There is something that has been interesting me. Out of twelve series, if we include Young Apprentice, almost half of them have seen the male Project Manager fired in Week 1. Here are the stats on this:

Male PM fired: 5 (Ben, Andy, Jordan, Dan and Edward)
Female PM fired: 1 (Jaz)
Male non-PM fired: 3 (Nicholas, Mahamed and Max)
Female non-PM fired: 3 (Adenike, Anita and Bilyana)

Does anyone have any reasoning for this? I think that there are a few potential reasons. Firstly, I think that possibly men are more keen to shine straight away than women are, so are more apt to put themselves forward without actually considering whether they would be good at leading the task. I think it's intriguing that up until last year with Jaz, there had never been a female PM fired after the first task. I think that women tend to have a slightly easier time of it on the show in any case - there have been equal numbers of male and female winners, but I think men have to work a bit harder to earn Lord Sugar's respect, whereas there is usually at least one woman who he likes pretty much from the off.

Also, for a time it seemed as though the boys nearly always lost the first task, although it has evened up a bit in recent years.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on why the numbers are like that?

If there's any common thread here, it's probably that the men who lost as PMs in the first week - particularly Dan and Edward - were far more autocratic leaders than their female counterparts, making it difficult to pin the blame on anywhere else. Likewise, at least two of the three surviving women (Mona and Gabrielle) were let down by the performance of their sub-teams, and Sugar let the axe fall there instead.

As an aside, I'll speculate on who would have gotten the axe had the winning team in the first episode of each series been inverted:

Series 1 - Probably Matthew, for suggesting a bad location at the start of the day and (apart from possibly Raj) selling the least on the team. Tim likely wouldn't have been in any real danger this week, though Sugar might not have taken as much of a shine to him as he eventually did.

Series 2 - Karen, easily, for promoting sales and purchasing tactics that Sugar really disapproved of. Oh, and she was just another corporate lawyer too, can't forget that!

Series 3 - Probably Jadine, for treating her team members badly and dragging Simon and Tre away from the good location they had early on. At a stretch maybe Tre himself for being disrespectful to Jadine, but only if he said something REALLY stupid in the boardroom.

Series 4 - Difficult to say since the episode focused on the men's foul-ups so much, but I seriously doubt it would have been Claire. Probably either Lucinda or Shazia, who seemed to sell the least.

Series 5 - Either Howard, for focusing on doing the hire car fleet when they were making more money from shoe-shining, or whoever was in charge of the car fleet job (which I think was James).

Series 6 - Likely Joy, for suggesting the "premium sausages" idea, and not selling a great deal. Maybe Melissa at a stretch for being a little abrasive when selling, but she would probably have defended herself better than Joy. Joanna would almost certainly have survived this week, but may have been less lucky the following week.

Series 7 - Again, difficult to say since the women did so well there was hardly any need to show them. Based on what we did see, either Edna for being confrontational toward Melody, or whoever sold the least on the team. I doubt Melody herself would have gotten the chop, as she generally seemed to do a decent job.

Series 8 - The men took a bit of a kicking over the quality of their goods, so it would have been either whoever was in charge of production, or Nick if there was no specific guy assigned to that job.

Series 9 - Jason, easily, since just about no-one had anything good to say about his leadership.

Agree with all but this this one. If I remember Phillip was the one that was in charge of the car fleet and he was the one who was told to JUST do the outsides of the cars, not the interiors (and promptly took a large job that sucked all the time away because of the interiors)

I don't think that Edward was that autocratic. Dan was, but the issue with Edward, if I remember correctly, was that he didn't tell other people what the plans were, didn't organise anyone effectively, and messed up the numbers despite being an accountant. And he also spoke in fragments a lot in the boardroom. (Although I haven't seen that episode in a while, there may be something I have forgotten.)

Did you watch Young Apprentice? I think that if the winning teams had lost on any of those series, in Series 1 we would likely have lost Hibah, for being late to the market and trying to but in on Zoe's sale. In Series 2 I think either Gbemi for not bringing back enough fruit or Haya for not being very good at negotiating, and in Series 3 I actually think Lucy. In task 1, she came across as the weakest on the girls' team, though she very much picked up from Week 2 onwards.

Edward made a lot of unilateral decisions (particularly with regard to purchasing) without consulting the rest of the team, and Glenn commented on how he was directing the team without ever really explaining his decisions. I'd still say he was autocratic, just in a different way to Dan.

Having said all that, I think what really killed his chances of staying in the show was not bringing Alex back into the final boardroom, when Sugar, Nick and Karren were all blatantly gunning for him.


I had to jog my memory pn YA, as I was a little iffy on the first two series.

I agree that Hibah would have gotten the axe in Series 1 for the reasons you said, and for getting really stressed out and emotional at points.

