In last night’s episode 25/05 Nick told one team “better get on with it”.

Is this the first instance of any of the 'observers' mentoring a team during a task?

Nick hinders more than he helps. He gives out a lot of facial expressions that hint to the team whether they are going in the right way or not.
Karen stay back a little and takes notes.

I recall Margaret in an early series pointing out that the team had spent hours discussing and not actually getting on with anything.
In series 5 Nick famously pointed out the sandlewood £750 not £5 error in the soap. Too late to stop the spend, but it did point up that they needed to sell for as high a price as they possibly could.

I noticed that too... either he just couldn't help himself when he saw the team flundering, or the producers needed to make sure it wasn't too one-sided, as that kills the drama...

I seem to recall him pointing out the massive over-ordering error in Series 2 when they decided they needed 100 chickens to top 100 pizzas. Again, though, I think it was too late for them to change the order

I'm not Nick's greatest fan, but I do love it on those occasions where he walks them through the maths and lets the true horror of what they have done slowly dawn on them

I thought he was a bit too intrusive on that task . One of the team were trying to sell a product to this woman and I couldn't believe how close he was, peering and screwing up his face. I know he would put me off, standing there with his clipboard, pulling faces .
Surely his job is to observe at a discreet distance.

Very true.

Very poor by Nick, as if he had been leering like that had I been a customer, I would have given him a mouthful and told him to p!ss off.

Maybe Nick needs his glasses changing but he's still the best part of the programme. Am still missing Margaret.

IIRC it wasn't too late, he questioned it at the time, but the one's ordering, Syed I think, insisted 1 chicken per pizza was correct

They had left ordering the meat too late in the day, so had to leave a phone order on the suppliers machine. Thus they couldn't haggle over price. Then, next day, the chickens arrived - and they were massive birds as Syed hadn't said what size he wanted. Those 2 things blew a massive hole in their budget. It was only after this that Nick went through their plans and pointed out that they had 100 (massive) chickens but were only planning on 100 chicken pizzas - "one chicken per pizza"

For my money Syed should have gone that week - but he played the "I'm just like you Suralun" card out and Sid fell for it (like he always does)

When he pointed out the Sandalwood error and made a comment along the lines of "I'll leave that one with you then" and walked off. Their faces were a picture. That was a priceless moment. Sheer joy.

I felt PM Alexa deserved a lot of the blame. She ought to have been managing their time (or making sure someone else did) so they didn't have to leave a phone message. Also, she was determined to spent their entire budget and would have spent it on advertising if it hadn't gone on chickens. They did in fact over-spend on other things - the chickens weren't the worst, just the most amusing. They made far more pizzas than they could sell.

Alexa had played the "Don't sack me - make me PM instead" card on the previous task, so she was on borrowed time anyway. Especially as the talented Karen had gone instead of her.

What a classic. I'm hoping there will be more like that this serious. It is obvious that in spite of their delusions of grandiosity, they can't cope with simple addition!

The team still lost though so Nick should probably stick to the day job of awkward face pulling in future and leave the candidates to sink or swim.

Yes, that was brilliant. And too late to change it so he hadn't interfered as such...

Though as said by someone, it could have affected their approach to selling the stuff. To be honest, though, the task was probably already lost beyond hope - just like the chicken pizza task was after Syed's blunder (I agree with brangdon that Alexa was very much to blame; both of them deserved firing really)

This! I sometimes wish that Karren and Nick were a little more involved. They have been speaking up slightly more in the board room this year which is a refreshing change. I love how them speaking puts an instant silence on whoever was speaking at the time. This week it was Thomas.

And the instantaneous -ish (ish being the succulent part) realisation of "oh no that is......oh f**k". TV moment of the year apart from then to be over taken by Nick's "Well I'll leave that with you that..." if you didn't p yourself at that??????

Not really. This is an entertainment show, his job is "standing there with his clipboard, pulling faces", a job that he does very well

If Alan Sugar were really wanting top business apprentices and partners do you think he'd go to the trouble of doing a BBC series to get them? He's there to promote himself and create a fun programme in the process.

Nick said in a recent Guardian interview that the candidates were obviously not the best business people but it is fun watching them make mistakes so you can point at the screen and say you could do better, or WTTE.

In Reality TV the stress is on TV and not "reality".

I think Nick is great, and I really like his inputs into the tasks, makes it more interesting.

Do miss Margaret though, thought they made a great team!

It's brilliantly described by Douglas Adams as that moment in a cartoon when the character has accidentally run off the edge of a cliff, realises what has happened, but hasn't started falling yet.