I think the fact that neither team questioned whether or not they should have a motivational speaker - only whether they should pay for an external one - suggests that it was a pre-requisite for the task.

Similarly, I wonder if it was stipulated that the teams had to provide their own catering rather than buying it in, purely for its potential to provide some comedy value.

^This^
Definitely nothing to do with the task, she was just one of those calm, professional, well-spoken, super-competent workers that LS feels he has nothing in common with, whereas he'll save loud mouthy idiots who keep babbling about their "passion" for weeks on end because he sees "something of [him]self in them", it's definitely his blind spot, in the series if not in real life...

She didnt stick up for herself enough. I'm still amazed she let them take her to task over the speaker. It was the best part of the day, the only thing that fit the brief and if he hadn't have been hired they would have lost by an even greater margin.

People saying "well they lost by x amount of £'s and they spent this much on a speaker, if they hadnt have hired him they would have won" are just plain wrong. They are failing to take into account the definite higher refund the company would have asked for.

Why do you think that? She's been accused of the opposite: of having too much influence over PMs. She has ran sub-teams, successfully.


Really? Again, for me her problem is being too vocal, having too many ideas, and getting shot down when they don't work out. For example, she suggested the venue for selling beer, which turned out to be smaller than expected. She suggested the wine tasting and paying for the public speaker. When she's not been featured, I think it's more because the edit was on other people.

My view is that Lord Sugar did not want to fire Luisa because she shouldn't have been in the boardroom at all, and did not want to fire Francesca because that would have meant 4 PMs in 6 tasks. Rebecca was the only other option. Even so, Rebecca could probably have saved herself with a more vigorous defence, but she probably didn't realise the danger.

I don't agree with Rebecca being a follower. She wanted to be PM, but didn't get the opportunity. And, on her last task, the team went with her ideas. Maybe the ideas didn't go down well in the end, but that doesn't' change that she made decisions and clearly managed to convince the team to go with her.

How much did it cost to do the wine tasting in the buying of the wines/glass rental etc? as personally i can't see how that could be done for less than a few hundred if you think we probably got £5,£10 and £20 bottles of wine on the tables and 3-4 bottles of each would have been enough to have won the task if they'd of junked the tasting and gone for something simpler

So she was allowed one mistake but she had two and they mainly brought her up on the speakers cost and i don't remember seeing any arguing over the price for him

I can't imagine the wine tasting cost much to put on. It was part of the Morrisons spend (which only came to about £280) and only half the attendees did it. You wouldn't need more than 3 bottles of wine, 6 at the most. Where it probably did cost them is that the complete pointlessness of it, and Rebecca's inability to sell it as useful, probably played a large part of the team's refund.

She was quiet, and made for bad telly. I think it was simple as that

Agree, plus I think the personal attacks she suffered in the first few weeks really knocked her for 6.

The problem with this thesis is that Rebecca did make the two calls that cost them the task: the wine-tasting which had nothing to do with the school theme or with business, and so led to the refund; and the speaker which added £600 costs, even if this mattered only because Leah's team used Neil for free.

To be honest, I'd have fired Francesca who seemed to have no control over this task, but keeping Rebecca is open to the accusation of protecting one-dimensional salespeople.

Twice in the last two weeks, Lord Sugar has hinted at a double firing. This might have been the occasion for it.

I will say in response to this the same two words I have used every time someone else brings this up: Zara Brownless.

I am late to this , but SrAlan had it completely wrong with the motivational speaker.

that certainly wasn't the losing idea. If anything it was an excellent idea. That was also the consensus in the "you're fired" afterwards.

They lost because the rest of what they did was poor.

Lord Sugar doesn't think it was a good idea though. He thinks anyone could do it. He thinks he could do it, and his advisers are telling him Neil did it well - though it hardly looked like it. He thinks one of that team should have done it.

However he's not focusing on the questions who decided to go that way, or whether it was the right choice given who was available. He just thinks anyone can do it if they try which is his default attitude. And he's keener on Francesca than Rebecca so Rebecca gets the blame for the suggestion , not Francesca for the decision or anyone else who didn't offer to do it.

They didn't lose the task because what they did was poorer. The only thing that measured quality was the fines, and both fines were equal. They lost because the other team spent less being as poor, and because that was the limitation within the task design's scoring system.

Rebecca's plan is to sell Moissanite which is a lab made jewel (although it naturally occurs in space - namely asteroids).

Whilst I obviously haven't seen her business plan, I think the idea behind selling Moissanite is solid. Why?

Moissanite is a low cost alternative to Diamond and is also far more ethical - no blood diamonds, civil wars, African children having their hands, arms chopped off etc.

Diamond costs also increase exponentially by carat weight due to De Beers artificially manipulating the price (a 3 carat diamond ring at VVS1 will cost £60k approx whereas a Moissanite ring will be £1.5k). A good Moissanite ring at 1 carat will cost less than a heavily included, poor quality, yellow-ish Diamond from H. Samuel.

Moreover, Moissanite is more sparkly than a Diamond as it has a higher refractive index and higher dispersion/fire. Definitely more eye catching in sunlight.

Currently Charles & Colvard own the patent on making Moissanite and thus heavily control the distribution to a very limited number of suppliers. However, once the patent runs out in 2015 there will be opportunities for labs and distributors to fill the space.

As a consequence of the above, I think Moissanite will become a very popular, cost effective alternative to diamonds in the future.

Rebecca was reasonably competent (good seller etc) although she didn't come across as a leader and had a fairly nondescript personality.

Francesca should have gone that week as she was ultimately responsible for the failure of the task.

I can't see how Sugar didn't realise how disastrous the day would have been without the motivational speaker!!! I think the refund would have been far more substantial.