Aside from what parents would obviously not like about the Big Mess idea (let alone how a recycling element was going to be shoe-horned in), 3 year old kids might want to make a big mess - but not 6-8 year olds. They think that stuff is for babies. They want to draw actual things, people, houses, animals etc. They do not want to be junior Jackson Pollocks. Stupid stupid idea and the lack of orders was hilarious.

To make sales, it was vital that the teams came up with vaguely original ideas. Odyssey's was fairly novel, Platinum's ended up being just another me-too. A load of old Pollocks indeed. The right team won, and the right candidate was fired.

My thoughts on the episode and a stab at the order of the final seven in my weekly recap. Happy for anyone to tell me why they think my order is utterly deluded ...

http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/...d-of-pollocks/

I actually thought Navdeep's team might lose due to the poor costings putting people off. Delighted to see her get such a big win as PM though. She seems to be a good leader who gets on with people and presents well, but that weakness over the costings is her biggest black mark to date.

Based on the task Ashleigh should probably have gone - the poor idea was hers. However, I was expecting David to go, as he's been useless in every task up to now. Sadly ironic that he actually shone and appeared creative and enthusiastic on the week he was fired though.

With Navdeep's poor costings and Andrew's apparently not being liked by Sugar (absolutely pathetic from Sugar, by the way; "you might be someone I don't like"? What a load of crap!), I think Lucy now looks to be very much the one to beat.

Interesting to note that, while Maria seems to be liked by her fellow candidates, Andrew appears to be disliked. They must see something different from us.

I have big question marks over Navdeep now, having considered her to be one of the early favourites. The poor business sense which was underlined tonight is a major flaw. She seems nice enough but I'm not sure what she contributes other than speaking well - similar to Andrew.

Ashleigh was a bit lucky, not so much because she had a bad idea but more than she missed the point of the task, which was to be original and with a bit of an educational element. I wouldn't hold her pig-headedness at sticking to her guns against her - when candidates have won in that manner in the past they have been praised for sticking to their convictions.

Having said that, I don't rate her. Yes, she is cost-conscious, but nobody ever succeeded at being an entrepreneur by watching the pennies. It's more about confidence and risk-taking and having big ideas. Ashleigh hasn't shown any of that for me yet. I'm not saying she doesn't have those abilities - merely that we haven't see more than this one dimension yet.

Sugar says something negative about everyone in the boardroom, just so you are not sure who is going to be fired - he actually didn't really say anything negative about Andrew - faint damning indeed - 'maybe you are this, you might be that.'

Also Ashleigh has clearly never used the word 'was' in her life. It's always 'were' no matter what the correct grammar.

I were
He were
The dog were
etc

Well, if he can't come up with anything less pitiful than that, he'd be better not bothering.


As opposed to Sugar, who says 'was" when it should be 'were'.

You was

I think Navdeep did the opposite for me tonight - she became a contender for the first time. Her pitching was brilliant and her leadership was incredible, considering she had Maria on her team. No sour grapes - that takes skill from the PM.

I feel there is absolutely no chance of Andrew winning after that little comment from LS. I don't think it was a curveball. If he says something as personal as that, there's no chance Andrew will be the end winner. Found it odd because I really like Andrew, but then the others all called him arrogant too...

Huge respect for Ashleigh sending Lucy back to the house.

I think that - and David being there - is what saved her.

She would have been a total fool to bring Lucy back, and if she had, would certainly have gone in a double firing for bringing the wrong person in.

I can't believe nobody else has commented on this, but when Ashleigh arrived back at the house, someone (it sounded like Maria) said what presumably was 'Thank f**k' but the second word was edited out obviously.

Surprised they'd even leave that in, thought they'd reshoot the scene in the event of something like that or find a better way around it than what ended up being a bit of a comedy edit. Made me laugh anyway

Ashleigh had one of the two best records. David had been poor on a whole series of tasks and would have gone last week if Lucy and Ashleigh hadn't won for him - his card was marked. . David also failed on the task that was most like his specialism (education) which didn't make him look like a contender. Andrew he doesn't seem to rate. Lucy goes even further ahead for having a better idea.

Navdeep failed on the figures - so her brownie points score is limited - though she has a PM win now.He may have confirmed his view that her business sense isn't that strong. Maria did very well in the lesson , putting the science tricks together, and generating ideas. They wouldn't have won without her contribution this week. She also didn't bite anyone's head off this week - which he tested - suggesting he's interested. By deferring to Navdeep, though, she's still not been a PM or won as one . He has to make her PM next week to see what substance she has. She's now more in play than she was..