For Series 2, I think what would have caused the girls' team to lose that task was forgetting they had two spare tubs and having to sell it off at rock-bottom prices at the end of the day, so chances are whoever was responsible for that mistake would have gotten the chop.

Series 3, possibly Lucy might have been fired, like you say. But I think Amy's toxic attitude was there from the first task, so had that played any part in the team's downfall, I think she would have gone.

I think Edward was always going to go, because he was a terrible PM - if he'd brought Alex back, it may well have been a double firing.


Also, I think that Hibah would likely have brought Zoe into the boardroom for their clash on the task, which would have very much played against her as Zoe was essentially the reason that they won.


Oh yes, that's a good point. I didn't see who was responsible for that, but I think the fact that they had to dump half of their mixture played against them just as much as forgetting the extra tubs. Hannah might have gone as well actually, because she messed up the figures in the kitchen.


I sincerely doubt that Amy would have gone. Regardless of her attitude, she came across as one of the best sellers. Nick commented in the boardroom about her saying to a bloke and his girlfriend, 'Wear it when she's not there!' and Amy pointed out that his girlfriend might have been furious, but he bought the jacket! I think Amy was pretty competent actually - she seemed difficult to work with, but just from a performance viewpoint she came across as quite strong.

The males who Pm early tend often to be overconfident. But not smart, or capable. The smarter candidates know its better to wait , quite a while, until the hopeless cases have gone so they don't foul things up - and there's more hopless cases already on Lord Sugar's list to go, if you still lose as PM.

Sometimes the under confident also try and PM first - because they think their case needs a boost. That tends to end in disaster too - unless there's some other reason to keep them in.

Its a brave competent person who tries to show it early - when the candidates don't know who can do what, who is weak, and most of them are competing for a place in the pecking order. You are just as likely to get derailed by someone less able who thinks they are better than you.Wait a bit longer, and the other candidates will have a better idea why they should follow you, and the hot air candidates may have gone.

Not necessarily - that was the trick that Alex Britez Cabral tried, and it backfired as he was fired in Week 2 for not showing himself enough.


I think Nick was the one who did this the best. He stepped forward, in a series when most of the previous series had seen the first male PM out of the door, and it completely worked out for him.

I think there's a fine balance to be found between people who recklessly charge into the project manager's role right at the start and end up getting fired (like Edward and Jaz) and people who spend the first few tasks doing pretty much nothing and getting the chop early on (like... well, way too many candidates to count).

Having said that, the first two male project managers to be fired don't really fall into the reckless category, since as I recall both Ben and Andy were chosen by drawing lots among their team members. In their case it seemed to be more that they actually gave away too much responsibility (Ben pretty much letting Ansell and Paul take charge of their market stall and then sitting back, and Andy letting Sophie make all the purchasing decisions), and Sugar saw their lack of control as being a bigger sin than the other screw-ups.

Ben was chosen like that, but Andy was chosen by democratic vote. Tre, Simon and Adam had all put themselves forward, and Andy did it just to save face. The vote tied Adam and Andy for first, and they went off and agreed that Adam would do it, as Andy didn't really want it in the first place. However, the other guys had already decided on Andy, so he couldn't really back out at that point. I think that this may have been the reason that Lord Sugar swapped Andy and Jadine around, although we'll never know for sure.

I didn't actually think that Ben should have been fired for that task. To start with, I'm not sure that that team should have lost in the first place as I feel that the girls cheated - but it was shown that they made more money than the boys did even after being fined the same about as the boys paid, so I suppose that's fair. It highlighted a flaw in the format though. I think that Ben could have done better in the series that Syed, but overall I think that Samuel should have been fired, as he did seem to be hanging back and not doing very much. The mistake that Ben made was letting all seven people serve on that stall, as Paul showed that he could sell so much better door-to-door.

You need to get noticed early to be safe - but that doesn't mean being PM. Note how many winners have been praised in the first few weeks for selling well, smart observations, being good at figures etc.

People who are not strong enough to be PM may well not realise this and jump in head first. There's also a willingness among many of the smarter people to let some determined incompetent be PM early on. I can recall one series where everyone else hung back and voted for one sacrificial lamb just to keep themselves from the firing line as PM. A vote in favour may be a vote in favour of someone else doing what you don't want to do, and anyone foolish enough to volunteer may be worth voting for.

Out of all of the winners, six - Michelle, Simon, Lee, Arjun, Tom and Zara - have been either the last or joint last to be PM. That's quite an interesting thing, I think. People who PM late seem to have a better chance of winning than those who PM early - unless you have a really spectacular early PM-ship, like Yasmina.

There are some people who want to look like they're putting themselves forward, but don't actually want the job - but sometimes, like in the case of Andy, that backfires. Zara managed it quite well - she said she was happy to do it, but she voted for someone else who had more experience.