Adam must have been quite loathed, when he returned to the house having survived against Paul, you've never seen such a lukewarm reaction.

Great post PJW, brilliant observations about this classic series

I think Jadine was affected by the comments made about her in the boardroom and subsequently became a shell of herself, and couldn't cope with the process any longer.

She was great in the final though, pulling Simon to one side and telling him 'this is your time, forget about everyone else'

My favourite series is probably Series 4, but thats probably down to Lucinda and Raef

Followed by Series 3, 5 and 6. But there were sporadic gems in Series 1/2 also.

I take it you don't like Series 7 onwards or Young Apprentice then?

If I'm perfectly honest I simply dont remember very much about Series 7 and 8....?

Was 7 the one with Jedi Jim and Melody? Bits and bobs of that Series were good. But never reached the heights of the previous 4 I felt.

Yes, that was Series 7. That was my favourite series of the adult show, and the series of Young Apprentice that came later was my favourite series of that. 2011 was a good year for The Apprentice.

No, that was Adam. Adam was with Paul when he bought the cheese and tea-lighters. He later said he knew it was a bad idea and kept his mouth shut because it would get Paul fired. So he was the one who didn't care if they lost the task because he had a scapegoat. Katie and Paul were doing the best they could to win. In Paul's case that wasn't much because he was so incompetent, but even he wouldn't want to lose that task. No PM would.

That said, Adam was a weak candidate from the beginning, and Katie and Paul would have known that. He was in the boardroom four times in a row, twice as PM. In my view he should have been fired the first time, when he managed to lose despite Sophie doing such a sterling job of production that he had far more goods to sell than the other team. Instead Sophie herself got fired.


Agreed. He should have taken Ghazal, who contributed nothing that we saw.

He couldn't take Katie because he had worked closely with her and had had no problem with her performance. Katie was fine in the French task. It was Paul who made all the mistakes. She wasn't there when he bought the cheese or the tea-candle stove, for example; she did question some of his other choices. As I recall, her biggest mistake was entering a shop not realising they wouldn't buy sausages; it was amusing TV but had no consequences.


Recall this is after she had been twice suffered personal attacks from Kristina and Adam. The first time was in the previous boardroom when she hadn't been present to defend herself. Kristina had said that Paul had favoured Katie because they were romantically involved. Sugar had shut that down as there was no reason to say it and it was a totally wrong and unfair thing to accuse him of. In this boardroom, Adam raised the issue again, saying Katie had performed badly because she was pining for her boyfriend. Complete nonsense, of course; Katie wasn't the type to pine. Sugar shut him down a second time and made it very clear it was a non-issue. This time Katie was present, saw what he did and responded in kind. The difference is, she was right. Adam did drink too much. He has published an online diary in which he admits performing badly on task activities because of his drinking. That happened early in the series; Katie only mentioned it now because Adam had started playing dirty. Before that she had been very professional in the boardroom.

For me the real snake of that series was Kristina. Kristina was the one who put a lolly pop into the hands of a child and then turned to the parents and demanded money. She was the one who conspired with Adam to keep boardroom revelations secret from Katie. And she then turned on Adam and toasted with Katie to bring him down. (A thing that might not have happened had Adam not been duped into keeping Kristina's secrets.)

I agree with the original poster that this was one of the best series. Lots of big characters, and controversy (I know my view of Katie and Adam is not universally shared.) For me it was somewhat marred by the winner, Simon, who was one of the weakest and mostly hung on Tre's coat-tails. Probably my favourite was Naomi; I loved her rant about shoes.

Actually, I believe in that situation (correct me if I'm wrong) the parents would have been within their rights to accept the sweet without paying for it. I believe that if you're offered something without being told that it's for sale, you are under no obligation to pay for it. If that had happened and they had lost, Kristina would have been very severely criticised in the boardroom.

I wouldn't ordinarily approve of such tactics, but in that case I have some sympathy with her doing it because they had very limited stock to sell and they had to have premium prices. In the same way, I have some sympathy with Zara adding lots of toppings onto a child's ice-cream without asking, because they were in the same situation; limited stock. Ordinarily I'd object to that.

Re-the bits in bold: That's not what the edit suggested. Both spoke French and left their team mates to run the stall while they traipsed around shops trying to flog their wares, gazing lovingly at one another. Katie and Paul's 'relationship' appeared to undermine the team on this task and pertinent to the failure of the team. We never saw anything suggesting Kristina and Adam conspired to mention it in the boardroom so we can but infer it had irked their team members sufficiently that the two of them found it necessary to refer to as a reason for the failure of the task.

You're exaggerating it a bit. I agree Paul should have made sure a French speaker remained with the stall; I have no interest in defending him. However, I do think he was just incompetent and not trying to sabotage the team he led. That the two of them enjoyed working together is no crime. Something similar happened this week, with Luisa and Neil.


