An old-style, task-based final depends on an even number of finalists, preferably two but sometimes four.

However, the interview round, whether that is the final or earlier, is the most flexible. It does not matter how many people are in it, or how many come out of it.

This means Lord Sugar can make one double firing, or two, or none, in the earlier rounds.

Apologies; a check on wikipedia confirms you're right. Very much not how I recall it, but you can't argue with facts.

It might depend how (or whether) you count the extra "biographies of the final five or so" episodes.

Yes, that's what I thought. However, it does appear that he has to do a double firing at some point, as with every series since double firings were allowed, there has either been one or someone has left at some point:

Series 3: Double firing in Week 2 with Ifti and Rory
Series 4: Double firing in Week 7 with Jenny and Jennifer
Series 5: Started with only 15 people as someone pulled out at the last minute
Series 6: Raleigh left shortly after the first task
Series 7: Double firing in Week 5 with Ellie and Vincent
Series 8: Double firing in Week 10 with Stephen and Gabrielle
Series 9: Double firing in Week 7 with Kurt and Natalie

I do find it odd that there apparently cannot be any more than four (or five in the previous format) in the interview round. Maybe that would just make it too hectic for the production team to give everyone the right edit? I don't see why they couldn't extend the length of the final episode if that was the case; in Series 1 the interview episode was only 45 minutes long.

I think you've hit the nail on the head, sometimes with 5 in the interview episode you lose track of whats going on and who hasn't seen who etc. Anymore than 5 would be too hectic.

I think the series run is designed specifically so LS can pull a 'shocker' to exert his own authority and give the viewers the impression that he's not to be messed with and more than one can be fired if needs be.

I don't think it does that at all as a matter of fact... it has done on occasions, but now it's just something to be expected. Apparently he was the one who demanded that they be allowed though; in the first two series, they weren't allowed, but in Series 2 there was a disastrous food stall task which resulted in Alexa Tilley being fired, but he also wanted to fire Syed Ahmed (and possibly Tuan Le as well, since all three were culpable) but was only able to fire one person. Apparently he said that he wanted to be allowed to fire more than one person, and if he couldn't, then he wasn't doing any more series. There is a difference though between having the discretion to do it, and having to do it to fit the format.

As I said, I don't see why they couldn't make the interview episode a little longer if they needed to. Lots of programmes have a final that is a bit longer. The You're Fired! episode for that is already longer to accommodate meeting all the contestants.

I dunno, I don't like YF when they cram two people into the one episode, which is extended by about 5 minutes, its not fair on that candidate if they have less time to defend themselves - for example, Claude was incredibly demeaning to Kurt this week, but didnt really have the time or the opportunity to defend himself.

That said, some of them might prefer less of the 'torture' that is YF

No. She was a useless, whiny perma-tanned vacuous idiot who made no positive impression whatsoever.

Very lucky to get as far as she did.

They could do, but I agree with the earlier point that it might make the interview episodes too complex for viewers. Personally I think four is just right.

Thanks for doing the research on this one, George. It's interesting to note that not only is there no fixed week for the double firing, but that it can also happen quite close to either end of the process - week 2, wow!

I think the double firing serves two purposes. For starters it allows some flexibility if someone leaves the process of their own volition, as has happened twice - you just skip the double firing and you still have 12 episodes. And, as you say, it allows Sugar to flex his muscles and add some drama to the episodes - every week we're left to wonder whether this might be double firing week.

The one thing that is 100% fixed is the length of the series: 12 episodes. (Personally, I also believe that, in the new format, a four-person final is also fixed for all the reasons previously discussed.) That's something which is agreed before the process even starts - there is absolutely no way you would allow the programme to unfold organically and just see how many weeks it takes. The production team does not dictate the length of the series - the BBC does. That way they can set scheduling (of participants and tasks) and more importantly budgets for the series, and the production team goes about setting up the tasks, which is hardly the work of a day or two. If the length of the series was flexible, it would be absolute chaos.

Indeed, and the Why I Fired Them episodes.

I agree that Lord Sugar should not be allowed to change the number of episodes, but he should be able to change the number of people in various episodes. Like with the second and third series of Young Apprentice, for example. Both were eight episodes long, and in Series 2 he fired four people at the semi-finals (three of them completely arbitrarily) to have a two-person final. He got a lot of criticism for that decision, and in Series 3 it was changed to a much fairer system - two people from the losing team were fired, leaving four in the final. The length of the series was not altered, but the number of people left at the end was.

And while the number of episodes can't be altered, I can't see why the final can't be an hour and fifteen minutes for example, if there was an extra person.

My problem isn't the length of the final, though, it's the complexity of the story. Making it longer doesn't necessarily help. For die-hard fans like you and I, that's not an issue, but I do feel that for more casual viewers (half of whom can't remember half the candidates' names), that simplicity is everything. Just my personal view, of course - I don't think there's any hard or fast rule about it.

The YA semi-final thing is a good example of tweaking with the format without changing the length of the series, but to me it seemed obviously a decision which had been made before the series started based on how poorly the series 2 format was received for all the reasons you mention. It was much better that way, absolutely, but that would surely almost certainly have been a choice made at (in fact, probably well before) the outset, not on a whim with 1-2 weeks left?

