Yes, you're right. She'd have been in the boardroom all day, which is hardly restful.

(For some reason I have trouble keeping track of who was on which team for this task. I also keep thinking Susan was on the losing team.)

That's an interesting point.

Maybe the 'treats' which, although sometimes fun, are stressful in themselves because they involve travelling and being filmed, are included just as much to ensure that one team do not have too much of an unfair advantage of getting a whole day to rest while the other team have the gruelling boardroom.

I would have said Melody but seeing she left, then yeah I agree, Natasha is more marmite

PM Natasha pointblank forbade her team from going to the cash-and-carry for restocking in defiance of the trading template Sugar had laid down for the task. Natasha deserved the fine.

Susan did go for a bracelets refill, subsequent to the wildgoose chase on which Natasha sent her, selling duvets door-to-door in posh Kensington. Approaching the 6pm deadline Susan was occupied flogging the last of her bracelets, so her high-margin low-ticket merchandise helped her team to win. Hard to justify a no-restocking fine on Susan as she did restock, and did sell out.

Jim repeatedly insisted on going for a refill but was beaten back by Natasha as firmly as Melody had beaten back Helen's leadership coup. Jim's restocking trip when he was finally allowed to go, was too little (£20), too late. Natasha was probably in physical possession of the team cash, but had Jim been an out-and-out revolutionary he could have pocketed his own sales takings and gone restocking in full-frontal defiance of Natasha. Such a coup could have been justified by results in the boardroom, i.e. the outcome would have been either individual defiance or team defeat.

Helen spent 4 hours restocking 30 duvets, but would have made 30 x £3 profits to save her team from defeat. Unlucky, actually unsatisfactory inattention to deails in that Helen had failed to ascertain her prospective buyer's shop closing time. Helen's restocking idea was ok, her implementation was not. She did not demonstrate courage in her convictions by attempting a second coup.

Tom implored for restocking but did not insist. Evidently Tom has no appetite for confrontation let alone revolution.

Both PMs resisted restocking. In deviating from the purpose of the exercise designed by the paymaster both deserved a fine. Team members who desperately needed restocking yet allowed themselves to be blocked, showed they were not men and women of redblooded action.

"I was following orders," they might have said afterwards. Those destined for the very top need to circumvent or defy bad orders. The buck stops at the top, or with those aiming to get there.

....and nearly always Right....apart from her views on Paris.....which is understandable, when you realize, she comes from the other side of the World.

Her column inches have been due to her ridiculous questions and comments. It's almost as if she's been possessed by the spirit of Jade Goody.

I don't think she's Marmite at all. She's far too bland for that. If anyone there is a Marmite contestant, it's Jim and if there's a dark horse, it's Tom.

No one who is so easily shouted down or simply ignored by her colleagues while still speaking is an asset to any company and a complete liability. If she has that level of interest and respect from her colleagues, how much interest and respect do you think she would get from clients and rivals?

Yes, I like some Susan on my toast.

Actually I think she has come to command more respect from her colleagues as they've realised what lies behind the froth of the apparently silly questions. This was very noticeable with Zoe, who once accused her of trying to sabotage the task yet by the end actively wanted to work with her.

I didn't realise until the Final Five episode how much the beauty task shook candidates' faith in Susan's claims. That may be why some took a dim view of her for a while.

Persons using a second language unless they were linguistically gifted often respond to situations by regurgitating from a limited library of cliches, conveying unintended nuance. God knows how many gaffes I would make if conversing with colleagues in Russian or German.

Functioning in the UK use of the English language is important. No doubt this 21yo will improve given time. Can't fault her for willingness though, always cheerfully selling even when she did not believe in the product.

I think it's more that people pay attention when she talks sense and don't when she doesn't.


Even on that task, when Susan says they should be paying £100 instead of charging £100, Zoe immediately takes her seriously and re-examines her strategy. She quickly concludes Susan is wrong (partly because Edna disagrees also), but she did listen to her opinion. The sabotage thing was said after quite a long sequence of Susan being out of step with the others, and particularly when Susan was raising issues when it was too late to deal with them. Zoe's patience was running out.

Yeah, right.

That's why the scenes of Susan getting tongue tied over her app idea and her musing on the French have been repeated over and over and over again.

Because so one pays attention.

Every time she makes a slip it's included in the edits, the previews, the summaries and on YF.


And Susan was the one who was right!

I'm not sure what your point is. That's something done by the editors, not the other candidates, and it's examples where she wasn't talking sense. When she talks obvious rubbish, they are right to ignore her.


Agreed. But again, that's something the editors do, and doesn't say much about how seriously the candidates took her when she had something worthwhile to say. Which is that I thought we were discussing.

Also, the editors have often shown her when she was right, too. For example, when Jim wouldn't give a discount on the magazine task, it was Susan they show arguing with him about it afterwards. They show her making a lot of mistakes, but they also show her getting a lot right. That's why I think "marmite" is a good word for her. It's easy to love her and easy to hate her, because there is plenty of evidence on both sides.

(And at the time Jim defends himself robustly, but in the next two pitches he does follow her advice and give discounts, so he did listen and she did have influence, even though if you'd only seen the argument you might think he was dismissing her.)


Probably. But I can understand why Zoe didn't agree with her. (And as I've pointed out before, if Helen had bid £100 she'd have turned a win into a loss. It is possible to over-spend; it's not an obvious judgement call, except with hindsight.)

That's another of the facets of the task that effectively turned it into a coin toss.

The candidates have no idea of what is a reasonable price to bid. (Why would they?)

Even if they did it's not really relevant because you are not competing with a rubbish disposal expert but another candidate who has no idea what would be a reasonable price.

Who won those bids was nothing more than serendipity and yet it was probably the major factor on which the task was won or lost.

I think Susan is by far the most impressive candidate of this series and is really the only option for Sugar to construct a business with.

It doesn't matter is she has a whiny voice, or if she is a bit immature (when I was 21 I was all over the place). The fact is that if people had actually listened to every idea she has had, the series would have played out very differently (and much more successfully for the teams she was on).

I work in management consulting for one of the big four and we spend lots of time analysing start-up businesses and assisting them/investing in them.

The amount of people I see like Melody who have swallowed a cheesy business manual and think that reciting the phrases they find in it makes them a good potential business is completely embarrassing. She was given four chances on YF to explain her business and couldn't do it - and this is someone who lectures the young on how to communicate!!!

Susan at a very young age has set up a legitimate established business which makes real (although we dont know how much) money. She has a great feel for what customers want and actually listens to her target market.

Contrast with the majority of candidates who appear to be just people who have set themselves up as a contractor and have cobbled together a website. I could do that tonight - its not an achievement.

The way (especially the women) just slap Susan down as soon as she starts to put an opinion across is not acceptable in a mature business environment.

Last chance to consider marmite on toast before this poll closes at lunchtime on Wednesday.