The conspiracy between them that I alluded to was afterwards, on the ride back to the house, when they agreed with each other not to share events with Katie. They both knew they'd done something underhand.


I don't actually blame them so much for raising it the first time. As I recall Kristina mentioned it first to explain why she was picked rather than Katie. Although I think Ghazal should have been picked, there had been some friction between Kristina and Paul on the task, so it wasn't really a surprise that she was the one he wanted to get rid of. So I think Kristina was right that she shouldn't have been picked, and she was wrong about the reason. Adam then jumped on the bandwagon. I don't see how we can say they both had the same idea independently.

I do blame Adam for bringing it up the second time, despite it being dismissed the first time, and despite there being less reason to mention it (Paul not even being there).

Perhaps my memory plays tricks but that's how they looked together and the fact that neither thought they were leaving the stall without a French speaker is blame for both even if Paul the PM shoulders the blame ultimately.

Had they done something underhand or was it that they knew how Katie would react? Her reaction was a bit more, in my mind, than just having to defend herself. She doth protest too much, me thought.

Your take on Kristina is interesting I might add. I never took to her myself even though she was most competent.

Why should Ghazal have been picked? We didn't see anything from her that suggested she should have been brought back - we didn't even see any obvious footage of her slacking - so to me, that suggests that she did everything that she was supposed to on the task. You can't bring someone back for having a bad edit. I think it should have been Adam and Katie. But I suppose at the end of the day, it didn't really matter who it was, because Paul was so bad that he would have been fired whoever he had brought into the boardroom.

^^ Paul couldn't have brought back Katie because she made no mistake that Paul had not also made himself. Any argument that she should be fired would also be an argument for firing him. I don't think he should have brought Kristina because on that occasion she seemed to contribute more than Ghazal. She sorted out the cooking, for example, which was essential to having samples for prospective buyers. So Ghazal by elimination, even though she wasn't seen to be doing anything wrong.

After a while the series tend to merge together into one jam filled mess of an Apprentice sandwich. Hard to remember them all!

I do think the best ever episode was the one when Sugar got quite cross and said they had pissed his money away. It was the pizza task. It also featured Alexa Tilley - perhaps the nicest female candidate ever. (also one of the worst ability-wise!)

I think the title of 'nicest female candidate' can go to none other than Gabrielle Omar from last year!

I liked Alexa though. I don't think she was that bad ability-wise. You can't say she was a good PM, but I think Lord Sugar would have done better to keep her in and to fire Syed, as I think Alexa would have learned more from the experience than Syed would. I also think she was thrust into the deep end by being asked to lead the boys' team, who I think would have been against her no matter how well she performed. She may have been better leading the girls.

Also, I actually thought that Alexa was one of the strongest performers in Task 3. It was right that she was in the boardroom, as she was part of the sub-team that hardly bought anything; but she did prove herself to be a much better negotiator than either Jo or Karen. She got the saffron pretty easily. Also, at the start of that task when they were all in the office making a mess of things, Alexa seemed to be the only one who was actually trying to bring any organisation to the thing.

^^ I think Jo should have been fired rather than Karen. Unfortunately Karen didn't realise she was in danger until too late. There was dispute about how much individual responsibility Jo had given out, and I think Jo weaseled it a bit. Alexa saved herself with a spirited boardroom defence, and I believe was the first to say, "Don't fire me - make me PM instead!".

She was a terrible PM. The "100 chickens for 100 pizzas" fiasco happened partly because of her bad time management. Leaving that aside, she was determined to spend their entire budget on marketing so would almost certainly have lost anyway.

I think the show's credibility took a bit of knock when Jo managed to remain on through several episodes.

Oh yeah, she was a terrible PM. That task was the main reason for double firings being introduced, as Lord Sugar wanted to fire both her and Syed. In those days though, he didn't have that option. I just think that if it was a choice between her and Syed, it should have been Syed because I think Alexa would have learned from the experience, and would have done better in the remaining tasks than he did. She has been pretty successful since the programme.


Hmm, I disagree. Other than the disastrous time that she was PM, she generally did okay on the tasks even though she was in the final boardroom a lot.

In Week 2 she argued against using cats on the calendar (although I actually think that the cats were not the reason that they lost - they lost because of Nargis's pitches, and also because the calendar was designed in a way that you couldn't use it as a calendar.) In Week 5 she came up with the 'Let the world revolve around you' jingle, and Ruth couldn't come up with a good reason to have her in the boardroom. In Week 6 she accepted the blame for something which was mainly Ansell's fault, which was quite sportsmanly. And she did get fired at that point, which was her time to go. When she returned to help Ruth in the final, she seemed to work well with the rest of the team and there weren't any issues with her that we saw.

