Katie is the only halfway decent girl (or man, for that matter) yet she is consistently being given a hard time - by Lord S and the other contestants. Compared to the other girls she is pure gold and the boys are a bunch of unintelligent chavs. It's a very weak field this year but she stands out above all of them

So we can all gasp with amazement when she wins and be fooled into thinking it wasn't rigged. She is the best female candidate and attractive as well, which is probabaly why the other women strongly dislike her.

She is definitely one of the better candidates but I don't really understand why she is given a hard time either.

Either there is something we haven't seen on the TV or she is just not in the 'clique'.

If it suddenly stops once the candidate numbers go down, we will know if it is just a 'clique' thing

Could be she upset the girls at the beginning?

Did you notice the chat before the boardroom survivors returned to the house? A couple of the girls were bitching about her - and at least one o the lads leapt to her defence!

Maybe Katie's on this show get a hard time because of Katie Hopkin's

I'm glad this thread was started.
I'm finding it hard to root for anyone yet, but I'm starting to warm towards Katie.
I don't think she has deserved to be in the boardroom or the losing team and has had a string of bad luck and dopey team-mates.

Unfortunately, Lord S has turned into a bit of a vindictive old codger in some respects with repeat offenders, and if Katie is back in there again soon, I think he'll just fire her out of spite

It must be the editing, because I am in agreement, in that I can't understand why she gets so much stick.

I suppose they need a whipping boy (or girl in Katie's case) every season & she is the 'chosen one' for that role this year.

Katie can't be that good as she's been on the losing team three times and Phoenix was winning until she joined them. As PM in the condiment task, she got both production and sales wrong.

I dislike the way she was smirking and looking smug in the BR when LS criticised the other team for having no product at their first pitch and I was really glad when her team got trounced by Duane's team.

I think Jane took against her last week because Katie was right. She suggested the 'tap cosy' and at the focus groups it was clearly the preferred product. The fact that there are several versions on Amazon.com and none on Amazon.co.uk suggests that there is a gap in the market here so they would probably have done well with the pitch to Amazon (as long as the figures were correct, of course). Also, last week Katie pointed out the errors in the figures but was not listened to and this week showed that she would have got the figures correct. Katie volunteered to be PM but Jane was chosen but the edit indicated that with Katie as PM and with the tap cosy task the girls would have stood a good chance of winning. No wonder Jane hates her.

I really like her, felt that she held her own against Ricky when he was trying to demean her choice of him for the final three.

The female candidates know that she is very good and therefore she has to be eliminated as soon as possible (though their moment may have come and gone).

There is a reason that some of the guys were seen to disrespect her yesterday (WITHOUT HAVING WORKED WITH HER YET!).

The same thing happened with Stella English a couple of series ago, though I wasn't a fan, even if she did win most of the task at the start.

I think she might be this years Susan Ma, got a lot of stick for being quite and not standing up for herself and she made it to the last 3.

I think that Jane has got herself a little team that hang-on to her every word and she made it very clear that she didn't like Katie. Therefore they will just follow her lead!
Bonkers scheme really as she will surely turn on them in the end but it will help to protect her for a while

The first person to start the pile-on was Nick. He put a very large signpost over Katie saying "this one is lazy and does nothing" and they all leapt on like lemmings because Nick is Lordalan's right-hand man and everything he says is gospel truth. Nobody got far on this show by contradicting him (except Debra (<3)).

He's given her the benefit of the doubt, moved her to the other team just in case it was a clique / personality clash and she's still losing. What exactly would she have to do to justify getting fired rather than it being spite?

True
He was very negative about her last night

She probably is the best of this year's bunch (so far), but it looks like this season doesn't really have any standouts, so not exactly sure how good she is.

I think she did well as a PM, despite losing, but before she never really stood out to me. I don't think she did very much on the first task, and if it wasn't for Bilyana pretty much negotiating herself into being fired Katie would have been a goner.

But as I said, she's probably among the best, if not the best of the bunch based on recent performance, so it looks as if she has redeemed herself.

