This is the first series ive watched from the start and i have a question.

Are the challenges always random or are they all geared towards one contestant?

Eg this weeks zee should have had an advantage because he used to work and live in dubai. Last time one was able to make money from milkshakes because thats what he does for a living.

When ive watched the odd apprentice here and there ive heard alan sugar question why wasnt person x pm since this task is related to their business or their business plan?

If zee had been fired last week, would they still have had the dubai trip or would they have changed it to suit another contestant?

No they're not set up for any particular contestant. But it makes you wonder if as a whole the show is set up with contestants skill sets in mind.

We've seen in the past certain tasks do favour certain contestants. The health one from a couple of years ago.

They're definitely not set up - not least because you don't know if contestant X will still be there in week Y.

On the whole, though, there is a running theme of candidates who have some pre-existing knowledge in a particular task putting themselves forward as PM, bombing out and being fired.

For instance, on more than one occasion we have seen a marketing 'expert' lead an advertising task, lose and get fired. Or, more recently, Kurt's tunnel vision in focussing solely on his shakes rather than how to win the broader task. (At least he wasn't PM then.)

I'd argue that Zee's knowledge of Dubai hindered both himself and his team here - it certainly didn't help. They'd have been better off knowing nothing at all, starting without assumptions, and treating this as a standard logistics-and-negotiation task.

I mean, I've lived in London most of my life, but does that mean I'd know where to buy a very specific item? No. But a little common sense would suggest particular parts of the city, or finding a particular type of retailer or wholesaler who could help me out. There's a big danger in a team relying too much on one person, who can't possibly know everything.

You could argue that Dubai was made with Uzma in mind being as she was nominated for an Asian Woman of Achievment award.
However I think it is just a co-incidence - both Miles and Leah also claimed knowledge of Dubai though not as forceably as Zee.

The previous task was not about milkshakes its just that Kurt saw an opportunity to showcase his business plan (to his detriment as it turned out) - it was supposed to be about selling farm produce.

To be fair to Kurt, I assume they were told to make a "take away" product and were given a list to choice from.

That's right - my point about Kurt was that him being an aspect in one aspect of the chosen strategy (i.e. shakes) blinded him to the wider task at hand, as we saw when he refused to spend the full fruit & veg budget Neil had given him. He just couldn't grasp why he needed to do that.

As for setting up tasks, bear in mind that setting them up is more than the work of a few minutes. I imagine several weeks (or even months) of planning go into setting up one as complex as Dubai, from the basic logistics of flights, hotels and scheduling to some of the more behind the scenes stuff - finding a hotel to act as the client, getting filming permits for locations, researching the items and putting the nuts and bolts of the task together. It wouldn't surprise me if the task details are nailed down even before the final 16 candidates are selected.

There is also the fact that SAS sometimes picks certain candidates to be PM - and not because a particular tasks suits their skill set. On these occassions, he wants to take them out of their comfort zone and see how they cope.

While I don't think the tasks are set up, I do wonder if the tasks are made up once the final 16 have been announced, and set up in a way to challenge certain people.

Example
The one where they went to France, not one of them could speak French (or maybe 1) and I'm not talking reading "War in Peace" in French, they didn't know basic French terms. Are we led to believe that out of a group of supposedly intelligent business people not one of them spoke French.

This week, for the first time in a few series we've had an exotic overseas buying task (not including France or Germany in this) and low and behold it just so happens that a few of them had experience of the Area, one actually having lived there!

In junior apprentice we had a clothes task, were one candidate sold vintage clothes and another was a clothes designer.

We've had a health/exercise task were one candidate was a health club professional.

There are probably others, or am I reading to much into this?...lol

To be honest, I think it's the opposite. Where a task and a candidate's skills match up it's likely to be just a coincidence. Why would the producers want to give a certain candidate an advantage - particularly when said candidate turns out to be a muppet like Zee or (Young Apprentice example) Patrick?

Plus, of course, unless it's an early task, there's no guarantee the candidate most suited to the task will still be there. In fact, it was quite surprising that the 'foreign' task occurred relatively early this year - often it's left until later in the run to keep the logistics costs down. Maybe Emirates spotted them some free flights as part of the free advert that Dubai effectively received here?

But does it give the contestants an unfair advantage or is it used as a "Billy bull sh*ter" exercise. Has there every been a task were a candidate was "the right man for the job" and was actually successful (by successful I mean not just won, but won really well).