I disagree. If that was on the back of Sugar's mind, chris wouldn't have been in the final at all. He saw something innovative in Chris and that's why he was there and deservedly so. The losing team is just that: a team effort so it can't be attributed to just one person.

Chris made some fundamental management mistakes though, in the last two tasks (and no doubt earlier too if I looked further back).

In the tour bus task, he offered the 20% of everything, apparently (at the time) without having considered how the final split of income would look. That sort of omission can make you a lot of money (as it did) but it's just as likely to bankrupt your business. Therefore, even though it won him the task, in real life it would be a huge error because by the time you've done it a few times, you will have come unstuck in a big way at least once - and once can finish you. Risk management is of
critical importance to any business and he did not manage that risk well.

In the final drinks task, he did not manage the people choosing the drink colouring well. That was a fundamental part of the product (along with flavour) and he needed to be on top of what was happening but wasn't. Then, when he discovered that they'd gone against his previous iunstructions (to make it 'clear') he meekly accepted it. Two major errors.

I do not think Stella would have fallen into any of these traps; she was almost always on top of things management-wise and I think that is a large part of the reason she won.

I wonder though Dave, if Chris' ability to fumble and think on his feet - sometimes regardless of the consequences in a fly by the seat of your pants fashion - wasn't the essence of his appeal? I liked his resourcefulness and his articulation of ideas. The 20 per cent thing was a basic schoolboy error from somebody not used to the sales industry. Yes Chris could sell but that was a desperate offer which paid off. The real world though wouldn't afford that to be the case. Get away with it once, not twice.

Yes, he does have the kind of appeal that you mention but as I suspect that we both agree, he is much further from being the finished product than Stella is. Chris and his ideas would need to be closely monitored for quite some time, whereas I think Stella can pretty soon be left to just get on with it.

Chris as an ideas man reporting to Stella might work, IF he could live with that at the personal level.

But then why did Sir Alan fire Jamie and Liz, both strong candidates who'd been on the winning team so many times?

I've always found on this show that they pick people who are very average all the way through. The ones that shine during the show never seem to make the final. I remember in the first season they fired james Max and Miriam in the semi final and gobby Sira and Tim (who I hadn't really noticed and wasn't great at the shopping channel task) made it through to the final