I know Series 3 hasn't been done yet, but Series 4 is my favourite. I will do my choices in a second.

I might not take part in this one. Series 4 doesn't interest me a huge amount. Or I may do, when I can be bothered.

Episode 1: Alex, just because he alienated some of his team, and he was in charge so should have been in control of the pricing etc. Yes, Nick was a d*ck, but what be did didn't really warrant a firing.

Episode 2: Jenny. Need I say more?

Episode 3: Ian, just useless.

Episode 4: Simon. Yes I know he was a nice guy but I feel he'd come to the and of the line.

Episode 5: Lindi, because that offering exclusivity thing was just stoopid, and she had demonstrated few talents.

Episode 6: Kevin, for getting behind that terrible idea.

Episode 7: Jenny C and Jenny M. Jenny C was east terrible, her excuses were so flaky! and Jenny M because she was so disorganised! I can't believe they left the hotel having done no planning!

Episode 8: Helene, most definitely, for picking those horrific dresses! Yes, Sara was very defensive, but that's not really a justifiable reason to get rid of her.

Episode 9: Michael, because his performance on tasks was crap. I didn't really mind Raef going though, because he'd contributed nothing for the last two tasks, and on this one, he and Sophocles were effectively messing around.

Episode 10: Michael. His management was non-existent. Claire was the only one on that task who contributed anything of real value.

Episode 11: Helene, Lee and Lucinda. Helene, becuase she'd sailed through without showcasing many skills. Lee, because yes he was a good sales person, but I didn't like the way he dealed with Lucinda last week, I didn't like his pop at Sara, and he was bad at pitching! Lucinda, becuase Sir Apan was pretty spot on really, in that she was a great PM, but couldn't really take instructions.

Week 12: Who should have been hired? Claire, because she'd proven herself in nearly every field: management, sales, pitching, the lot.

I find that so hard to believe haha! Its my absolute favourite! I didn't like it that much the first time I watched it, but I would definitely recommend you watch it again In fact, I though you said you'd never seem the first half of Series 4.

Until mid-2012, it was the only one I hadn't watched. I started around the Series 5 time, though I was only a casual viewer then. I picked up becoming more enthusiastic about it, whilst swatting up on past series. Series 4 was the last one I watched. I'm not sure what it was about it - I don't remember that much about the tasks, especially the later ones. I also felt that Lord Sugar seemed a little bit arbitrary.

Are you going to put this one on YouTube, in high quality?

I plan to, just not sure when. The quality isn't that much better, but it's still nice to have it unsegmented. I would sooner upload Series 5 than Series 4.

Watch Series 4 again!

Series 3 episodes 1-10 are up as you might know - the full episodes just take so long to upload though - normally about six hours

The time doesn't matter much to me as I currently don't have time to watch them (bloody Uni). But, I will do some day!

I may have a go at this, remembering my first impressions when I saw it for the first time. If I was Sugar....

1 - Alex, Nicholas, Raef
Was split between the 3 until the boardroom where Nicholas kept bringing up trivial reasons why they couldn't get on with eachother. Since it was that much of a problem for him then he doesn't have to deal with it.

2 - Jenny, Lucinda, Shazia
Can't really say much either. One of the worst performances and attitudes I've ever seen on a task.

3 - Ian, Kevin, Simon
Out of his depth, not admitting to the meeting the guys had in the kitchen.

4 - Simon, Alex, Claire
Dodged any kind of responsibility and I didn't like his weasel-like ways by this point.

5 - Lucinda, Jennifer M, Lindi
A bit deluded about her abilities, the exclusivity mistake, the pointless 24 hour hotline.

6 - Kevin, Claire, Sara
Became a babbling ball of indecision and uncertainty during this task.

7 - Jenny C, Alex, Claire, Jennifer M, Michael
Jenny C proved she was willing to pull deceptive tricks in order to win.
Jennifer M was a mess and was desperately focusing on getting Michael fired.

8 - Helene, Michael, Sara
Played it too safe and was a generally flat candidate with little spark.

