I was most angry at Sugar on the last task having a go at Helen because she has never run her own business and prepared to give preferential treatment to those who have.

If LS is not prepared to take a 'gamble' on candidates who have not run their own business then he should have made that clear before this season's Apprentice started and only invited candidates who have run their own business to apply.

No. He was complaining about her commons sense of going to retailers who can go themselves to the same wholesalers that she can. Helen was of the opinion that since her 'travel' costs were free paid by the BBC she could use them to get retailers to buy from her and save them. What she didnt realise was that retailers dont work that way.

Whats the know NO for, did you not listen to his summing up

I must have forgotten. Did he really say he is not taking anyone who has never had their own business. I just cant believe he said that.

I think he is too soft on her and that's because that narky bird KB keeps whispering in his ear.

Helen in the phone answering pencil sharpener for a bloke who heads a bakery that sells cheap poor quality products to the great unwashed. No wonder its doing well in the recession.
Apologies to lovers of Greggs who do wash, but it really is a dreadful set of products.
If frozen food giant Iceland ran a bakery.......

He didnt say it, but he did question her lack of drive to set up on her own.
And he was highlighting that she has become over confident because she has been a bit lucky and she is now creditting herself with winning all those tasks when in fact, she hasn't done anything instrumental in winning any of them

He was basically saying "you're not all that", and he is right.

He didnt say it, but he did question her lack of drive to set up on her own
That is what I thought he said. He was questioning her. If he wants to give her 250K he is entitled to. This does not mean he wont accept anyone who has not had her own business

Very not funny. Here's his tirade to Helen

" You say in your CV one of your biggest regrets is waiting until now to set up a business. You don't spring out of bed one morning and say I fancy starting a business. You have to have an idea and some experience"

Lord Sugar has always been wary of corporate bureaucrats. He is self-made, and needs someone capable of independent judgement. It is his £250,000 which will go west if a bureaucrat says, "It wasn't my fault, I have never seen this situation before."

" You say in your CV one of your biggest regrets is waiting until now to set up a business. You don't spring out of bed one morning and say I fancy starting a business. You have to have an idea and 'some experience'
I remember him saying that.
what do you think he meant by some experience. Experience in what. If you cant start you cant get experience. Experience in thinking about it. Or did he mean starting a big business (like with himself) without experience in a small one. Or did he mean starting a new business without experience in an old one.
Whatever you have to start somewhere.

I suspect Lord Sugar was saying an outstanding businessperson is born, not taught. Such a person would have so much inborn instinct he would have tried out business on some scale however small.

I am suggesting he did not believe anyone who has been comfortable for 25(?) years never having tried out business on any scale, would have a true passion for business, as distinct from a corporate perch however high. It is not lack of experience but the lack of passion and compulsion implied by a history of never having tried. If his 45 years personal experience did show that all top businesspersons were born as such(?), well who can argue with that?

Yeah I agree with this. It seems rather unfair when someone is criticised for their career before the Apprentice. Someone could be great at the tasks but fall down due to their lack of real-world business experience.

I think what Sugar is tacitly suggesting is that 'the process' isn't really the best way of finding the best candidate.

More proof (as if any were needed) that the Apprentice is fundamentally an entertainment show.

I think he is prepared to do that. However, the point did need to be raised and addressed. Doing so gave Helen a chance to repudiate it.

Be gone with your hideous slander! Greggs is a beautiful haven of carbohydrates.

I am intrigued about what Helen's business plan will consist of, nor do I entirely blame Lord Al for being cautious with new starts -- he is investing, after all, and needs to be sure that those behind the idea are savvy enough to go through with it. While the elimination process is intended to show this, I'd imagine it does help -- from his perspective, at least -- that candidates already have some experience with setting up a business. Since Helen doesn't yet have these skills, she fails to come with the security the others possess and is, as you say, a gamble.

If LS is saying the only suitable candidates to go into partnership with him are those who have setup their own business, then the 12 weeks so far of the Apprentice count for nothing. Helen, Jim and Natasha may as well go home and let LS decide between Susan and Tom.

Will be interesting to see how much he is going to harp on about this in the remaining two weeks.

The show only showed LS having a ''pop'' at Helen so it would make the programme more interesting and stop viewers thinking she was running away with the prize. Before last week she was classed as untouchable.