Not necessarily, because who's to say there wouldn't be a double-firing in a previous week? If there had been, they could just have had an ordinary firing at the end of that one.

I wonder how the first series was planned? If Adam hadn't quit, the final four thing wouldn't have worked. Did they plan a double firing in the semi-final? We'll never know...

That's true - I hadn't considered that - and who knows, maybe that was an option.

Even so, I think it was clear from a production standpoint that the final was always going to be 4 rather than 2 - it wouldn't have been a last-minute switch, would it?

Oh yes, totally. But that was different, because they couldn't have a final task with an odd number of people, because it wouldn't be fair with the teams. If the final task is interviews, I have no beef with having five people. They did in the previous format, so I don't see why they can't do it now. I think we'd still get to hear enough about their business plans, and if they had to extend the length a bit, it probably wouldn't be more than by about 10/15 minutes.

Oh, I agree with the principle that it could be done. It just comes down to whether you believe 4 in an hour is as much as viewers can take, or whether 5 in 75 minutes would be OK without compromising or complicating the narrative. I guess we're just on different sides of the fence on this one.

she basically sealed her fate by trying to say that because she worked in recruitment she would have done better selling the big ticket items than anyone else

whatever little credibility she had left in the process she lost with that

if she had just focussed on laying into kurt she might have survived another week but with her card already marked by LS coming out with tosh like that must have had him wondering why she was even there

I did feel for her. You could tell Lord Sugar wasn't her fan and everything she did was wrong in his eyes.

Back in Zee's departing episode; she was accused of not saying anything when it was even edited in that she was trying but was being ignored and neglected.

Then on Wednesday nights episode, she sold more than some of the others, was better than Leah at the product selection phase and although was a bit ditzy with the rowing boat, was a lot more personable than some of the others.

In the boardroom when she got shut down for saying she should've been on the retro caravan, it was obvious by the way she suggested she didn't look on boards, she specifically headhunted certain people for her recruitment work. That would mean what she meant was that she'd headhunt and sift through the potential buyers and then stragglers.

She had a really raw deal, and I did feel for her. Especially as I do think the only reasons he was bought back in was because Kurt, and the others, knew that she'd get fired if she was brought back in.

All very well stating this as an opinion, but you state it as if it was a fact. As for it being obvious Sugar was going to fire two candidates because of what he said, what exactly does that show? Whether the producers told him to, or whether he decided himself, his summing up would be the same.

A double firing in the Apprentice isn't especially dramatic, unlike in live reality shows with a public vote. So the idea that the BBC would feel the need to order a double firing is hard to justify.

Clearly many things about the Apprentice are contrived, but the part Sugar plays in it is almost certainly genuine. Apart from anything else he has to invest £250K in a joint venture with the winner, so from his point of view to be controlled by the production team would be unacceptable.

I'd also just like to point out that a double firing doesn't boost ratings, as no one knows that it will be until it's already happened, and by then it's too late.

I agree leah was lucky and that Natalie probably got the blame for something that was actually leah's fault

don't know if anyone noticed but at the end of the clip where they were talking to the woman regarding the bike leah made a really sarcastic comment when the woman refused to budge on prices which might have been the deciding factor in them losing that product

its all well and good trying to be persuasive in that situation but you have to be able to read the person you are dealing with and know when to stop pushing

To be fair, I'm not sure Natalie ever gave Sugar enough positive reasons to keep her in the process. Her stint as PM was disastrous. And, as was highlighted in the boardroom, her tendency to say "I told you so" after the event was far from endearing. It's amazing how easy it is to be wise after the event - the trick is in doing something about it at the time.

Natalie sold the least in her sub-team - we were told that in the boardroom. She sold more than Kurt and Myles, obviously, but that's not comparing like for like. If she had been as personable as you say, surely she wouldn't have sold less than Alex or Leah (who wasn't even there for the final hour)?

On YF, Natalie also gave a different explanation to your thoughts on her headhunter statement. To be honest, she didn't make much more sense there than in the boardroom to me. Headhunting *is* a role which requires selling skills - a combination of softer relationship-building and some quite hard-sell tactics too - but the nature of the sell is quite different and not really the same as the selling technique for caravans/trailers.

It was the same with Alex, who also claimed he would be great at selling bespoke campers. His selling style is definitely hard-sell - and he's very good at that market-trading type of selling - but it would most likely have driven away the type of customer they were looking for.

Personally, I think Myles was a decent choice for the big sell. Kurt wasn't at all. Leah would have been good because she does have a softer style, she does listen and she has already proven in earlier tasks that she can sell very well too.

I pretty much agree with all the above.

The only thing I would add is that to be a really decent sales person, you should be able to adapt your sell depending on the circumstances. It never fails to amaze me how rigid certain candidates are who claim to be masters at selling.

Knowing when to use the softly softly, more consultative type of sell and when to do the hard sell should be a skill that all sales people learn. If a sales person can adapt to their environment, the product itself and most importantly their audience, then they would do well in any environment.

They should also be comfortable selling to people of differing seniority, from entry level decision makers right up to board level and again adapt their approach accordingly.

Just my tuppenceworth.

Yes indeed, and Rebecca would have absolutely aced this task with her selling skills. Unlucky to be fired last week and just before the task that would have suited her best too