9 - Raef, Claire, Michael
Both he and Raef got distracted concentrating on the wrong things, but Michael tried to put all the blame on Raef.

10 - Michael, Helene, Claire
Totally flopped and was a shell of his former self by this point.

11 - Alex, Claire, Helene, Lee, Lucinda
Lucinda was my fave but she was too set in her ways and wasn't suited for an apprentice role which would require following instructions.
Helene lacked any fire and I found it hard to name anything she excelled at.
Alex I felt was too inexperienced and naive, also a self-serving git who I couldn't stand.

12 - Claire or Lee
Claire had demonstrated a wide range of skills and learnt to concentrate and harness her positives while improving her negatives.
Lee was still a bit sloppy and amateurish in comparison to Claire.

I can appreciate Sir Alan going for personal reasons when I do this because I couldn't help it either. When I can't decide who should go based on the task, it's about their character, potential and what they will bring to future tasks.

Here's what I wrote on Series 4:

Week 1

Who was fired? Nicholas
Who should have been fired? Alex
Why? I’m going to go against the grain at the time here and argue that Alex should have gone if the task is taken into account. His transparent strategy in the task was to delegate everything out to make sure that nothing was his fault. If he had been interested in genuinely winning the task, then as PM, he should have got stuck in and made personally sure that the boxes were labelled and priced correctly. In addition, the pricing mistake wasn’t particularly made by Nicholas, it was as a result of Alex copying the fishmonger’s prices and people shouting things Nicholas’ way when if they had been patient he probably would have sorted out prices correctly.

Week 2

Who was fired? Shazia
Who should have been fired? Jenny
Why? Because Jenny’s task performance, both personal-wise and business-wise was utterly atrocious and Shazia’s fatal error was never truly accounted to her and seemed to be Jenny’s error as well. The task was lost right from the start when Jenny suggested in the initial pitch a ridiculous price of £4.99 per item, which brought the total to £5000! The ridiculous attempts at pricing, combined with the fact that Jenny was partially culpable for Shazia’s error, as well as the fact that she treated some team members like dirt and she lied about nearly everything in the boardroom meant that she should have been fired five times over. That she survived means this decision is up there with the worst ever.

Week 3

Who was fired? Ian
Who should have been fired? Ian
Why? Ian had no clue how to manage this task short of dumping everything on Kevin and transparently trying to lump every single task fault on him when the task went south. He didn’t even consider costs, especially when it came to the food which, due to a lack of planning on Ian’s part, resulted in them purchasing food at supermarket prices. He didn’t motivate the team and this was highlighted by Kevin calling a meeting to motivate everyone halfway through the evening. Then, of course he lied about loads in the boardroom and dumped everything on Kevin. If Michael had been in the boardroom, my answer may have been different as his plucking prices out of the air could have sunk the task if it wasn’t already going tits up.

Week 4

Who was fired? Simon
Who should have been fired? Simon and Claire
Why? As the PM of a team who made a loss, when a lot of the errors were down to him, Simon, regardless of how he was treated, deserved to get fired. However, Claire’s treatment of him was unacceptable and Sir Alan could have done well to send out a message to the candidates that when you treat your PM in the disgraceful way that Claire did, you deserve to get fired. In addition, she was a critical reason for the failure of the task as the failed link between the back office and sales front. However, Simon crumbled on the sales day and he was out of his depth, so if one person deserved to go, then it is Simon.

Week 5

Who was fired? Lindi
Who should have been fired? Jennifer
Why? Don’t get me wrong; I am in no way suggesting that Lindi’s firing was anything other than fully deserved and she was, I suppose, ultimately culpable for the huge mistakes of the sub-team as the sub-team leader, but Jennifer made more blatant errors on task, shot down Lucinda’s good idea of the sub-team mix and her team clearly hated her, so I think she deserved to be fired. I do suspect that her survival is more down to the fact that she’s better TV than Lindi. Whilst Lindi offered exclusivity as well, this was as due to the pub owner asking for it (As opposed to needlessly offering it in the middle of a pitch that was going to sell anyway) Lucinda certainly deserved to survive for an excellent stint at leadership and I think Jennifer made critical mistakes so she should have gone.

