http://www.scotsman.com/edinburgh-ev...tant-1-2189612

Happened to come across this, a very personal story with also some background info about how the show is run behind the scenes. Wonder if she is still in touch with Michelle.

(even people who have seen that series might fail to recognize her though, as she was a blonde back then)

Hmm,.. interesting article, but I'm not sure how much of it I trust. I remember Sharon well, but I didn't like her at all. She came across as pretty bitchy person on the show (probably a lot to do with the edit) For example, she says in the article that the boys got babies to work with whilst the girls were assigned cats in the Great Ormond Street Hospital Calender episode. This didn't tally at all with what we saw. In the task, it seemed like they got a choice. Indeed, a huge sticking point was made about how Jo opposed it and the rest of the girls went for cats because they sold the most. So, unless Sharon is suggesting the whole show is scripted (An idea I don't believe for a second), then I think there's more to this article than meets the eye.

Fair enough to her for going on and being successful, though. Although, I'm sure she already lectured business before going on the show.

For proof that the tasks are not as free as we think and that the teams' choices are more limited than we are led to believe, you need only watch the episode of You're Fired on which Maria appeared. She clearly stated that the girls' team had to develop an accessory for the bathroom because that was the option they were given. The boys got the kitchen task. This is in direct contrast to how it was portrayed on screen.

If I were you I'd start believing it's scripted for far longer than a second

From the article:
“In one task, we made calendars to sell for Great Ormond Street Hospital. Naturally, you’d want them to feature children, but Sir Alan decided the boys would get the babies to work with – no doubt for obvious reasons – and we’d get a lot of random things not necessarily connected with a children’s hospital.

“On television, it looked like we were picking stupid things for our calendars, like we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. Which, of course, made better television.”

So the boys were given babies whilst the girls had a selection of other, less good, subjects to choose from. Clearly the conflict within the girls team was from trying to choose the best of a bad lot not the random ideas they came up with themselves.
From a production viewpoint it makes sense to restrict the candidates choices so they can have arrangements in place for photo models to be available at short notice.
Like the infamous 'no internet allowed' rule it would help if it were made clear to the viewer though.

Not the best person to be teaching enterprise and entrepreneurship though since she's had not much success in either. Her first business Scottish Baby Gifts folded within a year in 2001 and the only evidence of her "visionary internet TV company" are two videos uploaded on Youtube in Mar 2008 long before she took ill in 2009 (but still left her able to study for a Masters in Psychology).

As the saying goes, those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

Yeah there have always been hints of this over the years. For example the last episode, they clearly didn't come up with the recipes themselves.. so were given them. Which means they must have picked a product off a list off camera.

Also with the products they design, the focus groups always seem conveniently available and i've always thought the design companies seem to come up with the products very quickly and they do such a good job, I wonder just how much notice they had of the product they were asked to develop a prototype of.

And other subtle hints are there too. It's all just a bit too convenient sometimes. I don't think that means the entire thing is faked and scripted but I do believe the teams are guided a little off camera. Also you have to wonder just how likely it is that they'd let a team loose in a kitchen to produce a product and then allow them to hand it over to the public. Surely the product is tested first? Is the production part simply a test and they'd then handed professionally produced product to sell?

I wonder if the production team sabotage the tasks sometimes if it looks like they won't have enough entertaining footage to use. One team said they checked the correct spelling for 'Bellissimo' but it was misspelt on the label, and the team seemed quite resigned about it, also the ruined batch of sauce - a camera crew with them permanently but they didn't see what went wrong?

A lot of it falls under 'scenes created for your entertainment' I think. I wonder how much the contestants are aware of though.

More often its the other way around. Teaching requires some ability to do it well. Most entrepreneurs fail and many of the succesful ones only succeed because they were set up by parents.Thats why the best the Apprentice could come up with for an innovative idea is an old idea for a nail file and so many of the best candidates from the apprentice have ended up in similar fields to Sharon.

No, that's not what she said. She said Jane's team lost the bathroom opportunity because they were too slow. It sounded like the task was fair, and they could have had the bathroom if they'd been as quick as Azhar's team, and that Lord Sugar did not dictate who got what. I suspect the same was true for Sharon's calendar.

(However, I agree that in general there are a lot of constraints which the programme doesn't spell out.)


I think there's a difference between actively sabotaging the task, and not helping them by pointing out spelling mistakes or production errors. (It annoys me when Nick does point out their mistakes.)

That said, they are set up to fail in many ways. The lack of time, and the lack of sleep, and the constraints on filming, not being allowed to use the internet, etc. They often do a lot of good, hard work that doesn't make the edit.

There was nothing in the program to tell the viewer that each team had to choose a seperate household area, nor that there was a 'race' to get dibs on an area.
I think its quite likely that your scenario is right, and perhaps the race to grab the kitchen ended up on the cutting room floor, but it wouldn't have taken up any time for the voice over guy to mention why the girls ended up stuck in the bathroom...

No it wouldn't and nor would it have taken much time to tell us that there was a pretty strightforward, first come, first served choice between babies and baby animals in the calendar task or that the candidates don't have access to the internet. Leaving such details out though makes (it seems) more interesting television as we can all stare incredulously at this bunch of morons making apparently idiotic choices and wonder what on earth these cretins are doing on a show for the best young business brains in Britain.

Realising that they haven't actually come up with their daft choices themselves but have been given a selection of two and have maybe just been a little indecisive isn't nearly as much fun. Or so the producers would have us believe.