Its difficult though, and Lord Sugar ism't good on detail and sometimes makes superficial judgements.

Uzma's defence is that she's made some good points and seen some of the essential issues on all the tasks so far. In the kingdom of the blind, the partially sighted are worth keeping. Her offense is that the people who took her into the boardroom were all people who couldn't see those issues themselves, and many of the domineering males also lack them. Her problem is making a few good ideas that were ignored count. Her argument against the smoke without fire argument, is that her PMs failed to see problems, and then tended to round on anyone who made their life at all negative by raising difficlt issues. But she needs to be a lot more agressive to make that. She also needed to make the point even more strongly that she was a target for anyone needing a scapegoat after her second visit to the last 3.

Her problem though is that Lord Sugar doesn't work at the level of detail that says Uzma noticed what was going on here. He tends to look for what he thinks are major players, with more obvious success selling or presenting or being PM, and ignores many of the others. He sees something of himself in the Alex's, Stuart's, Tres and Neils so they overstay their ability.. You also had the nonsense about creative people being good at creating everything, and she failed to correct him on that, or to deflect the previous attack on her design ability by pointing out that no one would could make a square box look really good.

Basically, he hasn't decided yet that Neil and Kurt are pretty useless - because he doesn't judge intellect, and sees something of himself there, and he hasn't seen anything from her because he's not looking for small signs of ability. He also may have a problem with what she is offering - given Susan has already gone into business with him in a very similar field.

Its turning out to be one of those series where the reasonably smart but different, and the over enthusiastic, are going and leaving a large number of loud people with less ability still there.

Not sure on that, most "creative people" have an eye for design in one way or another. I'm a graphic designer, not a furniture designer but even I would say painting a piece of wooden furniture grey is an absolute no no in the market that they were aiming at. Uzma kept telling everyone how great she was at design, and even when the "boxy" was delivered she still looked for appraisal for her design. It wasn't until it was proved to be absolute junk, did she say "but I didn't design that". If she wasn't comfortable designing, then she should say so. I'm sure Alex isn't a designer but at least he had an idea and could get his ideas across to the fabricators.

uzma's failing with the design of the "box" was her concept wasn't going to be possible within the constraints of the budget and time , and doing a half-assed job of what she had in mind made it look like cheap tat

not saying that wasn't still a problem as she should have taken account of that when coming up with the concept in the first place

He doesn't see the footage we see. He relies on feedback from his two sidekicks and the production team, and from what he said that feedback was also quite negative in her case.


Yet he gave the win to Tom in series 7, despite Tom having no obvious successes. Tom won almost entirely by making good observations that everyone else ignored.

Karren normally has it in for one contestant and this year that appeared to be Uzma. She had nothing positive to say about her. I thought she would have waded in the girl power stuff when Uzma said she was being picked on for being the one who always got brought in.

Specifically on this task I don't think Uzma would have had a problem selling if she could get over how embarassed she was having to do it on the street. I reckon Uzma thinks she's too good for that form of selling and would have rather been behind a counter inside where she would have been able to make her presence more felt in a less vast space. Either that or she's just all talk and no action (which I suppose could equally be true). As for being ganged up on, I don't particularly think so, it just seemed to be Niall that had no time for her had and didn't want to hear her opinions.

Arguably Tom won because he had an idea Sugar wanted to invest in (not the one he was putting forward, but the nail file).

I don't think she thought she was too good for that form of selling. I think she was just too reserved to sell that way.

I think I would be just like her but at the end of the day, it's just a reality show, if she had the guts to go on that then why not sell on the street.

Tom won because he had a patent on a nail file. His few good ideas on task were more than made up for by a completely useless performance as PM, and completely mucking up when he attempted to design/produce any other product. He was hardly the only one to make the odd good observation that series.

I agre Lord Sugar doesn't see the little comments we see - though we don't see everything, by far, either.

Also agree he has picked up on people raising issues before. Lorraine made it till the interviews on her Cassandra reputation. Though when she got there, he threw her out because he didn't want someone as negative, difficult, and cryptic, and often wrong too, as Cassandra. She made it that far though because Margaret and Nick were, as you say, pushing the positive, and ignoring her mistakes, and ignoring how difficult she was for anyone to work with.

She might be good at what she does in the 'real world' but on the show she was no good and showed no promise...

Its rather a big flaw with the whole concept of finding a winning business propoal though, if she can do what she is proposing to do, and can't do something thats irrelevant to it?

She didn't come up with the concept. Its a group failure because no one can imagine what it could be like or any alternative. The cube came from someone else , the boring flat faces came with that idea, and, with that, the idea of being able to stand it on different sides. The lack of anything going on on the faces happened as the various ideas fell out en route. The colour seemingly came from somewhere else, as they rejected white - presumably for another bland colour that would fit in anywhere. She looked at what emerged, with the colour seemingly decided, and rightly spotted it was totally bland and needed to look much better. Its not at all clear, though, that it could be made to look significantly better given the basic design and the time and cost implications - or whether she really believed she had saved it. It might just have looked more saleable with a top quality painting or carving, on each side, but I doubt they had time to do that, or if the price wouldn't reflect that.