Week 6

Who was fired? Kevin
Who should have been fired? Jenny
Why? Yes I know she wasn't in the boardroom, but I have to iterate that she simply should have gone. Jenny should have gone for killing the team even before she pitched her atrocious environment idea as she shut down any ideas that Sara came up with, most of which had some legs. Not only that, but she came up with the task losing idea, tanked a pitch by stepping on her own argument and was responsible for the despicable scapegoating of poor Sara. That said, I’d happily have fired the lot of Renaissance (bar Sara) for transparently trying to get her fired. Of the three in the boardroom, Kevin was absolutely the right choice for a multitude of reasons, mainly for facilitating Jenny’s idea and pitch-related reasons, but I’d have given all of Renaissance (particularly Jenny) a bollocking for how they treated Sara.

Week 7

Who was fired? Jenny and Jennifer
Who should have been fired? Jenny and Michael
Why? Jenny, after seven weeks of showing nothing apart from abhorrent boardroom tactics as well as single-handedly tanking three tasks, 100% deserved to go for that alone, but also she was horrible in this task and boardroom and a terrifically satisfying firing, on her birthday makes me almost happy about the episode, in spite of Michael’s escape. Jennifer was pretty dire, but it has to be said that she wasn’t that bad, considering other candidates have PMed worse than her and won tasks this series (Cough cough: Helene and Michael) and she didn’t make any of the major error than resulted in the task defeat (Considering the Mosque Alarm Clock was sorted out). Michael, on the other hand was just as bad as Jenny with Koshergate and the tennis racket fiasco and the only difference was that he admitted his mistakes. For this task, there is no way he should have survived, particularly as his PM win last week was pretty lucky. Claire and Alex made critical mistakes, but they didn’t cost the team as much as Jenny and Michael’s and, therefore deserved to survive.

Week 8

Who was fired? Sara
Who should have been fired? Helene and Michael
Why? OK, hands up, this wasn’t Sara’s best task. However, for a start, Michael was just as poor as Sara and made the critical error right at the start by telling Helene to divide viewings geographically, meaning no team could view everything. If I had to choose one, I actually would have gone with Helene as she sunk her team twice (first by viewing the dresses geographically; second by going for the lower-end dresses which meant she also missed out on the bridal lingerie) and, devoid of any management whatsoever, she let Sara and Michael drown so she had ammunition in the boardroom (Lucinda, by contrast, moved Lee over to the dresses for the good of the task). It was clear that she set Sara up just because she (Helene) didn’t like her. Michael should have gone as well, if only for making the critical task error right at the start.

Week 9

Who was fired? Raef
Who should have been fired? Michael
Why? Overall, looking at the task, Raef was probably the worst on the team. He and Michael made the same mistakes all the way through but as PM, he was more culpable and, regardless of what Raef said, he didn’t make any move to keep in the product shot. However, that is an extremely unfair way of looking at it, considering Michael was primarily responsible for the failure of the last two tasks (as well as being a huge factor in losses in Weeks 1 and 3) but got another chance on both occasions. If Michael had been a positive influence I could have seen the reasoning behind keeping him, but as he made almost as many mistakes as Raef, he really should have gone. Claire’s brand name may have been crap, but was the best performer on either team and fully deserved to stay.

Week 10

Who was fired? Michael
Who should have been fired? Michael
Why? From a purely selfish point of view, I’d have quite liked Helene to have gone as I believe she would have been a bigger threat to the better candidates at interviews than Michael (who would certainly have fallen) but being honest there is no way that Michael should have escaped being fired. He went into the task lethargic and defeatist, he made yet another critical task-destroying error in the first few minutes (by not picking the Zonda), chose to sell alone when he knew nothing about cars, had appalling location choices, was absolutely pathetic in Ferrari selling during the day, had failed when Sir Alan had given him the chance at being PM, but most of all, Michael should have gone because he is arguably the weakest candidate ever to appear on the show and was out of his depth in Week 1, let alone Week 10.

