I think this is a claim to have founded the "Youth Parliament" which claim was featured on her website, but cant link to it at the moment, as it seems to be down.

I looked on the Youth Parliament website, but cant seem to find Melody anywhere, but even if she was involved, she was probably over egging the pudding by her claim of "founding" it, which she seems very good at.

Edit.....I have just checked her website, and the page with all her claims has vanished from it.

OOOPS.

Checked again, and its still there.....

(should really look before I post)

A lot of her 'claims' have to do with basically:

Attended session/had photograph taken with = Founded/Mentored.

Delusional twaddle.

On the issue of what Social enterpriese entails, she summarised it quite succinctly and well for me.

What more do people want? A 101 workshop with flipchats/powerpoints on the subject? This is a 30 minute programme with clearly defined/scheduled mini-segments.

The panelists displayed the worst type of fearful ignorance; when you don't know about something or understand it, attack it.

Retail and Brand Expert? What exactly do you do?. Yes but how do you spend your day?

Get on Google if it's a big deal. You'd probably need 3 minutes.

However, having said this, I understand entirely that on the basis of the strength of her claims, people will want to know more and that she will have made herself a target for greater scrutiny than a bog standard inventor or a CEO's Executive Assistant, jobs which people know about and/or can imagine the detals of much more.

But if we have doubts as to her credibility, what do we think the producers have done in the screening of the candidates?

Is there the suggestion here that in some way, the producesr haven't checked any of the candidates calims?; that we, the viewers and the panelists on YFd have now become some sort of regulatory body with the main purpose of fact checking the candidates' CV's?

Are we now saying that, as with Baggs licence before, that screening is not really all that deep as they are looking to create good reality TV not really find the next MBA of the year or real Businessman/woman of the Year?

In a way, perhaps Melody and her claims are a microcosm of what the show has evolved into?

It's classic reality TV in that the proposition, to work for Sugar was one which although delivered, didn't really mean all that much anyway? As, if I'm not mistaken, not one single candidate (with the exception of last year's?) are still working for him - another Nick and/or Margaret we haven't had.

The programme has been and especially now, is all about the process and not the end result, despite constant reference to that final decision for SAS.

The more extreme the better? The better the candidates are at creating issues/conflict/drama, the better?

Maybe they make the acceptance decisions based more on the audition video than they do on the paper CV?

If the claims about the Dalai Lama and Al Gore are indeed as has been suggested - indirect associations built up to be something much more, why is she on there in the first place? Didn't one of SAS's quotes in a previous series say right up front, 'I don't like B/Shitters'?

If Melody is a b/s merchant, why is she there?

To the extent that they want claims not real credentials, then candidates like Melody (and Baggs before) are ideal and prime targets for acceptance; the more cliches, the better. the more outrageous claims, the better?

And to this extent, to meet our needs for good TV, the producers and the show have sought an ever egotistical and in some cases, deluded set of young people to fight it out in front of us for our entertainment?

And then we and the panelists last night rip into the candidates with the barely disguised and just about unsaid agenda that we don't belive them.

It may be reality TV, but real it ain't.

And frankly, it's not very edifying.

The problem with Melody is that she exaggerates her achievements - look at her profile on Linkedin where she claims to be 'Offical presenter for Al Gore'. When you dig a bit deeper, it appears that she attended a 2 day training course run by the Climate Foundation, at which Al Gore spoke and she now uses the materials in her work. All very good, but not what you would first think.

Similarly with her claim "at 13 to have founded one of the world's most democratic institutions". That seems to be her involvement with the UK Youth Parliament, the history of which here on the organisation's offical page doesn't mention her at all. She might well have been at the original conference which led to its setting up and indeed may have served on its board (good for her) but so have lots of other people, none of them apparently claiming they founded it. Nor do they think it 'one of the world's most democratic organisations.'

People keep going on about how she's young etc but she's 26 or something -- not old but not a baby either! This sort of overblown rhetoric is forgiveable when you are a teenager, but no-one is going to take you seriously if you continue at this exaggeration and self aggrandisement in your mid 20s and beyond.

If she would just stick to stating honestly what she has achieved in her life, she'd be a lot more impressive. But throughout the programmes she came across as having an overwhelming sense of her own importance and an ability to twist anything to put her in a good light - remember her reporting that Sugar had read out her list of achievements and told her how great she was, when we had all seen something entirely different happen in the boardroom. The other candidates all had her number by last night - hence Tom's great put down in the boardroom and at least half the audience too. Just a shame Sugar seems to have been taken in by it all - even if Karren Brady (thabnkfully) wasn't.

I actually think she may be ill

Wellsaid Vinba - this, my friends, is Malady in a nutshell. If someone comes across as a prize exaggerator / bullshitter then the chances are that they are.

