Uzma.

All three were useless in their own ways but Uzma lied

I hate it when that happens. Almost always the person does a terrible job as PM and gets fired in the next episode anyway. If they're bad, they're bad. Sophie had three tasks to make her mark. As far as we can tell, she had nothing to offer.

Had Natalie or Uzma though? I agree its a dangerous strategy to stay in the shadows (Not that that stopped Kendra on USTA3, but I digress) but on a task like Wednesdays, where Evolve failed so much, I think it would have been fair to fire someone who was responsible for the failure of the task. Its not as if Uzma and Natalie had been at the forefront of Evolve the past two weeks is it? I'm not sure what they brought to the table.

So I would have given Sophie one more chance and probably fired Natalie (Though maybe Uzma as she was also responsible for the failure and hadn't improved that much since her Week 1 BR appearance)

I haven't figured Uzma out yet. She seems to say a lot, and even though she annoys the others I don't think she talks rubbish all the time. For example, as I recall it was her who told Rebecca she shouldn't have asked a buyer for their location when they already had the address from the phone book - she was basically right. She has energy and steps up and makes contributions. If she had better social skills I think she'd be worth having; and her social skills may improve over the series.

The team may not have won with Natalie in charge, but it hasn't won with anyone else, either. It's a difficult team to manage. It's not her fault no-one had a good product idea. The results of the market research were useless, being vague and contradictory. They tried to instil the product with magic, and she couldn't realise what a failure that was until she had the actual prototype. Then it was too late to fix and nothing good would have come from criticising it. The pitches, and everything else on the second day, seemed to go well. They didn't make mistakes like going to China Town when it was closed and they shouldn't have been there anyway; or trying to sell beer in a winebar, or forgetting to do beer taps or take beer samples, or showing their bum to the buyer during a pitch.

Natalie wasn't a great PM, or even an average one, but she wasn't as bad as some we've seen. It's usually better to have someone who does something, than someone who does nothing, because then at least you have a chance of a result.

Actually, that was one thing Uzma was wrong about. The company might have had more than one location, with the meeting place not the main office listed, or even have moved since the phone book was printed (but kept the same phone number).

Who should have gone? Rebecca possibly for sabotaging the market research, had she been taken to the boardroom. Natalie for losing control of the brainstorming session which set the women on the wrong track. Uzma for being weak at what she claimed was her strength: design.

Lord Sugar does have an unfortunate habit of firing people for "hiding away" when in reality they have simply carried out the backroom roles assigned to them. However, here Sophie authored her own demise when reciting to Lord Sugar the littany of things she could not do: design, create, pitch or sell.

I completely missed this. How exactly did she sabotage it?

OK, sabotage might be leaning towards hyperbole.

It is far too common on The Apprentice for the market research team to look for reasons for not doing what has previously been agreed, rather than looking to improve the design of the chosen product.

In this case, Rebecca was sceptical about the cube and preferred a desk. Her market research was aimed at eliciting support for desk-like features, and nothing that would have improved the cube. All the design team could do with her feedback was either ditch the cube and build a desk, or ignore it completely, which is what they did.

I would have fired Natalie I think. To be honest, the real weak link on the girls' team is Luisa. She needs to learn to shut up and stop shouting over people who are more talented, intellligent or experienced than she is. She really is an arrogant idiot. Natalie let her away with this and didn't listen to Rebecca when she tried to speak up earlier on or to the results of the market research. I agree Uzma talks a lot but doesn't do anything very impressive, but on this occasion I really think Natalie was a very poor leader.

It wouldn't have mattered (to me that is) overall in the show whether Natalie or Sophie had gone first. But seeing as I've heard Natalie talking aplenty in the previous episodes (along with seeing her perform badly as PM) I personally felt she might as well have gone before Sophie because we've seen (to my mind) all angles of her, which I can't completely say the same with regard to Sophie. Natalie might as well have gone first as I didn't see what else she have to prove and therefore no point in keeping her. She got her chance to be PM and failed. She was an average team member too. (to my mind).