Objectively she should have gone in Task 3, but I can see why Lord Sugar didn't fire her. He was about to, but then she spoke up in defence of herself, and Alexa did the same. He likes people who speak up, and at the time it probably seemed like Jo and Alexa fitted with his way of doing things, and Karen didn't. It was a very spur-of-the-moment decision. Karen was skating on thin ice anyway; she'd been in the boardroom in the previous week, and had a very dodgy PM win in Week 1, which she actually had to justify to Lord Sugar because he wasn't happy about it. I think Karen was overrated - I didn't think that she was as brilliant as everyone else seems to.

I was going to start a thread saying 'is Series 3 overrated' but I thought I'd pop it in here.

I think Series 3 is a come-down from Series 1 and 2, and is the worst series apart from 8. At the end of the day, who was actually properly likeable from the Final Eight. Katie and Tre had 80% of the airtime, both of which I found immensely annoying. It also had a disappointing winner I feel, and the tasks were hardly exciting IMO, bar a few.

Honestly

Also think that the finalists themselves were a bit overrated (especially compared to those of series 5) and that imho is the real difference between the two series.

Anyway, I do think that series 3 was a very good series, just getting the mix between business and entertainment correct (which then they blew in series 4, by going for the entertainment/ratings factor).

The competent business handlings from the first 2 series (well, mainly the second series) combined with stuff like Simon's trampoline & breakdancing, the cheese disaster, kiss-o-gram and Kristina pulling a fast one on a kid and their parents (while selling candy).

For me, a series is mostly defined by the top candidates and not so much by how many lesser candidates there are. Which is for instance why series 4 is down below for me, as the entertainment factor might have been there (well, mainly Marakesh) but there were no top candidates to be found in a thousand mile radius (and any potential ones were fired before the last stages of the series).

You really think the candidate standard of Series 3 was good? Yes it wasn't as bad as Series 4, but apart from Kristina and Katie they were all a bit naff!

There's just something about this series that doesn't appeal to me. Series 4 is much better IMO.

I think the candidate standard from Series 2 to 4 were pretty dreadful, but I still love Series 2 and 4.

Series 4 started to irritate me when he kept giving that useless Sophocles bloke another chance week in week out

I think that Lohit was very strong in Series 3 - he had a really bad edit, but he's someone I really rate. I would have liked a final between him and Kristina.

Simon and Naomi had their moments, Jadine started off weak and got a lot stronger. I also have some appreciation for Paul Callaghan. I know that may sound odd as he was behind the infamous cheese in France catastrophe (and I agree that it was absolutely right that he was fired in that task, because he performed appallingly and the loss was entirely his fault) but that was only one task. In the previous five tasks, he'd generally been a pretty consistent performer, and he seemed to be pretty decent when he came back in the final as well. Maybe he was just a good team member and not a good manager, but he wasn't completely useless if you look at his performance on other tasks.

I thought Season 3 was the worst series by a mile. Common sense was greatly lacking at a lot of points and there was little proof of intelligent business skills throughout it, especially on losing teams. I know its harder than it looks and all that but in other series, they've done a lot better like Series 6 and Series 8 like sensibly looking at costs, locations, planning etc. even when they do lose. The France task and Art task showed lack of even common sense by losing team. I also thought episode 3 of the girls team is one of the most embarrassing and inept performances on the Apprentice that there has ever been.

I totally agree Matt. People say that Series 4 showed little business talent and few contenders, but the same can be said for Series 3. In general terms, the ineptness of the candidates is what people like about the show, but Series 3 had nothing to save it...

Not many likeable or memorable candidates... Series 3's equalivalents of Raef and Lucinda (in terms of being the most memorable) were Tre and Katie, both of whom were most detestable.

And also, Series 4's counterpart of Series 3's France task, Marrakech is so much more exciting and memorable!

Other things I don't like about Series 3 was the winner (Kristina wuz robbed), and not exciting tasks! I don't want to watch people painting people's faces, and they had the negotiation task, and then two tasks later was the selling to trade tasks, both of which are oposites of one another and are both quite boring!


On a different note, I'm watching Series 9 lately, and It has GOT to be one of the best series ever in my opinion. It literally has everything, and there isn't a dull moment. Everything is perfectly balanced, and if they can follow the same lines as Series 9 with Series 10, then long may the show live./

That's not Series 4's counterpart of the France task. The France task was a sales task, the Marrakech one was a scavenger hunt.


My issue with Series 9 is that out of sixteen candidates, the only ones that (in my opinion) had the skills and the business ideas to go all the way were Leah, Luisa, Neil and Rebecca. Four out of sixteen really isn't good enough for me. I think that at least half the candidates ought to be strong contenders, if not more. I do not watch The Apprentice to see people fail.