Zee got no credit for:
1. Sharing his local knowledge. He was right about the kandura and most of the locals consulted by Myles' team also said oud was perfume or incense.
2. Ordering the flag in advance
3. Keeping spirits up in the team after the flag mistake became apparent.
4. Negotiating really maturely and skillfully at the flag business & garden Centre
5. having a clear overall strategy for the task (negotiate hard in the markets)
6. Managing a very difficult deputy

He rightly got fired for bringing the wrong people back into the boardroom.

If he brought one of the other two instead of Natalie he would be still in the process. Definitely.

Actually I think he brought the two correct people into the boardroom. He was fired because there aren't enough women left. So basically Natalie benefited from sexism

Yes, Neil made a major mistake with the Kandura . I mean these products were for one of the top hotels in the world catering for the very wealthy . Yet when he was doing the purchase he said to the guy " I don't care about the quality I just want the cheapest" . So the shop owner sold him a cheap non traditional bargain Kandura which was wrong , losing money and paying a fine.

But equally, he was the only non-white candidate left. If they're concerned about gender, then why not ethnic?

(not that I think these variables should matter one bit)

He was fired because the negatives outweighed the positives. His mouth wrote cheques that his actions couldn't cash. He started the task with huge bravado and then failed to deliver on many aspects. Yes, he did some things right but he did more wrong. His people skills were non-existent. He basically had at least two thirds of his sub-team pulling against him rather than for him. He was completely pig-headed over the oud scenario which ultimately cost them the task more than anything else anyone did. He allowed one of his team to make a daft error right in front of him. Then he allowed his instinct of sticking with the Old Boys' Network to influence his boardroom choice.

That said, I don't think he would still be in the process if he'd brought in Neil or Kurt. I think Zee was always going to get fired - it was never a doubt.

Getting the flag measurement wrong was such a bad mistake, I think he deserved sacking just for that.

I was shouting at the telly the instant he said it.

And I could see him being sacked when he brought the two women into the boardroom, too.

I wonder how much say they get over how to structure the teams? The key to this task is always knowing what the things are, and where to get the most obscure ones. The best way to to do that is probably to leave two people back at base on the phones.

I don't understand the point made that a 6cm flag would be trivial on a large structure as if a 6inch flag would look much more prominent

It was a 2 foot flag vs a 6 foot flag.

Reminded me of the Stonehenge prop in Spinal Tap.

The point was that they were told to get a 6 foot flag, so would have failed that item if they had not replaced it.

I don't know if it was the camera angle distorting things but does the guy who was wearing the green trousers have a minor form of dwarfism? Am I the only one who noticed this? No disrespect to any dwarfs reading this as I know he's a bit of a knob.

It was Zee himself who made this a make or break task for him, it was his chance to shine and he promised a lot. He didn't deliver.

He could probably have just got away with it without the fatal mistake of taking at least one wrong person into the boardroom and letting off 2 people who had made clear mistakes which contributed to the loss of the task. He put his personal likes and dislikes first and this showed bad business judgement.

Kurt's mistake with the measurements was embarrassing, but making the flag twice didn't cost them much more in the end. Just a few pounds. The Kandura was more damaging, and of course the fine for not getting the oud, the full price of which must have been over 1800 dirrham.

Zee was the main reason they didn't know what the oud was. He was so sure it was a perfume he ignored the hints in the specification that it was something else entirely. So the fine for that was down to him. Also his leadership was weak.

He really should have brought Neil back to the boardroom, not Natalie. The end result would probably have been the same though as I'm sure Neil would have put up a better defence than Zee could.

Bringing Neil back may have been a better idea but as you say, I don't think it would have made any difference.

Zee has several choices for bringing people back to the boardroom.

He brings back Leah because she's basically undermined him from the outset and shown herself to have a petulant attitude. When she gets back in, she's dying to hang Zee out to dry and she's capable of doing so.

He brings back Natalie because he knows her cards have been marked and because she hasn't contributed anything to the current task (whatever the reason). He doesn't realise that she turns into Natalie Superharridan when she gets into the boardroom and will band together with Leah to hang Zee out to dry.