Week 11

Who was fired? Lucinda
Who should have been fired? Alex, Helene and (with regret) Lee
Why? For a start, there is no way this year (definitely the weakest final four ever) should have had four finalists than the regular two. Secondly, Alex’s interview performance was absolutely atrocious; without a doubt the worst I’ve seen in the four years (And when you have Tre’s and Paul Tulip’s in living memory, that really is a terrible record). He was moody, he was angry, he was defensive and he clung on to the fact he was 24 in every single interview. He would have been a definite firing. Helene... didn’t do as badly as her task performance would suggest, but even so, she talked about her back story more than her competence and made extremely unprofessional comments about her colleagues. She would have been my second firing. Which leaves Lee, who I did feel for, as he was the best task performer up until Week 8, but as Claire has improved and improved he has declined and declined (despite his five task winning streak) and the CV lying meant I would have regretfully fired him. Lucinda actually did the best in the interviews overall (though she shouldn’t have admitted her quitting thoughts) in spite of unwarranted criticism from that knobhead, Paul and she would have been my first finalist. Claire would have joined her for me, as the best on task performer and for genuinely improving. I wouldn’t have overly minded any combination of the other four but that Alex survived is an absolute joke.

Week 12

Which team won the final task? Claire and Lee
Which team should have won the final task? Claire and Lee
Why? Alex and Helene’s concept was better, so, in theory, they should have won. However, the fact that their whole campaign developed off an idea that neither of them (nor their team) thought up meant that it would have been extremely unfair had they won off the bottle alone. Claire and Lee worked hard and well on a poor concept and made it as good as they could. In addition, their strategy for having thought of the business side of things as well as the fact that their bottle was more recognisable as a male fragrance meant that there was a strong argument for them to even win. However, the key reason I believe that they should have won is that, ultimately, the final task was pretty irrelevant. What it was about, in my view, was showing leadership skills, good boardroom skills and above all, proving they can work as a team. It was more a question as to whether the teams could put aside personal differences to work as a team for this task. Lee and Claire did this excellently (especially Claire). Alex and, in particular Helene, simply couldn’t get over their dislike of each other and their in-fighting proved that neither one of them deserved to win. And that is the final reason I believe it was the right result – neither Alex, nor Helene remotely deserved to win.

Who was hired? Lee
Who should have been hired? Claire
Why? It is such a reality show cliché, but Claire was the one who showed most improvement and after her Week 4 warning, in every week bar a couple (Marrakesh Week and, arguably Card Week) she was the top performer. From single-handedly guiding Renaissance to a win in Week 5, to being a top seller of the dresses in Week 8, to probably being the best performer in the car task in Week 10, considering Alex got lucky and Claire constantly sold throughout the day. Lee, by contrast, started really well, but from Week 9 onwards, continually got worse and worse and never really recovered, bar a weak storyline about his pitching skills, which may well have improved, but were still vastly inferior to Claire’s. It’s not as annoying as the first three victories but for her genuine improvement, obvious superior intelligence and continual strong performances on tasks, I really did feel as though Claire deserved the win overall.

I'm happy to respond to anyone's thoughts

Good grief, you'd have let Alex through to the final? Genuinely the worst interview performance I've ever seen - utterly atrocious. Just my opinion, though.

1 - Alex, Nicholas, Raef
Of those 3, I'd say Alex. He was too eager, and the pricing mistakes were down to him jumping the gun before allowing the rest to price things properly. It was close between him and Michael though, with Michael selling fish in a law firm and thinking he'd done a bang up job. Raef didn't deserve to be in the boardroom, it was total reverse snobbery that Alex brought the two posh ones back, and that should be another reason to fire him.

2 - Jenny, Lucinda, Shazia
This was the laundry one wasn't it? How Jenny got away with it is beyond me. Complete fail.

