Susan may not like Zoe, but given how Zoe has been a vile nasty bitch to her since day one, It's not surprising.

I dont think any of them are there to make friends.

I think you may be making some assumptions about how much people like Susan, as opposed to Nat or Mel.

Look at all the Suzy threads on this forum, it is clear that she is very polarizing (with people either loving her or hating her) and therefore popular.

Most of the threads about her were intended to be negative.

It seems that certain candidates - almost always female ones - bring out something very nasty in a few posters. (One of the anti-Susan thread posters is on a forced DS 'posting holiday' at the moment and another had a similar 'holiday' a few weeks back).

When that happens others, who would probably not have had anything much to say on the subject, tend to post to counteract the hatred. Such people then become advocates for the candidate concerned.

I doubt I would have had very much to say about Susan if it were not for the vitriol that some others have unleashed upon her.

Lord sugar always seems to have a soft spot for the youngest candidate, and even allowed Stuart Baggs to induce him to fire Ms Locke. He remembered when he was 17 and wants to give selfmade persons the benefit of the doubt.

I believe the unending dispute over Susan is due to the frustration felt by those who are unimpressed, who cannot point to a realistic alternative candidate and so cannot make their point complete with illustration.

If Stella or Ms Locke were around this year there would be no dispute by now. They would have eaten Susan. Except that Stuart Baggs actually displaced Ms Locke, to the eternal regret of Lord Sugar.

Very true. Its not that Susan is good at all, its just that the others are so bad. Im actually struggling to think of another series where we've had such a poor lot. In every single series there has been one where you've gone 'Yeah they'll do well'.

There is not one single standout, and the fact that Susan is being seen as a front runner is an indictment on the poor level of talent this year.

This has been one of the weakest seasons for candidates. Not many real standout characters. I do rate Helen, I think Leon has promise and so does Melody but last year we had several outstanding candidates. This year we do not.

So, it is not prejudice aimed at Susan, it is disgruntlement with the lot of them.

Helen has won 7 times out of 7, but both teams have been much of a muchness, beating each other by £6 more than once. Helen has not demonstrated the flair of Liz Locke, who I believe personally without turning a hair made the biggest sale ever on The Apprentice, was it £16,000?

Not as gifted as Liz, Stella exerted complete authority over her teams and never asked for special consideration despite coming from a poor family and a difficult childhood.

Not saying Helen cannot sparkle like a diamond -- just not as yet. Go Helen go, we need a hero or heroine.

Actually Liz made £99,000 on the sale.

Helen for me is like when my mum makes curry ...... bland and wishing you went for a spicier option.

I think it was considerably more, about £90,000.

The task results are nothing more than a coin toss. There's no point in reading anything much into those.


Liz was good, and deserved to make it to the interviews but she wasn't spectacular.

I can't believe that people ascribe that £16,000 to her brilliance. When you sell to a customer they buy what they think they can shift. That's based upon the size of the company, their customer base, and the amount of space they are prepared to allocate to the item. Liz did well because she obviously got them to take the product seriously but to make a quantitative judgement based on the sales figure simply does not make sense.


That's really nothing more than a matter of opinion.


This I agree with.

I'm sure she will barely know how to go on living when she finds out your opinion.

This is a Susan thread not Helen.
I think Susan is finished after what Nick said about her. Not that I hadnt realised it till now. LS will not be able to work with her.

She doesn't have to impress you OP she has to impress alan sugar
And anyway do you have your own business?

That's so unfair.

Why is it??
If the op wants to criticize her in the dogmatic way he had better have achieved more than her otherwise he is talking out his a**

That's, also, so unfair.

Why???

I have to say, I'm still on the fence about Susan. I like her and if she makes the finals then I would be perfectly happy with that. At the same time, yes, she's made some good calls and yes, her edit does seem to show her being victimised by the others, but at the same time she just doesn't seem that incredible to me.

Apologies if I disagree with anyone's personal opinion here. Feel free to correct me on any facts, obviously, but these are just my own personal impressions (and I have a bit of a tendency to be cynical).

Although Susan is being cheered for saying that the team should cut prices last week, I think that the reason that this is such a big issue is more down to Jim's stubbornness than her brilliance. I could be wrong, but as far as I remember the issue of pricing was only raised after the first pitch, in which it should have been obvious to the whole team that they were wrong not to negotiate simply from the look of astonishment on the buyer's face at Jim's words. Susan was right to bring it up, Jim was an idiot not to pick up on the fact that there was a problem and to shoot her down as he did (which is what I think stopped Glenn and Zoe from saying anything), but I think hailing this as excellent business acumen is a slight exaggeration.

