Well, surely the plan must have had something in it if they were prepared to work on him with it? They didn't do that with Jordan. They wouldn't even allow Helen to do it in Series 7. They did it with Tom, but that was after Lord Sugar had already gone into partnership with him.

No, when they said Plan B, they meant a completely different plan, because Neil's was a completely flawed concept.

I think you should re-watch Series 9

Maybe I should.

If they'd allow Neil to do that, why couldn't Helen do that in Series 7?

I think that's something that has puzzled everyone. That is definitely one of the few things I dislike about Series 7... Disappointing, anti-climatic ending.. I think Susan should have won because she was the only one who was a strong performer AND had a half-decent business plan.

I've been thinking, and I still stand by my four as the only ones who had a chance of winning, because Neil was at any rate given the opportunity to change his business plan, and if he had done that he might well have won. Jordan was not given that opportunity, and therefore was never going to win. So I stand by putting Neil up there and not Jordan.

Fair enough. Where do you stand on Myles and Alex, who I think were both very competent candidates?

They were indeed both competent, but Alex wasn't going to win because his business plan was based on something that he had no experience in so his proposal was insecure, as Leah rightly pointed out. Myles was more likely to win, and I think that he should have survived over Jordan in Week 10, but for some reason I don't think he'd have got to the final. I don't know why I think that, it's just a gut feeling that somehow he wasn't Lord Sugar's style. So again, I don't think he was ever going to win.

I agree with everything you've said about the two of them, but with regards to Myles not fitting with LS's mould as such, surely by the same token, you could say that about Rebecca?

Lord Sugar said that she wasn't tough enough for the business world, and I got the sense he didn't particularly like her, or rate her as a candidate. In Week 2, for example, I think LS just thought she was being a troublemaker witht the other girls, and overly sensitive.

I think Rebecca was really in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was made out to be something that she wasn't in the boardroom, Lord Sugar got the wrong end of the stick and in the end it came across as though she was a troublemaker, and her incredible sales skills went pretty much unnoticed. I think that she was certainly one of the best task performers, and from what we heard her business plan seemed pretty solid, although it obviously wasn't analysed in detail. If she'd defended herself a bit better in the boardroom and managed to avoid the amount of (mostly unfounded) criticism that she received from other candidates, I think she could have been a likely bet to win.

I did feel sorry for Rebecca in the Task 2 boardroom with Luisa especially being really quite agressive towards her, although on the other hand, she did kind of provoke it, saying that Uzma was rude to her, which I don't remember at all, and she refused to take ANY responsibility for location - yes it was Tim's decision, but she had to take SOME accountability, so I can see why that annoyed some of them.

But I still feel Rebecca's firing was really unfair, although I think we only saw exceptional sales skills from her, so I wouldn't call her a potential winner.

Rebecca wasn't perfect, by any means. On the task she was fired, I thought that she should have survived, but there was one criticism of her that I did agree with, which was that she pushed the wine-tasting idea, which was completely at odds with their theme. But in fairness, people with good sales skills generally do very well on the programme, and Rebecca had really astonishing sales skills. Adam Corbally was an excellent salesman but was very limited in other areas, and he still got to the final five.

I agree with you on Rebecca - thewine tasting was a terrible idea, but had they not had the motivational speaker, its likely they would have been fined even more! Fran should definitely have gone.

One thing I've been thinking about with Series 9, is that there were very few strong managers - every single one of the losing PMs could justifiably have gone, and many of the Winning PMs didn't do a great job: Jason for Week 1, Kurt on Week 2, Luisa on Week 4, Leah on Week 6. The only people who actually proved they had good management skills were Luisa, Leah (but only in the final), Jordan, Neil and Myles was OK.

The only losing PMs who didn't get fired in Series 9 were Natalie, Neil, Francesca and Luisa, and in the latter case the other PM was fired that week.

Yeah, Susie did have some problems getting her thoughts across correctly that series (remember the mobile phone app task?). Don't see what Karren did wrong there, as Nick does that kinda thing all the time in tbe boardroom (*shrugs*).

I think that that occasion and the mobile phone app task were the only occasions in the twelve episodes on which Susan did that - both of them were on occasions where they weren't dealing with clients or with the public, and therefore absolutely did not hinder the team whatsoever. In fact, in Week 8, I'd argue that her questions helped the team win, even if the phrasing was a little bit odd (we've all done that at some point). The rest of the time, I think she was one of the most articulate people in that series. You also need to bear in mind that English was not her first language, and she was still able to express herself better than most of the others who were originally from the UK.

That's the thing... Lord Sugar never actually told Helen that she wasn't allowed to change her plan. It seemed like he thought Tom was the better candidate even with Helen's suggested alternative idea.

Unless Sugar questioned Helen off-camera and it became clear that she didn't have the first clue how she'd make a bakery business work, I think the problem was that Helen picked the two absolute worst tasks to mess up on; her method of thinking on the Week 10 task indicated someone who was used to operating on much larger scales, but lacking in knowledge of how to operate at the "grassroots" level of business, and that impression probably wasn't helped by the bad plan she initially suggested. Even with that bakery plan, I think Helen's mistakes broke Sugar's confidence in her.

Of course, given what happened subsequently, it wouldn't surprise me if after the cameras stopped rolling, Sugar told Helen and Susan that they were free to come to him if ever they felt like pitching for an investment again (and told Jim not to let the door hit his arse on the way out), and while Susan eventually took him up on that offer, Helen chose to focus on progressing in her existing career.

What a beautiful phrase. I've not heard it before. I shall be quoting it on the very first relevant occasion.
Last edited by sausagesandwich : 30-06-2014 at 14:53

A tad unfair. Uzma judging from her site has a good business that could be expanded. Francesca had a successful business that would have had to be scaled up, but would have been easier to do probably than Leah's or Luisa's .On the other hand, Neil had a logically doomed idea. At least 3 of the other males had very dubious proposals that didn't work or were incredible and others just didn't suit him. Luisa had the strongest business sense but an arguable project, and Leah had a profitable scheme worked out in detail - that should have been more political dynamite than it proved - taking a doctor away from the NHS to make him money. There's been very few proposals that could fly in all the recent series though. Some have been minor and/or in areas he wouldn't be interested in (like Bridal wear or restaurants) and some with real businesses didn't survive to the end because he had already picked his winner (Zoe) but there's been very few adequately supported, viable projects reaching the final show. that's a basic issue with the new format. Tom's win was incredible given his lack of performance, and the rejection of what he actually offered , Ricky's offering was dull and against weak competition, and Leah offered the most worked up project in an area he shouldn't have touched.

I was talking about people who performed strongly on the tasks and had credible business plans. Neither Uzma nor Francesca stood out as a task performer. I know that Neil's business plan was very shaky and that ultimately let him down, but he was given the opportunity to change it, therefore it would have been possible for him to win.

And actually, Tom was a very strong task performer. He was unfortunate enough to be on the losing team a lot, but as an individual performer he was definitely one of the strongest that series.

It's very close between series 7 and series 9 for me.

"Hello sir, do you want something else to carry?"

That just sticks with me !

Have you seen every series?

To be honest, no :P I'm nearing the end of series 5 and I started watching during series 9, so I'm working back.

There are issues with Series 3 and 4 due to the producers clamping down on the YouTube videos. Hopefully they'll be back soon though.

In the meantime, have you seen Young Apprentice? It's really good for an Apprentice fix - I personally enjoy it more than the adult version.