LS did stress last year that the very promising finalist Chris had no business experience at all, whereas Stella had oodles. In the end LS chose Stella over Chris, not sure if experience was the deciding factor.

Sugar is a child of the 60s - his model for success is somewhere between Private Walker, Steptoe and the Trotters - with lots more success. The reality of the modern world is that nearly all those able are now going to university and joining the paperchase, people will change jobs and types of job more, and the world is more dominated by fewer and fewer big businesses andmore individuals supplying services - like whatever Edna and Melody actually do.

He's got past form on the anti-corporate argument - except when he's picked a winner for being corporate because the job required it. Kate lost to Yasmina largely as she had done well in big busineses, and Yasmina had set up a restaurant. Liz lost out to Bagg's rhetoric about being a succesful, thrusting self made entrepreneur.. Tre stayed weeks on his claim to being successful on his own. Lord Sugar even says he can't understand why people would want to work for anyone else - but fails often to distinguish the people who want to succeed on their own from the ones who live in dream worlds and the ones no one else would work with. Corporate in the Sugar dictionary is almost as bad a word to have on your CV as engineer, psychologist, economist or lawyer.Corporate people, in his analysis, are seen as lacking the drive, skils and instinct to do well on ther own just as lawyers are only people he hires when he needs them. He's been pretty bad showing his biases already this series - Glenn went for beiong an engineer. Zoe was rightly seem as a contender for running a business which impled lots of them are not seen as contenders because they don't. Helen is just the latest victim.


Its a nonsense argument in many ways. If it was valid there would be no point anyone without a business already applying. The real argument ought to be about who can best run a business now - thats what the show is there to suggest. You haven't dome it yet - therefore you can't do it - just doesn't follow. There's no reason why someone from the corporate world shouldn't have waited till they picked up the skills, ideas, contacts and finance. Nor is starting from the very bottom the only way, or a very sensible way, to do it if you can make more working for someone else.

Sugar needs to learn that not all people who work for corporations are 'corporate'. A lot of people initially join corporations and spend a few years there developing their careers before the oppression of the dead hand of corporate culture gets to them and they move on.

That was his other unsustainable remark about Helen last week. He might argue that the margins were better selling to consumers, or that it was very difficult to get between the wholesaler and the retailer, but his argument that it was impossible made no sense at all. Helen had done it. By some calculations, her returns were potentially as good as anyone street selling, and if the supply situation had worked, she would have spent less time making her money by going for bulk orders . If she could have delivered the goods earlier, her team would have won, and if they had found just one more retailer, they might have won without the fine

He may be right that there's no business model that would work long term there, but the problem is that Helen's model worked once and it only had to work once or twice to do well in task terms. She obviously wanted a better return without spending all day selling in a market and might get some credit for that - but it may not have been wise when you are being judged by someone who thinks that market stall skills are what its all about..

The whole retail/wholesale thing made no sense whatsoever.

None of the team were stupid and yet apparently two of them were quite comfortable going to retailers and Tom did not stop them.

I find it hard enough to believe that one person out of the original sixteen would be so daft, let alone three out of three of the top six!

On top of that, they actually got a reasonable order from a retailer. Why? What was he thinking?

Then there was attempt to sell to a pound shop - reminiscent of Catherine Tate's awful granny who went into a pound shop and kept asking how much everything cost.

That whole section of the task was inexplicable but I am pretty much convinced that the production crew somehow induced them to do some rather stupid things.

You do post some cracking posts networkbabe, always worth reading.

What Helen tried to do and LS cant forgive her was to circumvent the task. She didnt succeed, but that doesnt change matters. She tried to win using devious methods. She knew very well that the task wasnt to be the wholesalers errand boy but to sell to people. There may be a thing of win at all costs not to spoil her record, but this has damaged her more than anything. Someone who was riding so high should get so low,. If she would have done absolutely nothing it wouldnt be worse. LS must be thinking how can I trust her with 250K. She could take over or make a new sunday paper. Plenty of journalists there. Just in time for the final, Would it cost 250K to start. It was a very profitable paper making millions. If she just kept it in the present format she and LS would have it made. Change the title slightly and keep the best of the old workers. She would have all the publicity necessary, A real gold mine.