I'm glad you see that. It should make it easier to believe that she also informed of the potential for a fine, but ignored it.


You are the one making the strong claim here. You're the one who needs equally strong evidence. I'm pointing out that the footage we saw is consistent with the account the show gives. You seem to be claiming Jim had a mountain of umbrellas just out of shot, waiting to be sold. There's no evidence for that, but you need to believe it in order to believe he was wrong to want to restock.


I've explained why he had good reason to be angry about the £20. She was offering it as evidence she had restocked, but it was too little too late, and the fact that she couldn't see that implied she still didn't understand what the team had done wrong.

Quite the contrary.

It's easy to see how someone might have misunderstood a subtlty of the task - i.e. that remaining stock did not count against them.

It's much harder to believe that someone could miss something that formed a fundamental part of the scoring system, such as a fine for not restocking.

If the scoring system had included fines for not restocking it would have been absolutely fundamental to the task:

Why were we not told?
Why was it not mentioned at the briefing?
Why did neither team consider it important enough to form part of their strategy?
Why did Sugar only fine one team when both had restocked in a similar manner?

It was quite clear that Sugar just lost his cool and was flailing around impotently trying to make up for the poor task design. Even then his 'punishment' was probably a reward because past candidates have stated that the 'treats' are a pain in the neck because they would much rather get extra sleep.


Not at all. I'm simply saying that he did not run out of stock until right at the end of the task.

He sold a reasonable amount after the first phone call. Thus there is no reason to suppose that he had a problem with stock.

He didn't say: "Look, Natasha I'm almost out of stock", neither did he say, "Look, Natasha, I'm reduced to selling things that the punters don't want".

You are the one who is relying on something that we simply did not see in order to try and make your point.


We all know perfectly well why he was angry. Neither of the teams did the continual restocking that he wanted them to do.

That was his fault for making such a cock up of the task design that both teams ignored what he said he wanted because it would not have enabled them to score any better.

Really? Had he had a lot to drink. I can't say I noticed that he was pissed. Pissed off perhaps.

As for the task, in the real world, no business person with half a brain would "re-stock" when they still had so much stock left. This was one of several tasks on the series where the rules of real business are bent, if not totally broken, for the sake of good TV.

Yes I think it has been well documented on this forum that only an idiot would use prime selling time (during the day) to go back to the wholesalers to restock. Under normal circumstances they would restock early in the day. By the end of day one they could have checked the sales and seen which lines were selling well. (which I thought both teams did to a degree)
Then, armed with this knowledge, the teams then went back the next morning to restock on those items and maybe look at other, similar items. In other words, use their knowledge gained from day one to increase sales on day two. I believe that the items that sold well were not available in reasonable quantities (nodding dog) the next day, which also makes a mockery of the task. If you were going to do this as a business you would want to ensure that the items you wanted to stock would be available in the future, otherwise you would be going back to square one all the time.

A key point is that neither team seemed to bother to check when the suppliers were open. Wholesalers open early and close early, but both teams re-stocked late on the first day and could not get all they wanted from the suppliers which were still open.

I think you're right he was gunning for Natasha. Melody's team re-stocked less yet was not fined. Natasha is way out of her depth and I'm sure he'd rather have fired her than Melody.


He was clearly angry with Natasha for stopping Jim going to re-stock, as that was the core of the task. That she re-stocked the previous evening is not relevant. Natasha's defence was that she thought she had invested enough in stock the night before, and that really wound his lordship up.

Apart from that an outburst and fine makes good TV. The Apprentice was never meant to be a fair contest. Lord Sugar is judge and jury and can run it as he wants.


Only an idiot would allow stock of high selling items to run out. Sugar told them to re-stock frequently, up to 2 or 3 times a day if necessary. There were 3 people in each team so one could have been designated as the buyer.

I think that things might have changed a little since LS days of wheeling and dealing. What genuine retailer would spend hours stuck in traffic and use all that petrol at today's prices to make a £90 profit. Time is money as they say.
I believe a poster said that Helen's round trip took her 4 hours and even then the shop was shut when she got back so it was both costly and a waste of time. As a few peole have pointed out, the task was flawed from the start.

I used to do a lot of holiday/saturday work on the local markets, and dont remember anyone rushing off to restock during the day.

Obviously, the task was supposed to be designed to show if the teams could sniff out what their best lines were, but the reality is that this task was not suited for it.

It should clearly have been given a longer time frame, which because of the limited time allowed between tasks just couldnt happen.

Actually, he can't.

He is limited by the format that they bought from the originators.

And the BBC and the BBC trust have certain rules to which he must adhere.


You are again missing the point that if you designate one person as 'restocker' that person is not selling. And it's sales that win you the task.

Of course if you made it a rule of the task that one person must spend their time restocking it would work but Sugar didn't think the task through properly so didn't realise that he'd cocked up the design and scoring in such a way that to win the task you couldn't spend time doing what he wanted them to do.