Or, alternatively, just pretended they'd said things that they hadn't.

Well, she herself said that it was 4 people who told her that people in Paris don't drive.

While I agree that that was awful, too, the big difference there was that Vincent was PM and was the person making the decision. Tom was relying on accurate information from Melody upon which to base his decision.

I can see that it would have been difficult for Sir Alan to justify sacking her, but I really wish he had not given her so much praise for being ruthless. Aside from the fact that I do not see this as a quality he would want in a business partner, there is the matter that she was not ruthless, just truth-less. Her smug face as she was thinking that he thought she was great really needed a slap.

Did Melody say she spoke 6 languages?

Leon was also part of this market research task.

But he doesn't speak French!

Well I'd guess she knows one or more of the Iranian languages, English and French of course, and we know know she taught herself Italian

I also suspect we'll discover Desmond Tutu taught her Bantu, the Dalai Lama Tibetan, and she was taught to speak bull**** by Al Gore.

splitting the teams before they even knew the products was so wrong. it as almost impossible to arrange appointments with the right people.

melody should have seen the potential in the booster seat as she has a Globle Business working with young people, she dismissed the idea out of hand with her narrow minded opinion.

perhaps she should have been the one asking if the french liked their children as she clearly failed to understand parental purchasing power in preference to the stupid bone china teapot

on this evidence no one except perhaps Tom has the ability to be Lord Sugar's friend never mind his partner

Why did they ignore all of this on You're Fired? Unless I fell asleep for a while, they seriously went easy on her.

Melody even lied to Leon when one woman said it was s good idea melody said she said it was just OK

Isn't this based on what Vincent himself said on You're Fired? Hardly an unbiased source. Even so, the issue was Tom saying that you couldn't make a dog-food that matched the health needs of every dog. The vet indicated he was right. Two other people saying that they used ordinary dog food for all the dogs at their shelter doesn't contradict the point, and in fact makes EveryDog LESS of an appealing product (in that it's not filling a hole in the market that people aren't already filling with generic Pedigree Chum), not more. Vincent (and Jim, and Natasha) deliberately mis-represented their focus group feedback to their team, as Melody did.


This is true, although they were both putting their team (and by extension Tom) in danger by deciding they knew better than the focus group, and the other, more informed, (and correct) members of their team. I still think the motivation is the same - they were trying to get their team (and by extension themselves, I'm not claiming they're unselfish) a win by any means possible. It's not great, but it's not malicious, or active sabotage, or trying to damage anyone else IMO.

I'm disappointed in Melody tonight. I thought up to this episode she had been pretty steady in her performances, not perfect, but doing enough y'know. Several things really upset me...

1) She didn't aree with Tom's ideas which is fair enough, but... in order to get her own way with eliminating the child seat she made out to Tom that the market research pointed to it not being popular to Parisian's which was clearly the opposite (or at least seemed so). Yes, there was the odd person who mentioned using the Metro more but I think she used persuasive method of questioning to get this result in main part. I just didn't see her being so against a product that she would ignore all the positive feedback of it and only use the oppposing opinions to get what she wanted.

2) I thought she was so selfish in not giving at least a couple or so appointments to the other team members. I understand her getting them and wanting to keep them so that she could get the most sales (as this is after all a competition) but did she not think that if she failed in those pitches that all the blame of no sales would then go to her. Luckily for her she did sell but, if she hadn't, she would have been regretting taking all of it on.

She still knows this is a team effort (I'm sure) but I think because they are less numbers now she decided to ignore that (like with the market research) and seize the opportunity to cover hersef in as much glory as possible. With this also being in Paris she probably used that, and being able to speak French, as an excuse to say she was capable of doing more that the others and would try to justify her actions in this way (which isn't exactly valid).

Granted, she def showed in this task that she wants to win and is not bothered about being fair (like Tom with the paper scissors stone game) when there is a big prize at stake but I still feel disappointed in her. She's just not thoughtful of others which, I know she doesn't have to be but the team works much better if she does display such trait and will make her look better as well.

To think she's supposed to work 'for the children' with that utterly ruthless and selfish attitude, makes me shudder.

Lord Suralun has been consistant over all the past series - this is a game with just one winner and its no good being all 'nicey-nicey' - each candidate has to go all out to win. Melody obviously thought the best person to take each of her leads was Melody herself. That the other sub-team didn't even manage to secure any leads at all will have only confirmed her belief.
As for the market research - well we dont really know how many people she spoke to - always beware of the edit
Leon admitted he spoke to no-one - surely he deserves a lot of criticism too? I find it hard to believe that none of the passers by spoke good enough English for him to quiz them.

Yes, I can only presume, or deeply hope, that she must be able to adapt herself (and her method of doing things) depending on her environment, who she is working with/for and knowing what the end target is.

