I was pondering this during the cloche task, and again this week...the candidates seem to have been given smart phones, but I wonder if they have internet access on them, or whether one of the rules of the programme is that they are not allowed to use the internet?

The fact that they're always given reams of Yellow Pages suggests to me that they're not allowed to use the internet.

If they do have access though, wouldn't you think they'd have looked up "what is a cloche" and "Was Columbus British" at some point during the task....

Apparenlty they dont as that was the point of the task that they had to use their own logic to try and figure out what these things were.

That's what I thought; I wonder if they've disabled the wi-fi/3g access on their phones then?

It makes sense that they have to work these things out for themselves, but in the real world anyone starting a business would use the internet for research.

Yeah I know, I think its a way of sorting out the wheat from the chaff though. Any idiot can google something. But they want to see how they use their brains to work out what something is and what it could be.

Otherwise they could just order all 10 products online, pick them up and then spend the rest of the day at Legoland or something.

Excellent use of initiative!