You're not Samantha Brick are you, lol. (joke)

From yesterdays episode some of the guys didn't seem to think that highly of her either. Apart of me suspects the guys were happy to hand her the PM job because they thought that if the task was lost that she maybe be an easy opponent to dispose of in the boardroom. And that blonde guy is a patronising fella with the whole this is gonna be a hard task, thing. I mean he does realise that everyone in that show is competeing for the same thing because they all think they're good enough for it, doesn't he. Or does he think people that aren't confident in themseleves and their abilities (whether deluded or not) would apply for this job too.

On to the Katie issue though, I stil don't know if it's the editing that we're not seeing (if she is that hopeless) or if its just a personal dislike for her by others. I can't help think it must be a personal thing towards her becuase the TV producers would love to show her in a bad light if she really is as pointless as the other candiates are making out which which, apart from the first show where she did look like she wasn't doing much, hasn't been the case (or since anyway).

I think thought that Susan was disliked for being (or at least coming across) as immature and abit over excited. Whereas Katie almost seems the other way, like, more mature in her behaviour and almost laid back about her ability (which would be less annyoying wouldn't it)? Or maybe because she's less vocal and laid back it seems like she's not displaying enough urgency and isn't pulling her weight.

I am finding the dislike for her bemusing though.

Yes, it does seem that way. Especially since even with 3 losing tasks under her belt and being PM in this week the producers still gave her (and Stephen) a very positive edit.

Because she did a really good job as PM.

Even with the spoilt batch of sauce - Ricky & Co just didn't make enough of the stuff to sell to the trade a a decent price, and michael refused to flog the sauce he did have at $p less than what he had been told. Katie redid the figures and switched from mass market product to premium brand - and did well to match the other team unit for unit. She showed she was flexible, quick thinking and could do the maths!

As someone pointed out - we never found out if the posh grocers ever took any Belissimo

I think she is strategically bright and totally brilliant the way she handled herself in the board room. Body language was mega sophistated. Sat calm in her seat, didn't lose it, was fair about her own shortcomings but ruthlessly pinpointed where the boys had let her down. I think she is a star.

If they did, it was a very small order. The Trades Team only had 15 sales unaccounted for, and the Sales Team can't have done a deal with them, because Partridges is far too far away from Stratford Westfield for it to be worthwhile them trekking out there, especially as she'd given notice she'd abandoned the idea of selling to trade, and she only resorted to it on her sub-team when she needed to ditch remaining stock at the last minute.

I thought Katie did a decent job with what her factory sub-team lumbered her with on Day Two, but she wasn't an really good PM. On the first day she should arguably have been on the factory floor overseeing production or at least working out costs, rather than wasting her time with the branding and marketing team, to which she personally contributed little, and which produced a poor result anyway. On the other team, Duane was on hand to marshall his factory team when things went awry, and they won the task because of it.

Even the big point in her favour - raising the price of the sauce to cover the lost stock - was something that was suggested first by Ricky. Sure, she almost certainly would have come up with herself, and she did work out the sums well, but it wasn't the big exciting point it was portrayed as to justify her being saved from that Boardroom. (Not that they needed to, because Michael was the most pointless contestant the show ever had, and they should have pity-eliminated him as soon as it became apparent he was too unwell to compete properly).

Hehe, no, though I am sympathetic to the hardship of being beautiful as back in the day I was quite a looker........oh the good ol; days.

It will be interesting to see how the Katie story line pans out, either because she really is a contender or maybe because the rest have little to offer at this point, other than Duane of course.

Well, even if you have misgivings about her PM job, I think only Stella did better handling the boys (that said, Chris did become sulky during the task and Stella ended up in a bikini), you surely have to admit that she is a better candidate then the other two in that final boardroom.

Besides, as Lord Sugar said, production was the failure of this task and she decided to leave that in the capable hands of the guys (you could argue if that was smart).

Also, the other team didn´t have any marketing, something glanced over because they won, so obviously Duane could be on the production end of things (and let his subteam pitch without a product or concept).