I dunno, selling cheap shit - sounds right up Alan Sugar's street.

Ooooh, saucer of milk for the Lurker!

Francesca deserved to go really, but I can understand why Sugar wanted to get rid of Rebecca. I don't think she would have lasted all that much longer anyway.

All the girls that seemed to have potential seem to have turned awful (Leah, Fran, Rebecca). And Luisa's seeming redemption arc took a backstep this week and she turned into a bitch again. And Natalie is still invisible. Though the episode seemed to be a positive one for Neil, I still really dislike him. His motivational speech seemed awful.

You're fired!

Adieu till next week's strut of shame..

I find Luisa and Jordan a really unattractive couple (personality wise)

Anyway, see you all next week.

She seems tall and he seems tiny as well. I wonder where Jordan had come from when he answered the phone at the start

I think she has binned him now anyway probably looking for someone to help her up the zeleb ladder

Probably some photos in Nuts followed by "I'm a zeleb shoot me" on ITV 36 followed by chasing some sort of footballer, preferably one with an icing fetish.

Neil completely salvaged that task for Leah.

But then again he wanted the school task which would have been totally wrong. As I;ve said before in ohter threads, I think Leah has great instincts and is not afraid to tailor things and change if need be. Leah also made the choice of using Neil.

She does deserve credit for that indeed.

If Neil's motivational speech was so good why didn't they actually show us a proper excerpt from it???

If anything the things he was saying seemed similar to what Francesca got quite nastily cut down for

I think the fact that he had a personal story, which always helps. And also the fact that he said, 'I'm not going to tell you how to be successful, because you probably know more about that than I do.' Francesca was patronising and Neil wasn't, he was just honest about his own experiences.

sugar obviously knows what their investment ideas are, which is totally unfair as he is getting rid of them, more because of that than what happens on the actual show. remember the inventor guy with the nail file. lost virtually every task but won. the show is utter balls now.

Tom lost a lot of tasks, but he personally was actually a pretty strong performer. It's not always about what teams you're in. He was on the losing team eight times out of eleven, but he was only in the boardroom three times. One of those times he was PM so back by default, and on another occasion there were only three in the team - so there was only one time that a Project Manager actually decided to bring him back. What does that say about him?

Since then, they have changed the format so everyone who is in it has a business plan that Sugar is interested in. What he is judging them on is their business heads and personalities and whether he can trust them to make it work.

yeah, true.
I still think the relative difference between the 2 wasn't quite as big as presented

I felt completely the opposite! If my company had shelled out
5K for a day like that and someone said I'm not going to teach you because you know more than me, I'd be thinking then why the hell are we here, paying you?!

I would have gone for an external speaker like the other team did. Maybe if they hadn't have done that they would have wanted an even larger refund!.

I really dislike Neil, he has far too high an opinion of himself for me to care for him...

I also think Louisa has a tv personality agenda, wanting to be rich and famous but doesn't do 'corporate'. She would have been my choice to go if I was firing...... Myles also concerns me. Why is he on the show? He seems to live a successful lifestyle, not short of cash, I think he might be another one doing this for the wrong reasons.

Personally I'm unsure how Francesca survived when Sugar clearly directed her not to bring people back for personal reasons. Much though I dislike her - and silly though her anti-corporate comments were - Luisa was one of her stronger performers on the task.

Having said that, Rebecca had played the quiet game a bit too much - and she paid the price. As others have said, if she hadn't one this week, i would probably have been soon.

Here's a link to my weekly review, with the added extra of a half-term report - see, I've done a school theme too! - with my personal assessment of how the surviving ten candidates are doing. Feel free to agree or disagree as much as you like!

http://slouchingtowardstv.com/2013/0...rching-orders/

First post in here so be gentle.

Alan Sugar is not the sharpest tack in the box judging by his Barclays is the biggest UK bank comment, its HSBC followed by Standard Chartered and then Barclays, market capitalisation listed below.

HSBC - 128.8 billion.

Standard Chartered - 39.4 billion.

Barclays - 38.4 billion.

Aldo is a clueless barrowboy still.

hsbc is definitely not british, and it's Lord Sugar, to you...

I'm pretty sure he meant British-owned bank, in which case he is correct. Also, market cap takes into account the whole business, which includes the respective merchant banking arms, which is where HSBC is particularly strong. In terms of UK market share of retail banking, is Barclays number one? I'm not sure, but I suspect it might be.

Are all the male apprenticies gay or are they all simply self obsessed continually preening hetros?

Caught up with the ep this morning, having avoided social media from 9pm last night.

Firstly, £5K for a corporate away day for 16 people - who the hell spends that . We had a day for 60+ people this week, and the budget was half that, and was far better than the rubbish served up by the teams.

Rebecca was doomed as soon as she was called back in. The quiet ones never do well, and it's better (In the world of the Lord) to be loud and make mistakes, than quietly not mess up.

Yes it is according to Wiki.
It was founded in London, it's headquarters are in
London.
Yes it was brought over from being the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp but it's now soundly British.

Some of the tasks have a real business background - such as making something one day and selling it the next, or pitching an ad - but the away day concept was ludicrous. Nobody puts on an away day without rehearsals and run-throughs. No organisation will pay £5k plus lose 16 managers for a day to a bunch of amateurs with no track record. If you buy an away day you specify in some detail with the provider what they are going to do and what your staff will get out of it. It might be intended as a fun day out of the office or a serious team building event but you know what you are getting.
The idea that Barclays and LastMinute would expect this to be a worthwhile use of time and money is absurd. so clearly they treated it as a joke event for their staff and everyone knew that it was a just a TV stunt. In which case the "refunds" are meaningless.
Did we learn more about the candidates' ability to come up with sensible business ideas and to run a new business? I didn't. However motivational Neil might have been, I have no more idea about how he would run a business than before the show.
And it was supposed to be about quality as much as profit but the judgement about who won was based entirely on the profit.
This is one task that I suspect will not be repeated in future series.

Did anyone understand why Jordon bought all of those props, including the flamingo? What have they got to do with the school theme?

I think Francesca should have brought Jordon back in instead of Luisa and then had a go at him for poor budgeting. Then if Francesca and Rebecca had stuck to the line that the motivational speaker had cost money but had been the best part of the day as far as the participants were concerned and therefore saved the group from further fines, Jordon might have been the one to go.