Is there a set fine for an item that wasn't purchased? I mean, is it possible that the guys could have won without buying any item at all, if the girls spent more than the fine?

So what is the fine based on? Seems like the penalty for not getting an item at all should be considerably more than the actual price of the item, so it's surprising that the boys won.

It was stated that the fine was the list price of the item plus £50.

Ah ok, so the girls must have overspent the total list price by at least about 150 pounds. Probably mostly due to the truffles ****up.

In combination with the boys going under list price in various cases.

Looks like the maths let them down again. If truffles are £2K per kilo, then 50 grams is 1/20th, so would have been £100. Laura starting at £200 was a sure fire loser and the owner must have been wetting himself trying not to laugh.

The girls were fined £50 for being late too. It didn't make any difference to the result though.

no, but you could say the tartan plus the late arrival made the difference, rather than the truffles.

it's about 10 things, not one thing.


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the other thing - they were critical of Jamie only getting 2 things - but on his own, that's about right.

1 buyer gets 2 things, 2 buyers get 5 things.

they should have given the lads a bit of a start really.

The owner clearly knew they had no idea how much they were worth, so he started at £270 to convince them they were getting a great deal when he rips them off

not really - that was trade, so he needs a mark up, and we know what a food mark up is -

also if he's michelin starred, they are going to be best quality.

the thing is - if they WERE only worth £100, then not getting them would have only cost them £150 - (£100 plus a fine) - and they would have been better not bothering.

wouldn't they be told what the base price was in the rules?

The entire point of the thing evaporates if they know the list price. They don't.

The girls were hopeless at haggling. You need to let one person take the lead, with the rest of the team acting as back up for the pitch if necessary. Two or more people chipping in their prices ruins it. It's like bidding against each other at an auction. At one stage in one buy one of the girls said £55 then Stella offered £57 before the seller had had a chance to respond. It was as if they were competing with each other to do the deal. Stella was clearly embarrassed by the idea of offering too low a price.

They were clueless. Who in the right minds would think they'd get a bargain buying food from a restaurant?

As far as I know rules that apply are

- Arriving late into the Boardroom earns a straight £50 penalty which is applied to the final total spent
- Missing an item earns a £50 fine on top of the value given already in the guidebook that also contains what each item is. Say for instance I had to get an item with a guide price of £80. If I missed the item on returning to the boardroom then I would have gotten a £130 fine.

When Selling, I know of these rules

- When selling a product FOR another group, you may not offer any form of exclusivity deal. However when you are selling a product made by the team, then you are free to offer any sort of exclusivity.

Also as far as I am aware for the show in general

- Contestants cannot use internet as a tool to search (I assume this is a rule as I find it strange its never done)
- Contestants are disallowed to use phone/email/text/post/whatever to contact friends and family to help them
- Adhering to local laws

There's one car and one phone in it . It doesn't matter much if its got two people in it. One just has to do all the work if there is only one - but two can't do more calls or visits.

Which is where Stella who knew the rough price should have taken control.

But you have to ask how they knew the price for that item and not the price for anything else.Without knowledge or the net or time to phone around , the only way to know was to ask someone who didn't have any but knew - and rely on them giving you the right price. That seems to be entirely dependant on luck finding the right person before going on to find someone else with the goods actually to sell.

That is totally correct and many people forget this.

The only possible way of maximising the extra manpower would be for one to be phoning around while the other is in the shop and I doubt that will be allowed.

Liz offered the £57 when she was with Joanna. Stella secured the £1 discount on the tartan!

You're right, the sub-teams are not allowed to separate. It's because everything they do must be on camera.

Hi James - I made this point in another string but was cut down so I'd be interested to know if this is the rule or not.

My point was that if £50 was the flat fee for arriving late, why didn't the boys just stay out as long as it took to get the remaining items? Obviously it didn't matter in the end but, had they, there's a good chance they would have actually trounced the girls given that £50 would have easily been consumed by the bigger savings they had already made.

I suspect the late fine may have been a sliding one. I'm pretty sure in a previous show Siralun (as was) berated a team for getting a lateness fine, whereas if they had skipped getting the item to get back on time they would have had a lesser fine.

I'm certain you're correct.

Otherwise, what's to stop a team who know they are going to be a couple of minutes late spending another hour finding an item?

It would be senseless to have a fixed penalty. (But as the people who design these tasks don't seem to be the brightest in the knives in the drawer that doesn't completely rule it out.)

That's not allowed, but it is allowed for one person to do research with the books while the other person makes phone calls.


Another major rule is that you can only buy from a place that gives permission to film. So there might have been a dozen vendors with truffles, for example, but if none of them allowed filming they couldn't be used. (This is part of what scuppered Karen in series 2.)

There are often other hidden rules. In previous years, the candidates had to sell an item as well as buy them, and then this was cut almost entirely from the broadcast programme.

Sometimes they can use the internet, sometimes they can't. They aren't allowed to mention The Apprentice or use it as a bargaining tool.

How did the girls manage to buy the board on the phone. How was that filmed, when they went to collect it. But it didnt show them bargaining for it.

Rule 1. It's not a freaking treasure hunt! It's about driving the hardest bargain. Sure, it's nice if you locate all the items but you have to negotiate for your life. Stella is my favourite candidate, but she really missed the mark on this task.

Were they not allowed to use the internet to find items, i find it strange that a 30 second search on google would have given rough prices for every item, and a description of what it actually was

Apparently not.