By the sounds of it, enough fruit & veg to cover the mortgage payments on his first property.

In that show Karren said a lot about why LS had kept these five candidates.
Ricky - for his persistant self belief
Adam - for his successful sales patter
Tom - for his calmness and accurate costings
Jade - for her sheer enthusiasm
Nick - for his likeability and the fact that he always understands the task
So I think overall LS will pick either Tom or Nick to win.

It was a good programme,

Tom came out the worst really as it appeared he'd only done so well as his dad handed him the company and also that he cant cope well when the chips are down - an unfortunate bi-product of being handed too much too easily perhaps?

Nick I think came out best.

I think he's actually come out the best with Nick in terms of business acumen and efficency. In particular, it's the first time I can remember a candidate taking a high but calculated risk which they can then fully justify (admitedly, I haven't seen the first two seasons) and that it's been highlighted on the show last night was important. In real life business, you will have to take risks if you want to make it big and I think that it's something that will definitely work in his favor with Lordalan (of course, if he survives this week, at the end of the day, it's all going to be about the business plan and for all we know, Tom's could be crap - although I don't think it's going to be as bad as Helen's last year)

Where he comes worse off is in terms of personality (the "baby throwing his toys out of the pram" when things don't go his way). That's something that some people will be even less inclined to forgive him that he seems to have had the most "priviledged" background of all - and most of us prefer to see the underdog win, because it gives us the hope that, if they can make it, so can we But the fact that he's been handed a business doesn't objectively mean that he necessarily isn't as good and/ or as qualified as the others, or that he deserves it less

Anyway, I still think that it's a two-horses race between Nick and Tom, and I also still maintain that Nick is at an advantage, not because he comes across as more easily likeable, but because having set up his own ventures already, he's likely to know better how to formulate a strong business plan, and because the industry would fit well within Lordalan's organization

Having seen the 'Final Five' programme last night, I think it gave a good confirmation of how they want people's edits to come across:

Tom - highlighted his maths skills and the fact that he is a risk taker, but then spent a good bit of time showing clips of him having a tantrum. This was followed up by both Nick and Karren questioning whether he is too young for this process. To me, this is a clear indication that they want you to know he had past his prime, but so that they can have a 'surprise' final boardroom, don't want it to become too obvious, ergo they declare him as 'the one they've got to beat.' Overall, a positvie edit that showed how he grew from background to lead, but has recently taken a few hits. Second place.

Jade - a surprisingly positive edit, imo this is to try and level out the strengths of the final five. Highlighted her creativity in some tasks, but also interestingly gave her the oppurtunity to admit her mistakes when she was PM - not something she did on the task. Overall it was a sympathetic edit, in effect trying to defend the decision to keep her in and play up her assets. Third place.

Ricky - the programme wanted to hammer home the idea that this series, Ricky had been the one to go on the most significant journey. From starting out as a fairly cocky character, his loss in the sauce task meant that we saw a different person emerge in later tasks. He was shown to be decisive and a quick thinker, and reading between the lines the programme also pointed out that his losses were mostly done to the failures of other people. Fourth place.

Nick - if this programme wasn't trying to paint him as the clear winner, I don't know what would. It showed both his strong wins as PM, spoke in detail about his previous business, and (surprisingly) gave him a "sob story" (although I hate the term) to endear him as a winner. If the only fault that Nick and Karren could point out was that he has never been in the boardroom, then he must be doing something right in terms of business (thought not gameplay). Lack of discussion into his businees idea was intriging though. "Shock" First place.

Adam - a very negative edit here. Karren and Jade spent a good five minutes moaning about working with him, his lack of direction and independence. Tried to play up his strong sales, but apart from that there was very little substance. Again, no mention of his idea. Fifth place.

I agree with this except quite often there is a twist in the final episode so you never can tell!!

re: Adam's million pound property portfolio. This just means he has a few BTL's. These will have mortgages on them so he won't have anywhere near a million pounds of equity. It's not that impressive really!!

Neither did Helen last year....

How about coming up with a strategy of selling £25 bracelets to pound shops in the Flip Task last year?

Maybe its because both tend to play it safe, both might be capable, but Sugar wants a risk taker and both are neither that.

We don't know how much mortgage's on them. Besides, with the rent, there's a chance he earns enough to cover whatever mortgage's on them

Anyway, as I don't have one million pound, be it tied in property or in equity, I am still impressed

PS: what's BTL?

