Having watched Series 4 last week for the first time,this reminds me of the week Raef got fired instead of Michael.The bumbling idiot,practically begging to stay(and should have been gone weeks ago), stays in over the better candidate because they are 6 years old and remind Sir Alan of his Alan days when he was 6:sleep:

Obviously a tv decision based on entertainment value(as its a tv show) but its very much going down the route of shows like big brother and x-factor who keep the worst people in, no matter how bad they are for viewing purposes.

i swear alan sugar must know stuart or something. anyway iys obvious he dislikes prettty women like liz

Shocked Liz went. Easily should have been Stella with her snide boardroom looks Going by what Sir. Alan really thought Stuart deserved a last chance.

I was pleased for Joanna that her team won, but would much rather have seen Chris or Jamie go than Liz, Stuart or Stella.

I also think Lord Sugar didn't want to end up with Stella and Liz in the final which would have been similar to last year with Kate and Yasmine. Liz peaked early on and got worse by the end while Stella was effective early on and held firm in the last few weeks. She also stood up a bit better in the boardroom compared to Liz.

Exactly. Stuart makes good TV so it had to be Stella or Liz to go and that's about it.

I expect Stuart to be ripped to shreds next week in the interviews, but he will carry on bullshitting. Should be fun!

Well as much as it was a shock and Stuart should have gone in a way Liz got her comeuppance for being such a bitch last week to Stella. Liz was far too smug and nasty last week! I think the winner will now be Stella or Jo.

I don't think so. He hired Michelle who was that years "pretty girl" and quite similar to Liz. It didn't work out but the point is he hired her.

Yeah... I usually think people claiming 'fix!' or something when a contestant goes out is ridiculous, but this was really fishy. Baggs was an immature little tit all throughout this episode, he's been absurdly arrogant through most of the series too, and everything he said in the boardroom was so ridiculous, and Alan Sugar so knew that. No way is Baggs in this because he's a good businessman, but because he's entertaining for the audience.

Yes, I agree! I think that Chris, James and even Stuart are all plonkers! They are totally useless and so full of themselves. It has to be Stella or Jo for the win.

For a long time I thought that it would be Stella that won but Jo has come on in leaps and bounds in the last few weeks. The only problem she has is her mouth lets her down at times. What with her shouting and speaking over people and she can be quite aggressive at times!

As Eve says - Michelle was a pretty girl

The checkout girl, I sort of remember her. Sorry do you mean he saw some sort of similarities in the two? I understand his motive, of not just looking for another sales person but Stella comes across as a bit of an iron maiden and Stuart talks the talk, but no winner.

Yes, I could not agree more! He knows nothing and as for running a 3 million pound business, I think that he is telling some porkies here. I am just shocked that he got on the show in the first place. He has been useless at every task he has done and has been so lucky when he has been on the winning team, just as he was last week!

The strangest thing when Liz got fired was the fact that she had doubled her sales to Baggs and he was also the project manager. That has got to be the biggest let off in all the shows so far!

In all honesty Raef did an awful job as PM that week and it was a justified decision he left. Micheal was an awful candidate but Raef really was responsible for the failure of the task by not showing the product in the ad at all.

Micheal should have gone earlier but on the merits of the task it was not as bad a decision as is said in retrospect. It's mainly because Raef was popular with the public and Micheal disliked hugely.

Tonight really was a bad decision though as not only has Liz done more than Stuart over the course of the show, she was also better than him in this task. He was the main reason they failed.

You can see why he doesn't want Liz (or Kate) - partly because he runs on biases and partly because the way the tasks are set up and PMs are selected doesn't allow anyone much to build a record or success or to show great ability. That may be because they pick the wrong people, but its probably to do with the tasks and show organisation - the US show in its best years ended up with winners that won on three outings as PM and there were moment of brilliance shown from the winners and sometimes the runners up.

The point though is that Stuart has shown that he doesn't have anything like Liz's skill set or any business spark she doesn't have. Stella has done no better than Liz on sparking and has made bigger errors. Even Laura and Sandeesh have better useable skills than Stuart, and Laura could spot what Stella couldn't. You can't sack the most successful one of a group of three because they don't have something that no one else has either.