I still don't think there's anything to this creativity can be applied in many different ways idea. Being able to make up faces, or paint walls, doesn't necessarily translate into being able to make a box look interesting in a way that will sell widely, won't cost a bomb, and wouldn't take far more time. The boys chair looked like a kids high chair, for giant's kids, banged up by some woodwork class that had a small budget too.

I was referring to the design and how she wanted it to look rather than the product itself , as it was its looks she was being picked up on , particularly the colour

If people think that, I'm surprised they bother watching at all. You might as well say that Uzma was fired because her business idea was bad. None of the firing need have any relation to anything that happens on the show, so there's no point in discussing any of it.

Obviously, I don't believe that. Watching the show, Tom's talent was clear and the final result made sense, without giving Lord Sugar hidden agendas.

Lord Sugar had no choice but to fire Uzma. She had been weak in the first couple of shows and her contribution to this task was minimal. Kurt and Neil made errors in this task but also they at least have shown much more business sense and selling sklls than Uzma so far and have potential to do well

This was their first time in the boardroom and it would have been harsh to have sent them home for a failure on one task.
I think Lord Sugar felt they deserved another chance and therefore Uzma who had been given a let off had to go. On the basis of the task maybe tough on Uzma but it was the right call

That series ended as a complete mess -inevitably if the prize changed after the selection and tasks started as someone posted recently. You had one of the most successful people on task ever, losing to Tom who was one of the most incompetent ever, and the winning idea wasn't offered by anyone but lurked in a CV.

It still works as a series though bar the odd firing that might have gone the other way in a normal series. The last act being nonsensical doesn't mean the whole play isn't worth seeing. I doubt it Tom would have stayed in any normal series after admitting he decided issues by scissors paper stone, even if he had survived the emergency biscuit. I also can't think of any job that was offered in previous years that Tom could have done - so he wouldn't have made the last two then either. Things have got a bit better since series 7 - though only one contestant probably had a chance in the final assessment of projects last year either.

I agree he has written off Uzma after 3 appearances in the boardroom, and because she's up against people who share the blame equaly, can't be split, and are on their first appearance. But he's really not found much wrong with her in the smoke , and sends her off, as he did Sophie and Tim, with no real negativity.I suspect if he had wanted their proposals , as he wanted Tom's, he could have found equally strong positives for some or all of them too.

It was also the first time for Jaz and Tom, so your idea is not feasible.

Uzma should have been fired along with Neil because he messed up in a very bad way.

I think it was right, I'm afraid I can't get past the six inch heels and the caked on war paint, not to mention the eyes. Was she wearing blue contact lenses? Her eyes looked like something out of a horror film.

She could have had the best business idea in the world, but she came across to me as a typical airhead.

Tom's talent wasn't clear at all - he was an abysmal, weak PM, he lacked bottle as shown by his unwillingness to be PM (he did this only once all series and on that occasion he was made to) and, while he did come up with some good ideas, he came up with some terrible ideas too.

It was plain to see that Helen was the best performer on the tasks. But Sugar didn't like her business plan, and she didn't really have anything else to go on.

I watch the show because it's entertaining. It hasn't become less so because the final winner is chosen because of their business plan rather than the tasks.

Tom (in the seventh series) is a bit of a red herring. He did not appear in the final boardroom until task eight, when he was the losing PM, so there really is no question of him being saved by Lord Sugar's regard for his nail file: there was simply no opportunity to fire Tom in the early rounds because his colleagues never thought him sufficiently culpable or invisible to justify calling him back in the final three, despite his team losing the first five tasks.

And likewise Helen managed to avoid the Boardroom by just happening through sheer luck to be on the winning team however many times it was.

In the edits of the tasks, she seemed to do enough to avoid being called back to the boardroom with the PM, but she never seemed to be a driving force in any of them - and certainly was never solely responsible for the wins. In fact the only time I remember her in the early stages of the process, was when she stood behind PM Zoe while she ripped into Susan on the beauty products task......

She was a classic case of flying under the radar until the late stages, and when we heard her "business plan", that proved she was pretty useless.

There are several of the boys who are still there this year by dint of the fact that they have been on the winning team - Jason would be long gone had he been in the Boardroom and probably Zee.....

Women (and also but to a lesser extent men) invariably look better on You're Fired than on the main programme. The reason is makeup.

For You're Fired, candidates are professionally made up for television -- and those two words are key -- whereas for the main programme, they apply makeup themselves as they would for normal life, with no adjustment for the cameras (and it is doubtful they'd know how to adjust in any case). Of course, for the tasks, candidates are mainly interacting with the public so this emphasis is generally correct but it could be argued that the producers do owe the candidates some duty of care and should provide some expert advice.

In the final round, when it was Helen versus Tom (and Susan and Jim), I think it's acceptable and expected to take business plans into account. That's what the final round is for.

For some unknown reason, she makes me think of that scary girl in The Exorcist. The one who shoves a cross up her special parts. At one point in the film, her eyes are glowing and her hair is all over the shop and that is exactly what Uzma looks like.