He doesn't bring back Kurt even though Kurt has made a tangible error. However, had he brought Kurt back, Kurt just points out a PM win, the fact that Zee was there when Kurt made the mistake and did nothing to prevent it and Zee's pig-headedness over the oud which made a far bigger difference to the overall result.

He doesn't bring back Neil even though Neil's error is bigger and had more impact on the overall result than Kurt's. However, had he brought Neil back, Neil just points out his stronger overall record and bands with Leah to hang Zee out to dry.

He doesn't bring back Alex because Alex hasn't done anything tangibly wrong and has a much better record than Natalie. Also if he brings Alex back, Alex just points to his better record and can also band with Leah to bring Zee down.

Overall, Zee was always toast on this task.

Tabitha, you are making your points really strongly but if you can be bothered to watch it again from the beginning with an open mind, like me, you might find that you're expecting him to be really dreadful and actually you might be surprised. In many ways he was more effective than most other candidates on this task. Francesca and Luisa were also excellent. His positives were plentiful but barely acknowledged.

But you really need to watch it back to get at all what I mean.
I'd say power of suggestion is strongly at work in this episode.

I'm a bit confused after watching that episode to be honest. Were we meant to side with Leah? Because she annoyed me as soon as she said "right, I'll be going to the mall with my sub-team". It's like she was so annoyed that she wasn't PM that she just set out to gain as much control as she could and I ended up feeling sorry for Zee at the end, even though he was probably the right person to go. YF also did a complete hatchet job on him.

No, Natalie benefited from Lord Sugar's annoyance that Zee tried to his job for him by labelling Natalie lazy and/or useless, when Zee could not pin any error on her, let alone a task-losing one, and that in doing so he had forgiven errors by Kurt and Neil.

When Zee chose Natalie and Leah for the final three, Lord Sugar said to Neil and Kurt: "He's let you off, and maybe he's made a mistake there ... go back to the house."

Then Lord Sugar's opens to Zee with: "I asked you to bring people back in for the right reason -- on this task -- I'm sure Natalie wants to know what you brought her in for, and so do I."

That, in a nutshell, is why Zee was fired.

In the first phase of the boardroom, Lord Sugar had already identified that the whole team thought Zee was a poor PM, who was also responsible for misidentifying the oud. The flag error was blamed on Kurt (leading to the Myles/kilometres joke).

In the second section, the one with the whole losing team, Neil was blamed for the kandura error.

At one point Nick says there was no passion from Natalie, and perhaps this cued Zee into bringing her back but if so, it was a miscue: first, it was Nick not Lord Sugar; second, Nick said it about Kurt as well.

Zee's strategy for the final boardroom was absurd: crazy.

Lord Sugar had already identified who was to blame for the three major errors, and Zee let two of them go despite himself being the third, and therefore the only person in the final three with a task-losing mistake.

He blamed Leah for the failure of her sub-team without realising, as was covered on You're Fired, that the same argument makes him responsible for errors on his sub-team and indeed, the whole team.

And he continued to boast about his knowledge of Dubai, apparently forgetting Lord Sugar's record of firing people who fail in their area of expertise.

Short of placing a whoopie cushion on Lord Sugar's chair, it is hard to see what else Zee could have done to ensure his own departure.

You do have a point about the power of suggestion - 'tis always at work .

However, I still think Zee's negatives outweighed his positives; the main negative being his insistence on oud being a perfume and refusing to listen to someone when they suggested it might be something else. The other main negative being his absence of people skills. His strategy and negotiation was far better than Myles on the other team (I've acknowledged this before) and as I grudgingly state above (), he did get some things right on this task. Had he got his team working for him as Myles managed to do and been less stubborn, his team could have pulled off a large win. Unfortunately, he rubbed his teammates up the wrong way and they pulled any way but with him (admittedly Leah appeared to be pulling against him from the word go but maybe that's telling too).

I don't think bringing the others in would have altered the result. I've covered why above but basically Kurt and Neil can argue better (actually I think a mute armadillo can argue better than Zee - articulacy is not his strength) and have more in their armoury to counteract their mistakes.