Agree its set up to get Stuart to the interviews so he will look ridiculous, but again you really have to ask how he could come to the conclusion already that Stuart or Stella (or Chris , Jaimie or Joanna) are more what he wants. They are all in their own way massively problematic and none have shown any real spark of imagination or business skill. You really have to wonder what job it might be to require Joanna's communication and people skills, Stella's business acumen and propensity to errors , Chris and Jaimie's ability to blag and make silly mistakes and Stuarts ability to get anything wrong. You seriously have to wonder if LS intends to start again with them manning a barrow and whether any of them could run tonight's welk stall.

Michelle was earning 100k a year business, selling services using overseas labour, that she had set up. She also fitted the journey story of coming from a limited educational background to achieve success. The job he wanted her to do required her to set up similar contacts abroad. She was also literally less likely to frighten the locals than Ruth might be. On record too, Michelle winning was very arguable.

Its interesting what LS seems to have turned against. Its not the journey story as Lee ran one, Stella just ran another , Stuart ran a nonsensical one and Joanna has one. Yasmina won on the I set up my own business argument against Kate who seemed to have a spectacular CV from her early career - but one working for people. He has problems with females who he thinks are playing him after Katie and he may have a more general problem with females who either frighten him like Ruth or say the right thing to him all the time. You also have to wonder if he just rules out the most attractive females as he was accused of being mislead by looks when he picked Michelle.

But what I will say in LSs favour is that he did say that he did not want another good seller, that was not what he was looking for and he sees Liz as just a good seller! Stella obviously has a lot more to offer because she has worked for the chinese and has done very well for herself. LS knows that Stella has a great CV. Stella has said herself that she is not a great seller, and that does not bother LS!

Nah, it was much more than that. Obviously 'spark' is really difficult to define, but whatever it is, I think Yasmina had it more than any other apprentice candidate.

She had a real knack for spotting where the opportunities were in the market and working relentlessly to squeeze as much money as possible out of them - she was amazing.

Chinese/Japanese - it's all the same, right

I thought this too - I felt her card was marked after her bitchy remarks last week.

Kate Walsh is on Twitter shocked as well.

You would have thought she would have been in the know though

She probably already knew but wants to be seen like us normal civilians watching The Apprentice at the same time and not knowing the result.

This week is a shocker all over the place.

Starting with Liz over Stuart . There's no spark in that task that Stuart shows but Liz doesn't. Being preposterous is about his only advantage. Every mistake on pricing or theme is driven by Stuart or Stella and its his failure to match Liz's sales that makes up most of the difference in profits. Liz is criticised for not stopping their dumb ideas - but they stay for having them.

We then have the praise for Stella moving out of her comfort zone when the choice of who got what job forced whoever it was to do the same thing and anyone else doing it might have done it better and the one person who did, did do better.

We then get the attack on Joanna for trying to renegotiate a dumb contract because its not professional and would ruin your name and future trade.

We next get the LS praise for Chris's contract - with no proof at all that it wasn't what it looked like - someone thinking on their feet with no facts and coming up with a figure whilst not understanding what they were saying. He clearly couldn't explain it to Joanna so the assumption has to be there was no strategy there.

We then get the LS logic that the tour didn't matter as by that stage you had their money and future trade didn't matter. It did before when he criticised Joanna over renegotiating - but, when he wanted to praise someone else, business ethics went out the window again. You have to conclude at best that LS thinks ethics apply to fellow businesses but not buyers.

Finally, you end up asking what the task was about. If its not about a decent tour, much of what they did was pointless and someone would escape anyway. If it was about having the right theme, Stella's idea may have been the major failing point. If it was about pricing Stuart decided the concept and the price. If it was about selling Liz sold more and got sacked........ because she was good at selling.

Stella has a better journey CV - Liz's doesn't look any weaker though if you don't care how people get there . You might be right that its something in the CV thats related to the job and, if she had worked for a Chinese bank, that might be a clincher if China was vital (as it might be to any current big idea) The big problem, though, is that Stella, according to the BBC site, worked for a Japanese bank and Japan is about as bad an economic basket case as we are. If you take away that specific, both Stella and Liz have banking backgrounds so there's no obvious advantage there - apart from Stella having a rise from school leaver journey story, while Liz is an academic high flier.

This must prove AS's genius, because when Stuart speaks, all I hear is a 10 yr old, in a 21 yr olds body.

Stuart cant sell, he plucks prices out of the air, cant keep his gob shut, and yet he is still there?.

The Apprentice should change categories in next years TV awards, from "reallity" to comedy.