And did not stop to wonder when the price was "a tenner".

Perhaps Natalie would have been fired if Zee had brought back Kurt instead of Leah.

Three things would have been different. First, Lord Sugar would not have been annoyed that Zee let off both the people who had just been identified as making task-losing mistakes.

Second, Leah would not have been there to confirm Natalie's accusations of sexism.

Third, Kurt and Zee could both have pointed to Natalie and said, look, we made errors but at least we were working hard whereas she did nothing. We hold our hands up to the flag mistake, Lord Sugar, but Natalie was complicit in that too.

I think in that case, the result would have been different.

Whether Zee's choice was due to sexism or croneyism, or was simply another instance of Zee acting on the first thought that popped into his head, is moot. Zee was the author of his own boardroom misfortune.

Zee was kind of buggered in a way. He had reason to bring all of them back but he only brought the 2 ladies in. He should have asked Sugar Monster if he could have brought the whole team in.

I think the only person who he really couldn't have brought back was Alex - wasn't seen making errors as such (did moan about Zee a bit but nowhere near as much as Leah), and he flagged up the oud issue which LS pointed out.

Everyone else had reasons to be brought in.



There's a few things that I would have done had I been a candidate on that task:

1. Try and get Zee to compromise in the initial brainstorming session. If Leah was so adamant that she wanted to go to the mall, then spend a few hours in the souks attempting to source and purchase some items, before heading to the mall later on. They might have been able to find the oud then.

2. If I was on Leah's sub-team (and to be honest, I'm surprised that no-one said it) then I'dve said to her after that brainstorming session "look, Zee might not be the best PM but he is PM, you're not and so you do need to defer to him. If he's going to mess up this task then let him do that by himself and don't give him a reason to bring you back." Or words to that effect.

3. Asked Zee to let the sub-team look for the 4 items which should be easiest to source. With all his local knowledge he should have less of a struggle finding the more difficult stuff.

Personally I think he was better off bringing two from the subteam. So Neil and Leah, because I doubt Shugs was going to fire Alex when he was the one raising noise about the oud.

The only hope Zee had was pointing at them only getting one correct item, and staging a mutiny. At least his team corrected their mistake.

Let's face it though, you knew from the second he became PM he was doomed.

Even this is a moot point. Alex eventually figured out that there was oudh and oud. Yet he seemed to do nothing his epiphany. I can't think of one positive contribution or decision he made to the task.

Neil did try to do this to some extent. He had to calm both Leah and Alex down in the car to get them to focus on the job, but without much success.

The two of them stood by whilst he negotiated on the Kandura. Either of them could have double-checked the spec. If the sub-team had got the right one, Neil's hard bargaining would have paid off handsomely and the whole team would have won the task. I'm loathe to blame Neil for this solely when they were both present.

As I mentioned before, Natalie also had a definite hand in the flag mistake.

I started this thread because when you watch it back with the benefit of hindsight, it all seems less clear-cut.

Not exactly. He did say to Zee in the car that it might be something different, but he wasn't sure. I'm guessing the sub-team never got confirmation on that otherwise they'dve probably been seen trying to buy one last-minute like the other team did.

LS brought it up in the BR as a kind of positive for Alex, negative for Zee kind of thing, so that was kind of a hint to Zee to say 'don't bring Alex in'. A subtle hint, but a hint nonetheless.


To be honest, I did think Neil might say something along those lines, but I guess he wanted to keep the peace with Leah and Alex too.

And that is probably why Zee didn't bring Neil or Kurt in. Leah had the whole argument with Zee but also as sub-team leader she should have made sure that they were getting the correct product. Kurt made the initial error with the flag but neither Natalie or Zee corrected him.

Neither Neil's error or Kurt's error actually cost the team the task. Added together, they still would have lost by around £10 or so. There's no real reason why Zee should have brought them in. What really lost them the task was the failure to find the oud - and that you really have to put down to Zee.

He was damned in pretty much every way. He had quite a few positives but ultimately the failure was down to him, and it wouldn't have mattered who he took into the BR.

I do think a lot less of both Leah and Natalie though with the whole 'sexism' thing. That was not needed and it was basically all that was mentioned on YF, which could potentially destroy Zee's business reputation. I'm surprised it was allowed to be broadcasted.

You're talking a lot of sense. I agree with almost everything you said except the out and out blame of the oud thing on Zee. It lead to a totally unbalanced view of Zee's overall performance

But remember that all but one local said oud was perfume or incense (e.g. the other team were also on the wrong track begin with). He told his sub-team what he knew. If someone ask me what the Thames is, I will tell them it is a river because I know that to be true. If someone asked us what digital spy is we'd tell it is an entertainment website. I can understand him standing by what he knows. What he lacked was "cognitive flexibility" i.e being open the possibility that it could be something else too.

The person who found out that it was a homophone was Alex. If three intelligent people with a phone and yellow pages cannot get any further information about ouds for the whole day, then how can it be entirely Zee's fault? He's a Londoner. I don't get it.

I think this where power of (show producers') suggestion comes in. Alex could have been challenged on why he didn't act on this.



"Neil's" error definitely cost them the task. They were penalised for this. The extra flag was only a tenner.

They were but were they definitely penalised to the extent that had they not been, the £88 they lost by would have been accounted for?

I couldn't see any place in the programme where the penalty was made explicit.

I agree with you on the Alex thing, which is why I said that maybe the sub-team did try and find out but it was never confirmed that it was actually something else.

