It wasn't just that it came across as unncessarily unpleasant. It WAS in fact spiteful, vindictive, nasty, negative and supercilious. Showing Karren up entirely and competely undermining any credentials that she started with.

OK, just shut up now.

Hopefully this will be the last series on which she appears. Clearly not suited to it and a negative impact on the whole programme.

In your opinion, which some of us in this thread disagree with. Instead of simply dimissing such disagreement, how about accepting other people's views have equal validity.

Clearly the BBC think differently to you, and I suspect they are in a better position to objectively judge Karren's performance than you as a viewer.

I think she's great. I always look forward to her insightful comments.

Hahahahahahahaha.

Hahahahahahahaha.

Hahahahahahahaha.

Yeah, good one.

Karren is obviously a smart woman, but when you consider she replaced the monumental Margaret Mountford, she is nowhere NEAR her league in terms of career and entertaining us.

Karren is not an actress. Clearly the programme makers want her to add a bit of drama delivering the results and they like to show her looking incredulous when the candidates do something really daft. Its not Karren attention seeking its the way the programme is made.

They probably see her looking shocked at some ridiculousness then ask her to indicate her disdain so they can capture it properly. This leads people to think that her reactions are false or over the top. She is just not a natural actress or performer. Clearly Nick is better at this.

It doesn't make her a bad judge of character though.

I think she and Nick film a bunch of 'incredulous expressions' just before each task and the best of them is then paired with moments of incompetence during the episode.

I'm sorry, but what the heck (to put it nicely) are you talking about? That is so subjective it's almost laughable! I bet that every one of us here could look in your eyes and have a totally different assessment of the look in your eyes! And I bet you'd be the first to complain if anyone had 'got you wrong' just from 'the look in your eyes'. I have no opinion of Karren one way or the other, but I do not see 'joy from ripping people apart' (as you so charmingly put it) I see a person who has been given a brief to fulfil as part of an entertainment programme and is doing exactly as she has been asked in following contestants and making comments on what she sees.


Mean-spirited? Lacking in grace? Sadistically criticising for its own sake? I think you have just described yourself there, to be honest.

Again, what you have said totally subjective, based on nothing more than what you choose to see. Hardly definitive proof of any of the things you say. I'd need a lot more evidence than your opinions.


Oh dear - our old friend stating an opinion as fact and hoping no one notices that it's not a fact, but just subjective based on no hard evidence. Whilst many may agree that Karren could sometimes frame things differently, spitefulness is a completely different thing. Again, all the adjectives you ascribe to Karren rather seem to sum you up instead. I don't see someone who is spiteful or vindictive (and, believe me, in my job I see plenty of that). They are very strong adjectives indeed. I personally can't think of anyone I would describe in those terms, not even the worst of the people I work with, because I think you have to have done something pretty awful to be worthy of having those words used to describe you.


In your opinion, not suited, but plenty would seem to hold an alternative view.

Your negative, needlessly personal attacks on someone you've never actually met and do not know are really rather unpleasant and make you look the same.

In essence, Hazel, no matter how much you dislike someone you cannot express your opinions about them as if they are facts when those opinions are purely subjective (and, it seems, judged by a pretty strange set of criteria in your case).




Oh dear, someone else who seems to think that stating an opinion as fact makes something true! "She is aware that she is superfluous..." (Is she? Aware or superfluous?) "Doesn't provide insightful comments" (In your opinion - no proof that is a fact) And on and on you go making more subjective comments! You say she has "decided" things that you cannot possibly know for sure, and accuse her of trying to make more of her "small role", but she has the same remit as Nick in terms of role - and you don't accuse him of only having a small role!

Oh, and the comment that another poster picked you up on about Karren needing a 'good kicking' was just uncalled for. Trying to pass it off as 'irony' (as in trying to say you meant the opposite of what you said) doesn't really wash.


As I say, I have no opinion on Karren one way or the other, but there is no way she deserves the nasty things said about her here, and there absolutely no way that subjective opinions, no matter how firmly expressed as if they are facts, can be changed into facts.

The Apprentice is an entertainment show and out of the hours of footage they shoot they can edit it together any way they like. All of us know that the reactions we see from Nick, Karren and Sir Alan are not always the reaction they gave to what was said, but it's been edited to look that way.

Isn't life too short to be so bitter about someone you've never met?

I quite agree. I don't understand why there are a number of posters on this forum who feel the need to attack Karren at every opportunity instead of focusing on the candidates. There was a whole thread dedicated to her wardrobe
How sad it is that a woman who is successful in business cannot be admired for her achievements rather than being denigrated.

'attack?' How so? This is a tv comment forum

Yes it is, a forum. For debating and expressing - and acknowledging that that is all they are - opinions. But some of the things I've read on here go way beyond simply expressing or debating differing opinions - and some people have been trying to tell the rest of us that they are right, that Karren is some evil harridan, and there is no need for any further debate at all! That is not how a forum is supposed to work!

And some of the language that has been used is, and would be termed if it was happening face to face, attacking in nature. And very aggressive its tone and vocabulary, which is why the poster described some of the comments as 'attacking'. I hope that has answered your 'how so?' query.

