

Ruth wasn't responsible for the card advert being for the wrong thing. Ansell and Mani gave her the wrong info. The former held his hand up and apologized to her.

There is a bit of the Cult of the Badger. Adrian Childes probably started it as she's a gift to cheap TV. She does do a lot of management consultancy, it's not just media. But the TV fame does skew how good people think she really is.

For me, Michelle was the right winner. Might have stayed longer working for Sugar but for unforeseen events and her not being the doting pushover he was expecting. I don't think any winner since has had that steel strength inside them. Nor any finalist apart from Kristina.

If Kristina got the job she would not have chosen to have a baby immediately. There are such things as contraceptives for the thoughtful and determined.

Accidents happen too. 'There but for the Grace of God' is the saying.

I don't get all this chose child or career. Many do both. Quite a few business women cite their children as the major reason for wanting to do well. Kristina for one or that one with the dairy free deserts (Worthingshaws?) recently on Dragon's Den.

Exactly, Kristina combined career with motherhood and would have done so if offered the Apprentice job. With her uni son in the audience at the You're Hired show, Kristina said "This one is for Kristina" meaning the time was ripe for Kristina to put career first.

Katie had two young daughters in the west country whom she would not leave in the care of grandparents. She knew the Sugar location deal from the start, so why did she do everything humanly possible to bump off opponents when she never wanted the job? She never even checked out with her parents whether they could spend time with her daughters. Except to gain national TV exposure -- which she later exploited, no doubt according to plan, playing pantomime villainess.

As for pregnancy and accidents, a fair point. Any motorcycling, rock-climbing, skydiving bungee-jumping male candidate also comes with the risk of 6 months absence from the office.

You could equally argue that women tend to be more suspicious of pretty women for equal evolutionary factors. Or you could argue that all the winners have used the job for their own ends, and if they could, moved on. Or you could question why Ruth wanted the job and if she would have stayed.

I can't see the last argument at all. There were only 6 people to choose from according to wikilore and Syed isn't obviously worse than the alternatives and better for most tasks. I would never have taken Jo and Tuan, and her team had gone further and won more as PM than the equivalents on the other side. Ansel and Jo had never been a winning PM and Tuan's record, even with one win, was generally poor.

I disagree. She was project leader. She was responsible for steering the team in the right direction. That's the core duty of the PM role. If the verbal client brief was important, she should have attended it herself. If the written brief was sufficient, she should have relied on it.

Fair enough, nobody is without a private agenda.

Is one woman better at objectively spotting danger and failure in another woman candidate, before the observer knowingly goes on to make a decision pro or anti for unrelated personal motives?

Or is a man so distracted by pretty face and curves he cannot disentangle objective observation from animal attraction?

As for staying on in Sugarama, hopefully a truly outstanding candidate who proves himself would have been given opportunities for rapid promotion though the £700-million empire before he legitimiately comes to feel undervalued so that he leaves Sugarama. But some of The Apprentice candidates were using the programme like some Blind Date applicants used to do -- for TV exposure.

I take your point, and you're right. Identify the most important parts of a project and make sure you are always dealing with them. Like James last year with the Death-Box, the product is the task winner, stick with it. Or if you like the foundation everything then controls all the following choices, eg. Kate and chocolates. Like Ruth he trusted those he thought could do it not to make a mess of it. If it's just listening and questioning a client on the brief, you'd have thought two reasonably competent people should gather enough. Two allows for differences of views. Unless one convinces the other in the car. Yep, you must go yourself.
See, naysayers, the Apprentice does teach business lessons with examples.

His daghter in law is called Michelle does that mean anything!

That's his ex daughter-in-law, but he still has one called Michaela.

Its never happened though has it? Most come, they do a job thats at best tailored to their strengths (usually selling to various markets so they have to look like the market or be able to function in it) and then they leave. I wouldn't be very excited to win and then spend my time doing something like selling the advertising screens that sit in my GP's surgery - off most of the time and showing innane adverts saying eat a vegetable its good for you.

Is that because you can't just take in people from outside and a TV show and rearrange the office promotions expectation round them ? Or because he just wants to do the TV show and its more about him?

Hit the nail on the head! He's never looked for an apprentice anymore than Trump has. He looks for a good employee that if the worst comes to the worst won't be any worse than someone they would employ by normal methods. Trump looks for someone to use for PR purposes almost solely (there have been exceptions).

Says something http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oc...ugar-interview

Sugar, and others, have said that fitting in someone on 100k (for the first year) is difficult on those around them. Must be difficult for the winners too. You'd feel a real need to prove yourself and earn the respect of your collegues in a way you wouldn't normally. Yasmina yesterday gave a presentation to a major European expo on behalf of Amscreen. So can't be doing bad there compared to the others.

As for moving on. Historically that's what a normal apprentice would be expected to do. Having learnt, they set up on their own. It changed since the Industrial Revolution as that created large companies with a career path. Though not necessarily in the same company eg railway engineers.

Amscreen aren't directly responsible for the content shown. That's handled by a seperate company, Digicom. But I agree the stuff isn't that imaginative. However even clever VW adverts would get irritating seen several times a day, every day.

Polite comments In bold above.