i was shouting this through the tele but no one heard me. the plonkers

did it not occur to them to ask an actual arab person as opposed to one of the asian immigrants who work there but dont speak arabic! good lord. Just ask an arab on the street. anyone could have told them.

I guess none of them are Bill Bailey fans...

I said to my husband at the beginning "it's a musical instrument, isn't he?" and he said "no, it's a perfume". He certainly knows more about items from the middle east than I do, so like Zee's team I went with his judgement. Glad to be proved right

I'm sure if my husband had seen the mahogany and standard size, he would have realised a lot quicker than Zee that it wasn't a perfume.

I did initially think it was OOD like the YSL variety but the spelling made me think otherwise.

Me too.

It really didn't help that they gave the phone to someone with an Ulster accent.

ahahahaha. no it really didn't.

I was baffled by this also.
Said to my Hubby " Why on earth don't they ask a 'local' "

I had to google it. I realised it wasn't a perfume from the description, but thought it might be a bowl of some sort.

I think the bigger question though is, where do you get a falcon hood in Dubai? We may never know now.

I just like the way Zee just kept digging a bigger and bigger hole for himself over the OUD. Even in the boardroom when pointed out that didn't it make sense when they were asking for "standard size" he told LAS "but they come in small bottles"

To be fair to Zee, and the other candidates, OUD is also a perfume. Many middle eastern countries also know OUD as perfume. In the one of the shops in Duabi mall that one of the teams went into, the window display had a sign with "Egyptian oud" on it with bottles of perfume. this site sells oud, and there is no musical instrument in site. Yes you can get scented wood, which is where the mahogany description does not automatically mean it cant be a perfume.

Its not as clear cut, to say they were idiots, oud is also a perfume.

im sorry I did not know what and OUD was but it was clearly not a perfume.

True but it was worded in such a way that it could only really be the instrument. They often have one of these "red heringing" items on this section of the AP

Are they not allowed to google stuff in tasks?

The Arabs are into "hunting with birds of prey" so I assume it would be easy to source a "falcon hood'. Or just pop into one of the big hotels, they use Falcons to keep the pigeons away.

Nope, they aren't allowed to use computers or sneaky google on their phones.

In fairness though, I don't see why they can't ask people to google for them, or do what they do on the Amazing Race, go to nearest hotel and get the staff to help them.

I know what you mean, and I know what he means aswell because although I knew it couldn't be a perfume, I knew what he was thinking when he said small bottles.
as in 50ml and 100ml bottles where I think 50ml would be standard size

Clearly the item choices were designed to get them all mixed up. I can't immediately think of two physical objects in English which share the same name but if you were a foreign TV channel sending your non English speaking apprentice candidates to the UK you would probably choose them to run around asking for Boots so you could laugh at them when they ended up in the chemist and not a shoe shop.

I've no Idea what a modern Kandura looks like and how it is different to traditional and despite me being able to search Google I am still are none the wiser so that was a trap.

All businesses in the UAE must use SI units and can't use feet inches etc so clearly they were given flag measurements in the feet and coffee pots in oz (oz being both a measurement of weight and fluid oz being a measure of volume.)

I can't really blame Zee for his mistake because there is a shop in London's Oxford Street called "Arabian Oud" (without the "h") which is a perfume shop.

I guess as the Oud fragrance (Agarwood) is made from wood the idea was one of the teams would not be able to explain Mahogany so would just say wood and one team would end up being assured the perfume was correct and cue laughter when the boardroom came and Lord Sugar tries the perfume and berates them for getting the wrong thing like the Halal/Kosher chicken episode.

I agree with what you saying. What my post is highlighting, that it is not obvious (as posters in this thread claim) that an OUD is a guitar. It can also be a perfume.

It's amazing how much cleverer DS posters are compared to the contestants.

Thanks for pointing it out - interesting how similar they are. I had no idea about either the guitar or the perfume beforehand - when I first heard the word I thought they were talking about the Ood from Doctor Who ...

Obviously it's more fun to paint the teams as idiots, but it seemed like an easy error to make given how similar the phonetic spellings are. Zee's real crime was continuing to insist he was right even when his sub-team were giving him feedback questioning whether they had the right product. Anyone could have made the original error - even a DS poster - but the problem was that he took an assumption as fact without pausing to consider the spec properly.

Agree Alex was going "bat shit crazy" in the car trying to explain to Zee that they couldn't find OUD under perfumes in the Yellow Pages.

But I did notice when the went into the expensive looking perfume shop in the mall it did have a nice neon sign in the window saying "Egyptian Oud". But when they asked the guy and explained what they wanted and the specs he even said no.