The "but it's a forum and we're allowed to say what we like because that's what a forum is for" excuse is getting tired, and can't be justified when it's being used as a reason to launch written attacks on people with no evidence of why they deserve it, other than they are disliked and someone's opinion is that they are not someone they have any respect for. That is fine - we can't all like or have respect for everyone - but there is a line over which one should not go when it comes to how to express things, and frankly some of the language from one particular poster has been extremely unpleasant. In my opinion, of course. Anyone is free to disagree with me - in a relatively polite manner. They can disagree about Karren if they want to, but there is no need to descend into the kind of vocabulary that has been used in parts of this thread.

Honestly, if you didn't know who or what Karren Brady was you'd think she was an abuser or murderer of children if you went purely on some of the comments that have been written about her on this board! Yet all she is is someone fulfilling a role in an entertainment show (we can't, in all honesty, call it a 'reality' show) and she is earning her money doing the job she has been hired to do.

Whether you like her or not is entirely your right, but you can dislike someone and still be polite. But please don't use the "but it's a forum, I can say what I like" excuse to justify being nasty, personal and vindictive just because you don't like or respect someone. Remarks such as Karren deserving 'a good kicking' (and then trying to pass it off as an 'ironic joke' when you're pulled up on it - which makes one suspect the writer knows they'd gone too far...) or to claim, very definitely, to see a "look in her eyes and... see the joy she gets from ripping people apart" are way over the line of what is acceptable in a civilised discussion or debate of differing opinions. And yes, some of it has been attacking in nature.

Wow. You must be a lot of fun at parties.

Probably! I'd rather speak to jersey at a party than most of the bitter shrews in this thread, going solely by the range of responses.

I think she's great. I always look forward to her insightful comments. If you pretend to think I was being sarcastic again I will know that you are baiting.

Yup.

She is OBVIOUSLY not a smart woman. I don't recall a single intelligent thing she has said in all of her appearances. A young teenager could have provided the same low quality of insightful quality she provides.

Karren is indeed not an actress, or much else in my opinion, that is why her attempts to dramatise the revelations of the orders the teams received was so poor. She was desperate to make the revelations dramatic to amplify her role in the programme and perhaps toy with the idea of projecting herself as haughty for novelty value, her initial disdainful demeanour was just a dramatic ruse intended to make the final revelation all the more remarkable, and it just made her look her usual unprofessional and silly self.

I suspect this stratagem was of her own doing and had nothing to do with the production team. Karren has trouble enough being herself, the production team wouldn't have laid extra demands upon her.

Nick has never played such a crass trick on the viewers, and if he chose to, he would have done it better.

Her role isn't superfluous, but she is, and I suspect that deep down she knows it.

Indeed I can't know for sure whether she has decided things, but I believe the evidence is in my favour in the situations I described.

You say that I have no "proof" that she doesn't provide insightful comments, well I would contend that one can't prove something so subjective. But how about you offer some insightful comments she has made, and if they are even half-decent I might modify my analysis to "she barely makes an insightful comment". So if you have an example, please offer it.

Nick and Karen do have small roles, but because he does provide useful and worthy comment, and Karren, I suspect, is aware she doesn't, either consciously or unconsciously, so she feels the need to make an impact through some other means.

How the production team shoot the Apprentice has nothing to do with Karren's desperate attempt to raise her profile by her dramatic ruse of misleading the viewers and candidates as she announced the team results, and added a faux haughty demeanour for extra dramatic effect.

I suspect that Karren is a perfectly nice, shallow person, and would make a good neighbour, despite her lack of objectivity in assessing people, but she is doing a poor job on the apprentice.

'She is aware that her comments are not worthy' - what planet are you living on? You'd better tell Lord Sir Sugaryness quick because obviously he hasn't noticed

As for her delivery of the results - it was obviously ramped up for dramatic impact. Do you honestly think that was Karren's idea rather than the directors? If you think that you must be very ignorant about the making of TV programmes.

It was such a bad idea and so badly executed, and never used before to my knowledge, or at least not to the extent it was used by Karren, that it had to be her idea. I think there have been cases before where Nick has made very very subtle hints at the result in his preamble to a declaration, but the effect has been so subtle as to be acceptable.

If it had been the idea of the production staff then, on seeing the result they would have felt guilty for making her look such an idiot, they would have re-shot it.

My money is on her making a desperate bid for the limelight through her belief she could lead the viewers along a dramatic narrative in her declaration through building up expectations and then dashing them. Alas, she just looked silly and desperate to those of us who could see the underlying intention, and she looked disdainful and supercilious to those who took the performance at face value.

I agree with the sentiments. In 2012 there are women who are successful in the real world: some people can't live with that. Is attacking Cherie Blair and Nicola Horlick not fun any more

This really is laughable. Do you really think that Karren is directing the programme now? She was obviously asked to do it that way so that they could create some dramatic tension. Wise up about programme making.

Karren is not directing when she makes a decision on how she delivers her thoughts. I very much doubt she would have needed the director's approval for the style of delivery of the team's results. This is supposed to be a reality programme you know.

It is not out of the question she took instruction on how to deliver the piece but I think, for the reasons I gave above, she was the instigator of her style of delivery.

Christ, Flossie is just a troll. Take a look at his/her previous posts and realise that ignoring him/her is the best thing to do