Great summary. Agree with every word. As flawed as he is in many respects, I have more hope for David to succeed in his future endeavours than at least three of the others.


Now I have to disagree. Nadeep may be trying to fly under the radar, but I think she was spot on when she (tried to say) that Alice is good at the general things, but fails on detail. Look at her instruction to the sub-team. "I want something iconic but traditional", blah blah. No specifics at all. Whereas it's reasonable to assume that if the Mad Hatter was David's idea, the garden party cakes may also have been inspired by him as well. As for him springing an idea which exceeded their capacity - at least he came up with an idea under pressure. The others, Ashleigh in particular, just seemed intent on moaning about how poor the organisation was.

She's the PM - can't the sub-team come up with any ideas? 'Traditional with a twist', fair enough, now go with it and report back with some ideas. What else are they doing?

I reckon they kept her in because The Apprentice is not a business programme, it's an entertainment show. Always keep people in who make good TV, especially if we dislike them - the more we shout at the TV and talk about the programme by the proverbial office water cooler the next day, the greater the prospect of decent viewing figures the next week.

Pardon me if this has been mentioned before as I've only just started reading this thread but would you use David as a tutor? He does not sound very intelligent to me because he speaks so slowly.

And would you use a 17 (??) year old to give your son/daughter tuition?

Personally I hope that David makes it to the interview stage so we can find out what his 'business' is all about. It would not surprise me if it is something like tutoring a few relatives' or friends' kids. But maybe I am wrong.

Ha! Ha! Great comment.

I don't know why people are getting so upset about the lack of authenticity - a bit of an artistic licence is fine as far as I am concerned. I would rather have gone to the 1940s one than the Mad Hatter's one simply because the former looked so much better - but I wouldn't have due to the price.

The only reason for the queue was that people were desperate to be on TV. Imagine all the people who paid through the nose to be on TV only to be edited out.

There is a massive difference between how much you would be prepared to pay for afternoon tea in Central London (especially somewhere like the Langham), where the 'market research' seemed to be conducted, and afternoon tea in a Country House. No one in the team seemed to account for that. Or for the massive price differential that people said they were prepared to pay, which needed analysing.

And a sample size of a dozen isn't accurate (OK, we don't know how many people they asked but we do know that not everyone was saying they'd be prepared to pay £16+).

I phrased that poorly. I can't place my finger on why he does not sound intelligent but the speed of his speech is one of the reasons.

Young Apprentice doesn't have an interview stage. I'm not sure if they'll go into what the winners will put the money into. In Series 1 they didn't mention that on the show, but in Series 2 they did, though they didn't go into as much detail as on the adult version.

I've actually accepted that my comment you quoted was wrong. The market research did show a few people willing to pay higher prices, but most went for between £5 and £10. Maria misinterpreted this and so did I.

In the street, anywhere, people might say they'd pay all sorts of prices for tea and cakes. As for what somewhere like Posh Country House Tourist Spot Blenhem Palace can get away with charging - did anyone really know for sure? I wouldn't know if £10 was too cheap or £20 was just right.

I understand what you mean about David not sounding intelligent, I take that as not in an academic way as he showed on the task he was able to respond with practical solutions but failed to take an overview of their situation and prioritise getting ready for service which the other team did so well.

I have wondered if English is his first language or the main language spoken in his home when he was pre-school. He speaks fluently but with poor vocabulary, not that the others are much better, except for Lucy who is half French.

I suspect the real reason for his comms problem is living in Luton. (I lived there from age 5 - 16)

David is just not blessed with a motormouth like some others. Admittedly he doesn't say much of great intelligence when he speaks but he can be steam-rollered easily by someone who can talk a mile a minute, even if what they are saying is basically a stream of bollox.

At last! Not only does this give me a chance to agree with you for once, it also gives me a chance to compliment you on your great user name. Putting aside the silver underpants for a second, possibly the greatest ever character created by Stan & Jack?

PS A lot of people seem impressed by Lucy but I haven't forgotten her breakdown as PM. She was as lucky to get away with her sub-team shambles as David was last week. Steven's creativity won that task.

Thanks for telling me. I didn't realise.

Thanks. I didn't realise.

When they said they would charge £16, I thought that was ridiculously high. I then concluded I must be wrong when the programme showed plenty of people willing to pay (at first).

I have to admit that it's a lot easier to criticise decisions from your armchair than actually being a contestant. It'd be easy to find out that you had forgotten something, or had massively over/underordered etc. We all make mistakes when we start something new and on The Apprentice, pretty well every task is new to the contestants.

Well Jack designed the character alone, sans underpants, (essentially just three lines anyway) but the Comics Code assumed that meant he was naked, so on the pants had to go. But yes, my favourite character.

Deja vu! The redux of Susan Ma, Sandeesh Samra and Arjun Rajyagor, eh?

I'm from a trilingual home and believe me, knowing languages has nothing to do with IQ. My aunt knows 5 languages (English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese French) and she's not exactly the brightest bulb in our box. She could acquire all these languages because her memory is near photographic. Nothing to do with her IQ.

My granddad's IQ was 143 and he had a foot-long list of academic and business achievements, but he could never speak English fluently. When he spoke English, it was slow and stiff (or as my friend put it, 'abnormally measured'). Because of that, English speakers treated him like a moron, but he was anything but that.

David can still be a thicko if he were totally fluent in all possible languages. If he's a thicko, then he's a thicko, regardless of the way he speaks, whether his home is bilingual and blah blah.

I said it before and I will say it again: how you speak does not measure your IQ. Just as there are slow readers, normal speed readers and fast readers, there are slow speakers, normal speed speakers and fast speakers. Ditto with how well or poorly you articulate your points.

Lucy was the PM? Which task? Oh, the cookery book task! I can't believe I completely forgot all that. Yes, she had fights with Amy, Alice and Ashleigh, didn't she? And there were many spelling errors in the book.

Yes, but the spelling errors were down to Amy, Ashleigh and Alice. As were the fights, frankly.