They have all worked with David and I think they would all have put David in a foam outfit to get him out of the way on a task by that stage... he was a risk too far for your team as they get into the later stages.

Yup made us LOL here, I liked the way he rowed back on his instinctive (and funny) comment quite quickly without missing too much of a beat!

...And you can also give it to your mother...

I thought it was mean too.

'Perhaps you are the sort of person I don't like' he said. That's not business, that's personal.

I totally agree. Her complete lack of imagination should have seen her booted out of the door. She is pedestrian and seems 'old before her time'.

Can anyone guess how recycling was going to be part of Ashleigh's plan? Using recycled paper, ok. Recycled paint? No such thing, or at least nothing kids could paint with. Recycled paint-brushes? Well there are some, but again geared for home decoration, not kids paintings. Or did she envisage making art out of old baked bean tins or something? Did she do any research into this idea, had any background into whether it was a 'thing'? I wish she'd been asked about it a bit more as I am quite curious.

In fairness, I may be wrong, but I wasn't sure that the task was 100% laid out beforehand - I thought it was an afterschool club thing instead of a Butlins camp type thing.

By the way - has anyone given credit to Maria for not slapping down Navdeep in the boardroom when she claimed Science was her big idea? She wanted to do a literature club!

She made me think of The Wombles.

A scavenging through rubbish club for kids. Imagine the havoc!

Mummy look at the art I made out of these needles and some sticky rubber balloons!

To be fair, although the other contenders didn't rate David it seems as if Lord Sugar at least had a huge soft spot for him - that was a gentle firing for someone who had been in the boardroom for four out of five weeks and he even got a "regretfully you're fired." I quite liked David, but perhaps he was too laid back for this. Being a private tutor is more academic/educational than entrepreneurial. If David didn't have such a poor record, then Ashleigh would have gone but based on past weeks she deserved another chance. The comment to Andrew was abit unnecessary.

she confined herself to a little smirk, probably knew that the decision would be on film and K and N report back to him, so she knew Lord Sugar would have the true facts.

Incidentally, if the contestants in both Young and Ordinary Apprentice watch the show before they must be aware that everything is recorded and Sugar probably watches it before they go into the Boardroom, yet they still sit there like butter would n't melt, lying through their teeth, very strange.

Ah that's good it makes me feel less self-conscious wondering if we all sound like that on TV.

I'm definitely rooting for him though, I thought Sugar was way harsh on him. Surely he could have worded it better, like maybe some helpful advice instead of making it too personal to a young guy who hasn't even finished growing yet so can learn from his mistakes with a bit of direction.

Not a chance!

Following a team around for a working day, you might generate what, six hours of footage? Let's reduce that to four, to be on the safe side.

But there are two teams, so four will become eight. And each team is divided further into subteams, so that's, what, approaching sixteen hours?

This is per day, too. A task like this, you've got a research day and a pitching day. Sixteen becomes thirty-two - but, of course, the subteams will unite for some of that, so let's round it down, assume they were together for the entire day and say twenty-four.

Frankly, even on the shortest tasks, he wouldn't know where to begin. That footage wouldn't be made into a coherent narrative until long after filming's finished. The amount of work that goes into editing a show is enormous. He physically would not be able to watch the tapes. It'd be information overload. And there's a lot more stuff that happens on the tasks than makes it onto our screens - we're just getting the snapshots, the bare minimum we need to get a coherent narrative out of it, and the tasks will be cut based on what's mentioned as significant in the boardroom, rather than the other way around. Time spent in the boardroom would be counted in hours, rather than minutes.

He'd go mad within an hour - because when they go into a meeting, he wouldn't be watching the two minutes of salient bits like the rest of us, they wouldn't have time to edit it and wouldn't know what the candidates are going to bring up! They can't know what's salient in the first place. If he wanted to see that meeting, at that point in production, he'd be seeing the full half hour play out in realtime.

Not viable under the time limits, no point when he's got a room full of people who were there... he'll have been fully briefed on what happened, and not much of what the candidates say is going to come as a surprise to him, but I'd say it is incredibly unlikely that he's seen any footage whatsoever of the tasks except in very extreme circumstances. I don't think it would be physically possible.