I do think Zee probably brought the wrong people in but I don't think the result would have been different whichever way. It would just have been easier for the editing team to eke out tension and possible fire-teasings with Neil, Kurt or both in the boardroom. Still, we'll never know and I'll certainly cease to care very soon .

Zee's mouth was his downfall.
1. Why not send Leah to the flag company, it wasn't as if any special knowledge was needed, and she couldn't of really screwed that part up, unless she got the measurements wrong.

2. Zee would of been better of in the Souks, he claimed to have so much knowledge of.

3. He refused to be told Oud may be something else, even going to the lengths of defending him self in the boardroom.

4. He didn't bring Kurt back. He was playing a dangerous game brining two women back, who basically hadn't been any worse then Neil/Kurt.

5. He admitted on YBF that if he had brought Kurt back for making a simple mistake on the flag dimensions he would of been fired because of that and the "Milk Shake" scandal.

If Lord Sugar thinks the flag mistake was a major error then he truly is a rotten businessman; it was a mistake that cost 28 dirhams or whatever the local currency is. Kurt made the money back on the pot plant. It was utter stupidity, but not task losing stupidity, and two other people sitting next to him didn't question it. If Kurt had been fired for a £5 mistake it would have been a travesty.

Neil's error however was big enough to get him back in. Especially when he is shouting his mouth off about halving the price of some shabby outfit in a market - I could show you twenty Australian women that would have got it for a tenth of the starting price, based on their holiday purchases in similar markets.

But it also cost them, the most important thing, time. I assume the flag place was on some industrial type centre, hence why Myles decided to stay for the hour. Zee on the other hand with all his forward planning, got the measurements screwed up, by trying to be the "big I am" doing deals in my car.

He says that, but it clearly isn’t true. The last 2 weeks Lord Sugar has fired the candidates for doing too little rather than making mistakes the caused the loss. I’m sure the business plan and his personal preference are a factor as well. They have to pretend it is based on performance due to the format of the show.

Zee likely thought that he had the best chance of surviving against those 2. He also saw Neil and Kurt as strong candidates so may have wanted them to stay so he’d have a better chance of winning next time. Natalie has been useless since day 1 and won’t last long so I’m sure he was glad to be rid of her. Leah and him didn’t get on so he’d have wanted rid of her despite her being one of the best women since they’d struggle to work together.

He didn't bring Neil back because they seemed like good friends back in the house. I think the same applies with Kurt. This is normal, pm's don't bring their friends back. Think back to the year when the greasy Italian with the massive nose didn't bring his friend back even though it was all his fault.

Also, the week when Natalie lost, it was Uzma and Louisa to blame as they came up with the crappy concept. She should have brought them 2 back and not Sophie who didn't do very much a bit like most of the other girls. She saved Louisa because they are friends.

And Leah needs to get a grip. In business, you don't always get what you want and you can't always be boss. You can't go round throwing massive strops and acting like a brat if this happens. Sugar Monster should have fired her solely for that. Can you just imagine her being his business partner, he says something she disagrees with and then she has a paddy for the rest of the week. Awkward.

It was supposed to be 6 feet but they miscalculated by starting on the premise that there were 12cm in a foot...

For example, when you watch it back, you see that Kurt asks Natalie to confirm that there are 12 cm in a foot, she thinks for a moment and then agrees.....
.
Much of what you say I really agree with you, Tabby (can I call you that?) but to be fair, I think Leah was probably more responsible for team cohesion being poor than Zee. Her attitude was so poor from the start. His sub-team got on well, reflected in Natalie's surprise for being called in to the boardroom.

f


some people obviously dislike Zee but he wasn't the weakest one on the task. Accusing him of acting like the "big I am" for ordering something in advance which takes time to produce is a little, er, personal.

The flag mistake was minor because they only needed one flag. Remember that in his manufacturing days, Lord Sugar would have been ordering components in the thousands.

Kurt in his drinks business will order thousands of cups. What if he confuses millilitres and fluid ounces?