Yes, Sophie was bad in terms of being a team member, I think most of us saw see she seemed to not offer much, but only because she (for whatever reason) says she only does or doesn't do certain things. We had seen all angles of Natalie (who seemed to have more confidence in herself and her abilities) and yet while she tried to talk the talk and walk the walk she failed, both as a team member and PM also. She didn't fail because she was in secure or was holding back (like for some reason Sophie) but because she did talked aplenty, shouted abit too and was still average despite all of it. So why not get rid of hopeless Natalie and stick Sophie in as PM just to see whether she had any redeeming qualities like we've seen Natalie doesn't. No harm seeing as Sophie's time (like Natalie's still) was running out. Then we'd have seen both Natalie and Sophie be fired because we'd seen both of them as average PM's along with being average team members when not PM.

Sophie pretty much made out via a poor excuse that she couldn't talk or do better because of some of the other girls and the way they were. But if she had got PM (as one last chance) then we'd have seen whether any change would have occurred in her (as it's possible it might have) as she'd have no one to hide behind and the last say on everything (on top of having to actually speak and give instructions). Then we'd have seen for def whether she really was was kept quite by some of the other girls (and hence couldn't perform to her best) or see if she was just plain lying and used it as an excuse because she has no real skills to offer. She didn't o much on this task, but I don't think she held less blame for the poor design and overall idea that was steam rolled by other people that in comparison were the opposite of her and tried to do and say too much. You might not have wanted to see Sophie as PM but I did, and I can feel that if I want to, I don't need you permission to have my opinion.

Confessing that you dont pitch, sell or design was a bad idea - poses the question: what do you actually do then? In terms of the task, she should have stayed, but she would never have won.

I said Sophie, in the first task she was told to do more after it and she never did, she just hid in the background. You could make a good argument for Uzma cause she created it and the box was awful but she did some things in the other tasks and at least contributed to this one unlike Sophie. Natalie wasn't a great PM either but Sophie didn't do much. Plus saying I can't pitch, sell, design etc didn't help and her defense in the boardroom was weak.

It wasn't just that speech. We've seen almost nothing from her over the previous two tasks. To the point where last week some people were saying Tim should have brought her into the boardroom instead of Rebecca. At that time I defended her, on the grounds that she might have done stuff which didn't make the edit. However, it now seems she didn't.

Part of my background here is that I don't want the PM role to become a poisoned chalice. In the American show, the losing PM gets fired so often that sensible candidates avoid it. The producers had to offer a bribe, in the form of immunity from being fired in the following task if they win, to get them to consider the role at all. In the UK we've avoided that, partly because Lord Sugar does not fire losing PMs as often as Trump does. That may be part of why he saved Natalie: he'd just fired two PMs in a row, and three in a row would have been too many. It is also why I don't like to see poorly performing candidates made PM and then fired as PM; it affects the statistics of more PMs getting fired.

So I think it's important for the long term health of the show that candidates not be punished for being PM. PMs should get the benefit of any doubt.


Absolutely. I hope nothing I've written implies otherwise. I wasn't attacking you or trying to intimidate you.

Uzma is clearly deluded about her creative talents.

Toxic Uzma should have gone, but I suspect they're keeping her because they think she's good tv.

In addition to her obnoxiousness, she seems to be one of those people who gets away with saying she's 'creative' and has design ability only because she hadn't really been tested. Her 'design' contribution to the task was laughable.

Last series, the show went too far the other way, with no PM being fired until almost the end of the series. I do think the PM should go if they are primarily responsible for the failure of the task, unless there's a really compelling case for someone else to go (for instance, in the Marrakesh task in series 4, Jennifer M was primarily responsible for the defeat due to her lack of organisation, but Jenny C and Michael should for me have been the ones to go because of the utter idiocy of the kosher chicken episode and because both had been shown to be morally delinquent)