One thing's for sure, Susan has earned the most column inches in The Apprentice series 7, stirring the audience for and against more than:

9-wins-in-10-weeks Helen,
smooth-talking Jim,
nodding Tom,
black-and-white Natasha.

Does "Are the French fond of their children?" Susan perform well but talk something terrible?
Is the mouse going to roar?
Is Susan the dark horse peaking at the right time?
Is Susan an asset or a liability?

If you are going to invest your last £250,000 on a candidate, what do you think?
This poll will close at lunchtime on Wednesday, before the next episode.

no, becuase some strange people actually like marmite. nobody likes Ma

I really did lol at this.

You are embarrassing yourself now.

The current candidate poll shows that Susan is way ahead of any other candidate.

This is a good poll, though. It will be interesting to see how many people actually vote that they dislike her.

Yeah, nobody. Apart from everybody who voted her in the poll, the entire YF audience, etc.

Fail

Whilst the polls on DS may show Susan in the lead I would say that around the water coolers at my work she is not that popular. I might be worth considering that DS is not that representative of the wider society.
Having said that I think she is this year’s Lucinda (whom I personally could not bare) and so she might qualify as this year’s Marmite. But I am not moved by her, either way, at this point. (She was a bit annoying early on in the series) However, I do not believe that she is the best candidate for the prize (at this time)
She has just left university and although she has run her own company by herself, she does lack the maturity of Helen.
By this I mean that in the years since Helen left university she has held various positions and has learnt many skills along the way such as leadership, teamwork, time management etc. Susan will develop these skills with time but for now I do think she needs to learn about management from a corporate environment if she is to emerge as a leader.
On a personal level I would like either Tom or Helen to win if only because IMO they are ready to run a business. Running a company will involve managing staff and for all their faults both these two have good people skills and do seem to get respect from the other candidates.
LS would have us believe that business is all about selling but a company is only as good as its product and staff as well as good leadership.
I think Susan's immaturity will be her downfall in the end but I do admire her drive and ambition and her obvious passion. It would do her no harm to get some more experience and try again (assuming this prize will still be on offer) in a year or two.

Susan has shown herself to be naive, slightly deluded, lacking in basic knowledge and easily led.

Susan odes appear to popular and whilst she may not have the mature management skill of Helan or the inventiveness of Tom some of her decisions are really very good and her understanding of the task rules etc show a sound business mind behind the niavity.

I really dont know what LAS is looking for if he is not looking for the finished product Susan may be the ideal candidtate.

Lucinda stirred a strong responses both for or against. In the end Lord Sugar decided Lucinda could not and would not suit Sugar's purpose, and sure as hell the Sugar empire was not transforming to suit Lucinda.

All the winning candidates did not stay long with Sugar, and to date not one has shown signs of becoming a millionaire or millionairess, emulating Sugar's rise from £100 to £700 million. Arguably over 6 years Sugar has not found a single Apprentice in his own mould.

Good point about LS although I'm not sure the world needs another LS. I bet he wasn't easy to work for!!

This is true.

However, I don't think the title of the programme is honest.

Sugar is not looking for an apprentice and never has been. He has his children for that.

What he was after was upper middle management candidates. I don't really see that the winners were getting what they thought they were getting. Stella, for example, would have just been working as a manager under Bordan Tkachuk.

The winners probably got some useful experience in a job other than the one they had been doing. If they had a few one to ones with Sugar giving them general advice, so much the better.

susan in my opinion is the one who is going to win this show. why you ask?

well she's has already got her own buisness at such a young age. That shows initiative and also buisness flair. Through the show she has done quite well. In the last show she took a risk and sold bracelets with a highly ridiculous margins.

She's the only one with a viable buisness plan. The rest are just your average employees. Which is why i wont be suprised if LS picks her as his buisness partner. She is a buisness woman by her own right and hence LS does not have to babysit her.

Susan to win. It's that simple

I don't dislike her, but at the same time I am not her fan either.