Frankly I think she got off VERY lightly on You're Fired... I wish Ruby Wax had carried on and asked some really seraching questions. I have a feeling Malady's yarns would have unravelled very quickly.


Exactly!

If you google about and check archived news, she's quite fond of claiming to journalists that she is a co-founder of the "UK Youth Parliament" so I guess that's what she's referring to.

Mysteriously though if you check their website, and in particular their history page, there is no mention of her whatsoever. Not even on their news page, where you'd have thought they'd put a mention of one of their "founders" now appearing on prime-time TV?

I suspect that the reality is that she may well have attended some of their early meetings and conferences (1998/1999 fits with her 13 year claims) but has deluded herself into thinking this means she set the whole thing up. Of course claims like this on CVs are notoriously impossible to verify!

To be fair to Melody, if you google her name and the UK Youth Parliament, you will find that she has been involved with it and has been/is a trustee. So that doesn't appear to be made up. She does appear to have been involved around the time it was set up, but that does not make her, as she claims to be, it's 'founder'. As I said above, the problem isn;t that she is bullshi**ing the whole thing, but that she exaggerates and hyperbolises what she has done.

For example, she describes setting up a branch of the UK Youth Paliament at Oxford Brookes as "making history". Even if she did set up the branch her characterisation of it as history making is just ludicrous and it is this sort of thing which makes her a laughing stock.

yes. I am sure that the underlying facts are technically true (i.e. was around at the early conferences) but she goes absolutely crazy on the over-embellishment. Of course everyone does this sort of embellishment on their CV but she takes it to ludicrous levels with the result that you can't trust anything she says and she just comes over as a crazed comedy character.

It is like going to watch Man U, chanting their name and then telling people you personally won the English Premier League.

It is psychopathic.

-was involved with
-helped set up
-spoke to
-asked a question of
-listened to
are not entirely equivalents of
-founded
-was consulted by
-was selected and employed by
-lectured in

even 'advised' could be 'wrote an unsolicited letter to' or 'voiced my opinion in front of'

if she attended a meeting of a youth participation initiative from the local council or sat on a committee that set funding criteria for youth justice projects - all very laudable and worth using as examples of what she might be doing at 10 am on a work day - but such involvement, whilst worthy, are not the same as chairing a UNICEF committee or founding the League of Nations.

it is not having a sense of your own relative (un)importance.

Im a tad disappointed that she went before the on/off interview round.

They would have sorted out her claims and revealed her for what she actually is and not what she claims to be, as it is, it is still befuddled and cannot be fully eplained.

As for Helen, I know having worked in a multi national (global) Head Office only in the catering department, I found out by going into the board room with coffee what was actually going on, by just overhearing conversations.

Helen is at the pivot of business, not actually driving the business but she could not help but learn from her job, how business works, how products are presented to CEOs and she would have access to strategies and objectives for the whole company.

By saying she hasnt had eperience in her own business but she has had the best of teaching/mentoring in the position she held.

Almost the same as being Sugars apprentice. Underestimate a PA at your peril.

In her spewing forth of her credentials at some point I am sure I heard Melody say the Queen referred to her or her business in her Christmas speech? I was a trifle banjaxed by the constant grandstanding, but I have read the text of the Queens Speech and can't find Melody mentioned....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12079065

She couldn't explain what she did, Ruby Wax saw right through her, and Melody's website is all 'smoke and mirrors'. A fantasist

To be fair the apprentice was filmed 2010 so she would have been referring to the Queens Speech 2009.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8366125.stm

just mentions new legislation so I don't see how she can be referencing a project melody worked on.

Viewers are the same whenever candidates make grand claims. For example, they've queried how much of Susan's business is her and how much her mum. With Yasmina, people went so far as to get records of her resturant from Company's House. We debated about Bagg's business for ages.

So she "founded" the Youth Parliament in the same way that her mentor "invented" the internet. Guess she picked up a few tips at that conference.

I think she actually said she'd founded one of the world's "most successful democratic organisations", which is an even more dubious claim than "most democratic" IMO.

In Melody's defence, she is mentioned as a founder on their website: http://www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk/...ession*id*val*

It was fairly obvious but I was surprised people on the show didn't get it or more accurately didn't want to get it because it was an simple joke for simple minds.

She set up a global group, planned it through social entrepreneurship (i.e. encouraging commuities globally to work together voluntarily) which would aid people in deprived communities globally to raise development funds when and where needed. This is something vitally needed globally and is what she did.

If you understand what she says I guess it's easy to know what she is talking about but the idea of development programmes and social entrepreneurship is alien to people especially on a global basis.

So her positioning in this area was straight forward. She works with government, commerce or other NGOs or groups in order to get this working and encourage activity. This will include lobbying, introducing changes to policy or even working with other international organisations to make sure this works.

