Its still the best reality show in my opinion, however the signs were there in series 5 with Kate Walsh/Phil Taylor and their romance and Kate finding tv work

This year Baggs was clearly kept on this basis for being good tv, the squabbling females the Stella Liz rift etc. Liz will probably get tv work as well

I think it started way back in series one with Saira and Paul's love hate relationship.

I guess the post task scenes where you get an idea of who doesn't like who (Liz and Stella) and of reactions to firings when the two survivors walk in moves it a bit toward Big Brother.

I think they've certainly moved it away from candidates there on merit to candidates there on personality which is similar to Big Brother- for example there is the posh one, the self made one, the cleaner etc.. Sugar admitted to them doing this to give a cross-section but it actually makes for much better TV.

I remember series 1 contestants being much more mature and experienced with only one or two crazies- someone like Melissa would have not got on the show that year.

The one thing I would note is that very few have carved a credible TV career, not numbers on the scale of BB or X Factor (remove word credible)- I can think of James Max, Tre, Kate Walsh and Claire Badger as the only ones to move into media work so hopefully potential applicants realise its not the way to get a TV career.

Actually, that seems like more who have made careers in the media than from Big Brother or The X-Factor. As it is, the production company gets contenders media agents, so it doesn't seem like too bad a way to try for a career.

Oh and, if you count it, Katie Hopkins went on I'm A Celebriy after all but admitting in the boardroom that she was just there to get a TV career.

They seem to have really dumbed down the business side of it as well, take last years final when we had Yasmina's cheap disgusting chocolates against Kate's expensive nice ones, in a three draw expensive box, for which Kate was beaten for not considering margins enough and missing the price point. This final they didn't even have to come up with a price, and not a single mention was made of margin (unless I missed it all). Chris' bottle shape for example would cause difficulties with packing, thus increasing costs, and waste shelf space with its far larger base than a conventional bottle, but this year it just seemed to be the colour and taste that mattered!

The outcome has no logical effect on the show - Kate got TV work because someone spotted she would be good at TV work. The same thing happened to Saira in series 1 - though she's suited for different work. Thats what will happen. Liz and Kate were arguably the most able people in their series, so its no mystery they stayed till the end, or should have.

Thats completely different than keeping less capable /hopeless people in the show to provide good TV. Thats always happened too though, and we just don't know if its because they are there for entertainment or because Lord Sugar sees something thats not there.

I've got nothing whatsoever against Liz but I really struggle to see how you come to that opinion.

I think Liz's real problem was that she never actually got many chances to shine. She was unlucky in that the format of the tasks or her placement in them did not give her the opportunity to really stand out.

She certainly seemed a very safe pair of hands in the same way as Joanna and Stella but I never thought she had the opportunity to 'show the spark'.

They did raise the issue of merchandising that bottle. No retailer is going to have a whole shelf full of it & retailers hate large air gaps above products as it make the shelf look empty, so there's no way they'd raise the shelf heights for one product.

No mention of costing what so ever. Just, "ooh, its got three sides, how clever".

The show always has been just another big brother. It has very little to do with real life business skills. I don't think any of the previous candidates would get a senior job at my company - but I don't watch it to see great business people at work, I watch it to be entertained. For that reason I'd rather see a Baggs vs Alex final and laugh at them than pretend that a Stella vs Chris final is two elite buniess mins going against each other.

Middle-class Big Brother FTW.

\o/

Woo!

Well, as someone else on here noted a few weeks ago, even the very best candidates on this show would only be suited for, at best, middle-management roles.

I'm not a business head but can't understand why people who want to get on in business would go on this show. It's like those TV modelling competitions. Surely if you've got the goods to be a model (or think you do) you would take yourself around to the different agencies and see what they think? Why would you humiliate yourself on an elimination show whose only purpose is entertainment? Why would you need to?

No it hasn't... simply because there is no chance for the uneducated voting public to get involved. It would simply become a case of voting for the 'fittest' if that ever happened. Women voting off the attractive females, votes being cast for the pretty boy with the lumpy package, and there would soon be a boardroom audience jeering at every comment from the big man.

No more than the Crystal Maze is. It's a series of business-based games which place value on decision-making and entrepreneurship. That's leagues away from "watching mental people being vaguely hedonistic in a small building."

Of course, you can't turn off the "human interest" section of your brain and stop finding the group dynamics interesting if you're into that kind of thing - and, yes, shows like Big Brother - but that's what the viewer wants to get out of the show, rather than its primary objective. Sure, they add a bit of colour with it, but it's just the trimming.

They keep in the odd bits not only 'cause it's relevant to the narrative, but because it's good telly - but at its heart The Apprentice is still a series of business-based exercises, rather than the latest brand of televoyeurism.

Yup, we're all spiteful, jealous bitches.

One reason is that it can be very hard to break in to the business. Many of the candidates are disadvantaged. Chris and Joanna, for example, would be very unlikely to walk into a £100k job with so little experience. I think that's part of why a relatively high number of candidates have an ethnic background.

The other reason is that they want to learn. Most ex-candidates say they learnt a lot, even if they don't win the apprenticeship.