Honestly, she is the only one who has shown improvement throughout the series. Some candidates are getting worse & worse, including my previous favorite, Tom who clearly has no balls (everybody seems to have more balls than Tom). Only Susan & Jim whom I find showing improvement & courage to take challenge. Helen is OK, but she's an executive assistant material (last episode shows that she is not really commercially astute).

Natasha? I think she is the most undeserving candidate to be in the final 5. Susan's nemesis, Zoe should have been in the final 5.

Other than the odd biscuits, what exactly shows his inventiveness on Apprentice?

I have liked Suzie right from the start. When Edna and Zoe started bullying her, I liked her even more because she always fought back (and this is where people say she is whiny, she was only trying to stick up for herself!). I know she probably won't win, but I hope she gets to the final 3. She deserves it.

I sometimes wonder what show people watch?

Are you sure you are watching The Apprentice on BBC1?

Where are their business plans detailed ?

thanks

It all depends on whether Susan's internet sales (more so than her street trading) are proven genuine as claimed, or whether on closer inspection they turn out to resemble Stuart Baggs the Brand's Isle of Man empire. If Susan truly sold enough to pay off her mum's mortgage then there must have been method in the madness. There would be an implicit business plan. At an economic time like the present it would be very unlikely for a schoolgirl or uni girl to earn enough by ducking and diving to give mum security.

When Sugar first floated Amstrad, the investment bankers asked him what was his P/E ratio? "15 press-ups every morning," said Sugar in perfect seriousness, never having had a business course . By his performance Sugar would have had a business plan, but it would have been in his head. Until he floated Amstrad he had no need to explain his business plan.

The same show where susan won twice as a manager. the same show where she sold in every episode. The same show where she took risks on products and succeded in it.

yep that show.

@ tissy, i presume susan's plan would be her current cosmetics buisness.

http://www.tropicskincare.com/

zoltan, did you achieve that whilst a teenager studying through university? yeah i thought so...

Yeah, that's why the 'yes' option is winning in this poll, and Susan is leading in the favourite contestant poll.

Yes, she has a real spark and get-up-and-go attitude.

I personally like her because she's nuttier than a squirrel's diet.

I've not seen much change in her. She's always had great strengths and great weaknesses. She sold well on the very first task and raised important questions, eg over whether they needed to spend more on fruit. She was also capable of vagueness and blunders, eg her suggestion for the mobile phone app.

She made good product selections in Paris and in other tasks, but then in the Flip It task she makes a blunder like trying to sell duvets door to door in the wrong location. Buying the bracelets seemed good on the Flip It task, but she got quantities wrong on the Beauty task. Sometimes she pushes her ideas, as with Jim making discounts on Magazine task, and sometimes she doesn't, as with the name of the magazine. When she has a good idea and pushes it, people listen; if it's a bad idea or she doesn't push it, they tend not to. She rarely shy about coming forward. She had a go at Zoe on the Rubbish task, just as she had a go at Natasha on the Flip It task.

She's been pretty consistent across the show, a mixture of strong and weak.

People react to her differently partly because they attach different importances to her mistakes. I think they see her improving because they forget how strong and confident she was in the beginning.


Tom has no balls now, but then he never had balls. He was always the one who raised ideas and has them ignored. Nothings changed.


Jim is good at sales and looks good right now because he just had a sales task. And because he paid attention to the task rules. But he's always been good at sales, and he's always shown initiative. The biscuit task shows he's still handing out the BS; it just works better selling to the public than it does pitching to professionals.


I think Helen is one who may have changed, in that this was her first duff task. I suspect she was too tired to focus and think properly, and just reached for the first tool in her toolbox, ie big single sales to companies. Then again, it may have been a one-off. Not having a treat will probably help her by giving her a day to rest.


I agree (except Zoe wasn't Susan's nemesis, and they worked well together on their final two tasks).

Well with an argument as watertight as that I can see I cannot compete

and I did not go to university as I was in jail.

Indeed.

Candidates have said in the past that the 'treats' are a nuisance and they would rather have more time to rest.

Looks as if Sugar has cocked up AGAIN by punishing them with exactly what they would probably have wanted.

I would say Natasha is more the marmite.

Helen was in the losing team, so wouldn't have got a treat anyway.