In pevious tasks I haven't seen this level of..., is aggression the right word to use?...in her, so I suppose I've been abit taken aback by her in this particular task as before, in previous tasks, she's been able to be professional in doing her job in it without doing so in the manner that she did today.

simply the wrong product due to misleading reseach and a weak Pm, come on Tom learn from this and show u r a worthy contestant

And, in Vincent's case, he was fired for it.


Well, I'm going to offer a semantic quibble and say that I think it is active sabotage, although sabotage isn't what Vincent or Melody tried to do. But they certainly did actively sabotage the task by their own actions (again, Vincent less because he was gathering information for himself, rather than passing on information to the decision maker).

I agree that it's not malicious, though. What it is is egotism. Vincent was in love with his own idea, and Melody was just convinced that she was right about what would sell well in Paris, despite not having done the research on the company she was asked to research, and not having seen the product itself. She just had to be right about it because, well, she's Melody and has worked with every notable historical figure since Jesus. How could she possibly be wrong? She's Melody! So when the things she was being told didn't fit her narrative, she changed the facts to suit the narrative, and then didn't try to research much harder for fear of being further contradicted.

Of course, Tom isn't blameless and should have put his foot down, although I think that Natasha could have been the deciding factor there. If it had just been Leon and Melody who said they didn't like the seat, then he might have dismissed their opinion because they hadn't seen it, but Natasha had and didn't like it either. He should have trusted himself more, but I'm not sure that he didn't act in a reasonable way. He was kind of the anti-Melody in the task, if you will.

Mind you, how stupid and artificial the whole process is hasn't ever been more blatant, I don't think. I mean, who on Earth does market research when the only people who have seen the products are actually in a different country? How can you do market research on a product you've not only never seen, but barely know anything about?

She said she got negative feedback on the car seat from 4 people. The edit seems pretty accurate.

True, this is a big prize and maybe it is not aggression or being selfish that you would use to describe her performance today but instead initiative or being passioniate or... something else along those lines. I can see how both views would be seen, seperately or at the same time. Sure Leon and co def didn't help themseleves and could have got their own leads but, in the event that they didn't, which was the case, Melody should have helped them out as it would have been a more progressive move on her part if she had done that. They needed to win this task as a team first, so, working better with her team members would have been a good thing for Melody to do.


Sure, I couldn't deny that there is the possibility of suspect editing. But, Nick did say something in the boardroom about it didn't he? (I would have to re-watch to confirm).

I think the issue with this is that getting pitches for the whole team was one half of her and Leon's job while in France. That and the market research, is what they were in the country for. To then turn around the next day and say "well, no, I'm keeping all of these appointments, actually" was terrible behaviour.

Mind you, while I lay the blame for misrepresenting the market research mostly on her door, I blame her keeping the pitches for herself on Tom. As PM he should have pointed out to her that it had been her job to secure pitches for the whole team, and not backed down on that. Instead he just let her get away with changing the rules halfway through.

I would have accepted it if Melody got fired for it. Even with Leon's entire contribution being giving "LOL I'M DOING NOTHING! *peace sign*" interviews to camera. I think she's a bit lucky that there was an individual sales element to the task where she could shine (Vincent was clearly a strong salesman as much as Karren pulled poo-face to try to persuade us otherwise) but also she had a stronger past record to fall back on than Vincent did in that she had a prior victory as PM, some task wins and no prior Boardroom appearance and he had none of that.


If it's a semantic quibble I will amend my phrasing to "deliberate sabotage", which is probably more what I was going for.


Agreed - it's her biggest weakness (and the biggest weakness of a lot of women who've got her sort of edit - Saira, DebraBarr, Claire). I eagerly await her redemption arc (looks like she and Tom are fast friends next week from the previews) and eventual 2nd/3rd place finish.


I think my problem is that Tom's now had a good 6 weeks or so of constant feedback of "you're right, everyone else is wrong, trust your instincts, push your ideas through, you've got good instincts". This was the week that he should have pushed all his chips in and gone for broke. As it is, unless his business plan is blow-away great, I think he might have just about blown it. Natasha's opinion surely weighs pretty much less than an atom's weight at this point doesn't it?


I guess they were going for broke on hilarious "culture clash" footage and didn't trust these people with only one day's worth of blundering around.

It's because she's rather a snob, hears the word 'Paris' and automatically thinks 'Style! Sophistication!' although she clearly doesn't know much about that city as she didn't even know that there are lots of cars on the roads there.

Yes, exactly.


Yes, agree too, Tom was so weak. Melody walked over him which I didn't take too kindly to but he just let her do so for reasons I just don't know why. Leon was pretty poor in same aspect too, though at least he sealed some sales without having to resort to doing paper scissors stone.

I can sympathise, yes a lot of people speak English, but when Melody is insisting on speaking French with them, it can cut you out off the discussion.

btw.. does she enunciate her words in French too? can a French speaker clarify for me.