And actually, the fine for the kandura would probably have been about £60 (based on the other team initially being offered one for 300 dirhams). So if you add that on to the extra flag, Endeavour would still have lost, as if I remember rightly, the other team only beat them by around £90.

It was not getting the oud that would have pushed them over the total of the other team, coupled with the fact that the other team only won because Jordan got such a massive discount on the oud (the equivalent of around £150). You could deduce that the oud was what won it for Evolve and lost it for Endeavour. I don't completely blame Zee for not knowing what it was, but him more so than the others as he wasn't willing to accept that there could be 2 possible meanings.

Lord Sugar did say they lost on the kandura fine in the boardroom. It's all very obscure the way they do the calcs, isn't it? I suppose it gives the producers leeway to decide which team "lost".

The other thing is that it was Leah's team who were tasked with getting the oud. As much as Zee should have been open to the possibility that the oud was not perfume, they should have been open to the possibility that he might be wrong or only half-right and acted accordingly, given that they knew he was not a world renowned expert in middle eastern culture. He knew something, but not enough.

Zee was hung out to dry. Although we are all agreed he didn't do himself any favours, I reckon the bystanders got off lightly. I suspect Zee will do well for himself.

I expect he will. He has the resilience born of self-belief that borders on egomania. No setback will faze him: look at how quickly, easily (and appropriately) he responded to the flag debacle.

I've worked with a couple of people who were, I think, a bit like Zee. Most of us have a mental map of what we know, and what we don't know, with these islands clearly demarcated and separated by a large sea of things we sort of know but are a bit hazy on the details. But Zee-like people make no such distinction. They are great for getting you out of a crisis, which means they can be useful assets on a team, because they are calm, confident and decisive, even if half the time it is them who got you into the hole in the first place, because of some mistake in a procedure they half-remembered but whose details they saw no need to check.

I do not know if Zee falls precisely into this group but it certainly looked like it, with the oud mix-up and the flag fiasco and recovery. Lord Sugar mentioned it too: "I couldn't go into business with someone who has a lack of knowledge of their own abilities," he said on You're Fired.

Nice post. Sounds like you've had some interesting times at work!

Zee's problem was he was so reliant on his local knowledge that he wouldn't accept that he was maybe wrong. When Alex mentioned that Oud maybe something else, Zee should of said "ok like what, try and find out if there is something I may of missed". Instead he just shut Alex down, and carried on about it being a perfume, how much time did that team waste chasing down a non-existant item? He wouldn't even admit he was wrong about the Oud in the boardroom.

what you say is certainly all true but you are just regurgitating the official line that the show's producers wanted you to swallow and no more.

I was inviting people to think a little wider about aspects of Zee's performance that were not discussed. My point was that it was surprisingly easy to do on a second viewing whilst being able to think past that one issue to gain a more balanced perspective is quite difficult just on memory.

Obviously if you can't see past your dislike for him then everything he did, even the common sense moves like the pre-order can be viewed negatively.

He wouldn't . Neil and Kurt are the sort of contestant Lord Sugar often sees something in. I wouldn't be surprised to see Neil there at the end unless he commits more serious errors. Zee brought back in the women because he thought one was vulnerable as she had been in the boardroom before ,and he had set her up to do nothing that task , and because the other one was a forceful woman pointing out he was hopeless.His only hope was that Lord Sugar would discount her. He had no good alternatives as all the males would have argued that he was as hopeless - but he lost a few more points for avoiding bringing in a male and bringing Natalie in for no reason at all.

Lord Sugar was always going to fire him as he was a bull in a china shop, substituting overconfidence for self questioning, thought or ability. He failed on the judgement issue, his claim to be able to function in overseas markets was questioned by events, and the girls raised serious questions about his ability to work with females.

But the pre-order of the flag failed, as I mentioned earlier, instead of taking the time to get it right, he ordered on the fly in the car, screwed up the measurements, and had his flag no quicker than the other team. If he had taken the time to track a few objects down first, before leaving the hotel, got the measurements correct then phoned ahead I would be praising him too!, but he didn't.

He really should of gone to the Souks, any idiot could of gone and got the flag, it took no specialist knowledge of the area or product, accept that a 2 foot by 1 foot flag would look stupid on a building.

...whilst all the others lounge around the hotel pool?

Indeed his overall strategy was nonsensical in that he wanted low prices from markets, but failed to realise that that would only work with experience, local knowledge, factual knowledge on what was what, and local communications.language/bartering skills. He sent out a team of people to the markets who didn't have all those skills he claimed for himself, and took himself off to a flag makers where none of those skills were needed.........He then ignored his sub team when they questioned his failed identifications, and pointed out they would be better off looking in places where there were actually people who spoke english and could identify what the goods were.

The two women played it perfectly to get rid of him, if he brought Kurt back he would have been safe as houses.

This makes little sense to me.

Kurt did make the measurement error and probably warranted being brought into the boardroom more than Natalie.

However, Kurt's error was minimal in terms of task result, also Zeeshan was there when the error was made and did nothing to prevent it. He's also got a PM win behind him and although he made mistakes during the farm shop task, he also came up with the one good idea.

I very much doubt Zee would have been safe as houses had he brought back Kurt. Unless said houses were built on marshland during monsoon season. The only thing bringing back Kurt would have done would have been to make the editors' jobs a little easier when trying to squeeze tension out of the potential firing as I concede Kurt was more culpable than Natalie.

Nice observation as well as a funny one