The reason Karren didn't understand something like this is she's just a puppet on the show living off the superficial hand downs of brand Karren Brady (that's two Rs oddly - another trait of the Brady brand) complete with lavish business extravagances to say she's different when she just likes to pick at the better looking women on the show.

Ruby, another woman, had a go because she's a woman too.

The joke was on everybody else but then again, I realised there are a lot of people who don't understand what she was talking about but that's not their fault but I would expect a show like the apprentice to rely on less simple and juvenile jokes.

So in conclusion she did something on her own back and not by salivating up a corporate ladder and then using ugly industrial soundbites like "I was instrumental in making 50 quid last year for my company - it was a woo hoo moment and I bought myself a pair of Jimmy Choos"

Thanks Brangdon.

But I repeat myself. What is the need to know?

This is a highly edited and contrived reality TV programme.

It's a fantasy concept with no reality at all. It doesn't really deliver any substantial end result bearing in mind most, if not all of the successful candidates only work a few months for SAS and then there're off to some media/celebrity driven career.

This genre should be called non reality tv.

What is the point in expending all this energy of finding out one more layer of information?

How much closer to any truth does such investigation get everyone?

Kablamo, where have you been all day?

Post of the day. Marvellous stuff.

Like most reality TV, this show is about judging people. The people on the telly do stuff and we judge them for it. If we don't pay attention to what they do, we don't have much basis for making judgements. Hence, the information matters.

And despite what you write, it is reality TV. It's not scripted. The candidates are real people. Melody has done stuff in the real world. Zoe did have cancer. These things do affect how people judge them. It's not like watching a soap opera. The emotions are real, not what some writer things someone in that situation should feel.

Interesting points Brangdon.

You may well have struck upon the rationale behind viewing for many people.

It may sound daft of me to say this, but I hadn't thought of this aspect of it, especially bearing in mind that this particular Reality Show does not get the viewers to call in and make the cuts.

For me, however, I think that my agenda/rationale as a viewer is a little different.

People may watch it to make judgements. I don't. Well not about the people.

And of course the people are real. Of course they have achieved and experienced things outside the show. And those are the operative words; 'outside the show'.

Because within the show, they are placed, like a lab experiment into a set of conditions where certain outcomes are bound to occur and do occur.

No, it's not scripted, but in outline it is and having watched many episodes over the years, the reason for my own dwindling interest in it is the formulaic nature of the scenarios, their actions, reactions, conflicts, decisions and emotions.

There isn't a script but it would be easy to write it.

Isn't it interesting how the candidates come across much nicer and for me, more real, in You're Fired, now that they are out of the pressure cooker of the show itself?

As I mentioned elswhere in another post, the reason I watch it is because I made the journey from the bottom up into senior management in the saes and then marketing departments of a major multi-national, including working in 3 overseas assignments.

So, I watch it to see what they come up with; what the end result is, not to make a favourites list of who I liike and who I don't.

When they are given a task of producing an advert in 2 days, this bears absolutely no relation to how things are done in the real world other than the most shallow of sketchy attachment to the broad process.

We see them carrying out planning processes which in the real world can take days at minimum and usually weeks with often many feedback processes and changes in basic strategy, briefing documents and then initial executions, all in 2-3 hours, depending on how many arguments they get into, how tired they are, or what their deadline is.

They then actually do the work of creating the art/copy a and then the actual ads themselves, tasks which would be carried out by creative departments of an advertising agency with trained people usually qualified in the relevant background skills, followed by more feedback/adjustment phases.

The only bit that's at all real is when they make presentations on the stuff they've thrown together over the last 48 hours and even then the powerpoint pitch is thrown together in a car or at the last minute.

Not surprisingly in such a hothouse environment, they are under extreme pressure and can act, react and behave in all sorts of ways. And that's what creates the drama.

Of course, it's real within the actual show. But it's not real in realtion to the outside world in the slightest.

If the show depitced the real live process, it would be too boring for broadcast; it would be too slow.

So I for one am not interested in what they all say they've done including whether or not Melody has worked with the Dalai Lama, Al Gore or weird Al Jankovic, for that matter. That stuff is all self promotional hot air and they all do it.

I'm interested to see, even in the daft and contrived scenarios in which they are placed, what questions they ask, how they analyse situations and then what solutions they come up with.

How could we make any sort of informed opinion about any one of them, assuming that's what we wanted to do, on the basis of the information we are shown, with the impacts of editing on their image and a few google searches or trips to Companies House to check out some annual reports?

Of course, we can make them, but they are only ever going to be superficial ones which would liely change quite substantailly if we spent time with them or worked with them in proper real life as opposed to TV real life.

It's just a show for people to point and laugh at ridiculous claims, then come away with the impression that Alan Sugar is the best business man ever.

Well said, tennisman.