Buy To Let.

Thanks! Sorry for sounding totally illiterate

That is the thing about property Adam doesn't have a million pounds either, he could very well have a million pounds of debt though! BTL'ers don't generally own their houses outright so they are mortgaged to the max. Hopefully in 20+ years his rents will cover the mortgage and then he will have a million pounds but at the moment he doesn't.

There is a famous example of the BTL king and queen of kent who even got on the Sunday Times Rich List as they had so many properties, I think it was said they had a 180 million pound property portfolio. In actual fact they had kept remortgaging the properties to the max to release equity and buy more. So they effectively had 180 million pounds debt and (after the property crash) about 400+ houses which were worth less than 180 million. Amazingly even the Sunday Times didn't take into account the debt against the properties when calculating their "wealth"

I think they went bust around 2010 as they used to be in the news all the time but pretty quiet now, last thing reported was they were in arrears and in talks with their bank + trying to sell up... I think they claimed they were "retiring"

Except that wasn't the only fault pointed out. They made more of the fact that that he does not step up and stand his ground whenever he can see that all is careering out of control. Too much of a 'Mr Nice Guy' if you like.

Re discussion into Nick's business idea, do you mean his business plan? If so, they did not discuss anyone's plan did they?


Re BIB, see above.

You make some good observations in your post but I'm totally convinced that, due to the new direction the programme has taken (business partner as opposed to employee), LS has based his winner on the business plan rather than the person or their performance week-on-week. The winner is now decided before the tasks even take place.

Was interesting how neither Karren or Nick said anything negative about Tom, that I can remember. Karren managed to turn his negative into a positive about how he came through anyway. They could have quite easily mentioned his poor performance recently, but it was left to the other candidates to mention his tantrum-throwing when things don't go his way.
He didn't come out of it very likeable though. I find myself rooting for anyone but Tom to win.

Was surprised how negative Ricky and Adam's were portrayed, although they did lead to a redemption arc.
Jade's was just the typical strong-willed business woman who made a blunder on one task.
Nick's was by far the most interesting.

What I meant by this is that Jade, Tom and Ricky all had moments where they spoke about their "brilliant idea" that was "going to make a load of money" and was "so exciting", whereas the other two have made little mention of it over the series so far.

And yes. The wierd order of firing this series has made it obvous LS is keeping the people whose ideas he prefers. At this point, he should like all 5 of them (5 out of 70000), but at the end it is all a matter of personal taste. Notice how many tasks this year were decided by an arbitrary "your team/product/pitch/idea/brand/concept" was better than the others.

Karen did call him half playboy I think that's bad'?

Not the way she said it

As in 70000 applicants per series?

The business plan doesn't even come into the selection process until they get down to the last couple of audition rounds, so maybe 256 or 128 more likely - maybe even fewer, I don't know.

To be fair I quoted that from Tom's website so its probably BS anyway...

Ha ha, maybe he's confusing it with when he auditioned for Britain's Got Talent.

Of course he could be, but we don't know for sure either way - he could be up his eyeballs in debt, or he may have been able to take only a small mortgage that's easily paid with the rents with some extra for him to pocket on the side - both cases exist, with plenty of possibilities in between

Anyway, that whole real estate is impressive viewed from where I live because here only the really highly wealthy (or companies) can afford to invest in real estate - both because the laws that allow borrowing, be it in the form of a credit card or of a mortgage, are more stringent than elsewhere, and because real estate prices are just out of pretty much everyone's league

Be real. He's on the show because he's excessively dumb and has zero self awareness.

He's only a good salesman because people laugh @ his stupidity and then feel, oh, lets jus give it to him, he's made me laugh.

Should be on a show like Big Brother or something, wish they'd put people with actual real talent.

Anyone know what track is being played at 34;45?


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...he_Final_Five/

Oh I see... well until recently the UK mortgage lending was very freely available, we even had 125% mortgages and in the 90's they would pretty much give mortgages to anyone. It was a very fashionable investment and there were even oodles of tv programmes about buying and selling property. Most rented accomodation in this country is owned by private landlords, we don't really have the kind of real-estate companies that you get in other countries for residential property.

I agree we don't know either way whether Adam has played the game to his advantage or just built a pile of debt thats why I say we don't know whether it is impressive or not!

Building up his wholesale and fruit + veg business is far more impressive imho!