Similarly, a lot of focus is given to the things that Susan said were wrong about the task that did indeed turn out to be wrong. I believe she was also against targeting the over 60 market, which both the advertising companies and Lord Sugar thought was a good demographic to aim for, but I've hardly seen this brought up at all. A part of me thinks that she's covering her back for the boardroom by feebly disagreeing with everything (for example 'Hip Replacement'. As I remember, when asked if she liked the name she said, "No, but I'll support it no problem at all." This could be argued both ways though.) I think that she was all too eager to criticise, but was nowhere near as ready to offer alternatives or improvements.

I also think that if Susan weren't quite so young and cute there would not be quite so many people rallying around her in outrage at Zoe's targeting her in the beauty task (and elsewhere, but this is the main one). I agree that criticising Susan on the shop floor in front of the staff and customers was ridiculous and unnecessary, but at the same time I wasn't impressed when Susan came back straight away with "It's so unfair." It does seem as though she has difficulty expressing herself at times (eg. the app task), but I think that she immediately blamed the location for the lack of sales. Of course, there is some truth in that, but I also think that she should have been more willing to be accountable for her prediction, especially since she is in skincare. I'm not sure whether she took into consideration the fact that she'd be selling from cold in an unfamiliar location. I think there's a lot in what we didn't see here, but I think they were both at fault - Susan for the overestimate that she didn't deliver on and Zoe for attacking her publicly.

I'm just a bit apprehensive of how Susan would cope if she won. She may have her own business already (and I think this has a lot to do with Lord Sugar's surprisingly positive attitude towards her. I also think a lot is down to Nick, who seems to adore her!), but we don't know how the winning business will work. As far as I know, she's currently sole trader and TA has nothing in common with how business actually works, but I think she will need to be able to express herself a lot better. I'm very reluctant to use the word 'whine', but I think that she comes close to that occasionally.

I know it seems as though I don't like Susan, but I think she's got a lot going for her. She's been very prominent in the edit and I think some people (for example, my own family!) have been influenced by how young and vulnerable she seems. I think that Tom, Helen and Melody are the other credible candidates and can't wait to see more of Tom. From what I've seen he's my personal favourite, but hopefully we'll see him as PM this week, which will either make or break him.

Susan did come up with a name - Young Looking But Old Hearted. And yes, it was awful too, probably even worse than Hip Replacement. But she did think of one.

One thing you cxan say is that it shows she's willing to speak up if she thinks the PM is making a mstake - something we've actually seen her do in most tasks. And Jim did actually change his approach so it was to some effect.


Lord Sugar did say it was a good demographic, as it was a large segment of the population and had a lot of spending power. However, there are problems with targeting it; over-60s are as diverse a group as any other age group and won't like the same things, many if not most over-60s will not want a magazine targeted at them. Most importantly, Susan was worried that they might find it hard to connect with this age group, and so it proved. I don't think she was wrong about that.


Susan definitely needs to try and remove the words "so unfair" from her repertoire.


I think she might cope better than you'd think. Candidates are rarely seen at their best on The Apprentice due to the unique circumstances they have to contend with (not enough sleep and the fact that your team mates are rivals as well as colleagues).


I think your post is quite fair; Susan has both good and bad points. I certainly would be surprised if Tom doesn't PM this week, as he's the only one who hasn't yet done so. It'll be interesting to see how he does in the role.

That was an awful name.

She can hardly criticise "Hip Replacement" and be wise after the event when the name she came up with was dreadful.

I asked if anyone had counted the unique instances of her saying that.

Apparently it was two - which matched my recollections.

Of course we saw it many more times than that as it was included in a lot of previews and summaries and used on YF.

Of course, she still needs to remove it from her repertoire - unless she's being ironic.

Err yes, I do ....... Im a contractor running a limited company of which Im the director. It would be a little hard for me to travel back and forth to Germany each week if I was working at Sainsburys stacking shelves wouldnt it?

But heres a little secret Im going to let you lot in on ..... it doesn't take much to set up a business!

I paid my accountants to set it up for me as part of a package in which they would process my invoices each month to work out how much tax I need to pay, and my initial cost was in the hundreds and I am paying just over £100 a month on an ongoing basis for full financial services.

To set up your own business from scratch with no financial help can be done for less than £100.

So please lets not there be some mystique or aura about someone setting up their own business. Any idiot can do it. Even Susan Ma.

HAHA, she comes up with a worse name, but somehow people will still give her kudos for criticising the name they went with ..... unbelievable.

Just as with you comments about learning a language, your observations on starting a business seem to demonstrate that, despite your (admittedly limited and somewhat specialised experience) you know next to nothing about the subject.

The particular type of company that you had formed for you, and the actions needed to maintain it, are well understood and easily performed on a 'production line' basis by any junior accountant (except for the final accounts sign off).

Having accountants set up a company for a contractor and perform the necessary actions to keep it legal in no way equates to starting an internet company with a website, suppliers, customers and considerably more complicated accounting and book keeping requirements.

Thinking the two are comparable is rather like thinking that running a lemonade stand is the same thing as running a decent restaurant.