3 - Ian, Kevin, Simon
It was between Kevin and Ian, but Kevin did at least try and didn't BS in the boardroom.

4 - Simon, Alex, Claire
Claire. Bad attitude, instead of backing Simon up, she set out to make him fail.

5 - Lucinda, Jennifer M, Lindi
Double elimination, Jennifer and Lindi should both have gone, from the exclusivity rights being thrown around, to them not wanting to swap teams on the second day so someone who'd worked on the ice cream could be with them.

6 - Kevin, Claire, Sara
Oh Kevin, what a wally. Could've saved himself in the eleventh hour by taking back Jenny C but he didn't.

7 -Jenny C, Alex, Claire, Jennifer M, Michael
Jenny C and Michael. Sorry but the bribery was unforgivable, the kosher chicken was unforgivable.

8 - Helene, Michael, Sara
Michael (again). Okay Sara was whiny sounding and dull, Helene left her two worst people to handle the cakes, but Michael showed he should never work with the public, chasing the poor brides around and demanding they make up their minds.

9 - Raef, Claire, Michael
Michael (again). Raef did fail on this one, but it was the first time he'd made a mistake. Michael was a running joke by now.


10 - Michael, Helene, Claire
Michael (again). The return of the Michael from the bride task. Desperate and unable to think of a plan B.


11 - Alex, Claire, Helene, Lee, Lucinda
Lucinda was my fave, and I thought Lee was the one that was going to give her a run for her money. However this year it felt like SAS was looking for a "Yes" man rather than someone that could think outside the box, so Lucinda, Claire and Helene should've gone.


12 - Claire or Lee
I wasn't a fan of Claire. There was something off about her IMO. She's Badger without the charm. So probably perfect for Suges. Lee needed it more though and I can't say he deserved to go any time before that, he played a good but unspectacular game throughout, so was the most consistent candidate.

Maybe I need to rewatch that episode - not seen it in a couple of years I actually think Alex should have been fired over Lucinda, even just on Weeks 1-10 performace. I don't actually know why I wrote that

I have to say, I never actually saw what was supposed to be so awful about Claire on this task. She was quite sharp with Simon, but I don't think that there's necessarily anything wrong with that if you think that the Project Manager is doing a bad job and you think that you know better. I felt that Alex performed worse than Claire, trying to avoid taking on any responsibility in the way he did. I don't see how Claire's attitude was any worse than, for example, Kristina's towards Paul in the France task the previous series (and for the record I have no issue with the way that Kristina was with Paul, but I don't see what made that any different to Claire's attitude towards Simon.) Maybe I'm just being really dim...


I never understood why the teams were divided up like that, as neither Alex or Helene deserved to win, and it was clear that it had to be Lee or Claire. Why didn't Sir Alan put Lee with Helene and Alex with Claire, or do a girls vs boys thing? That way, whichever team won would have someone on it who could reasonably win the process.

I agree with both of the points you made George - if I had seen Series 4 at the time, in the run up to the Final, I would have been terrified that Helene and Alex would win

After that year's Final Five episode, I remember a lot of viewers being genuinely terrified that Helene was going to win, as Sugar, Nick and Margaret seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time singing her praises. In retrospect, I guess that was probably more to persuade viewers that she deserved to make it to the interviews (and final)

As for the topic at hand...

Week 1: Nicholas, mostly because of his spectacularly inept boardroom performance. Alex was a poor leader, certainly, but the team wasted so much time deciding on their name and leader that I think they were dead and buried from the outset.

Week 2: Jenny. Even if we play devil's advocate and accept that Shazia was at fault for losing the clothing, Jenny was a terrible organizer, treated her team like crap and failed to set up any sort of pricing strategy.

Week 3: Ian. The only other person (at least, of the three in the boardroom) you could make any sort of case for firing was Kevin, who made a lot of mistakes with quantities and pricing, but Ian buried himself by trying to deny that Kevin had given that motivational speech.

Week 4: Simon, sadly. Even he admitted he should have been fired, and despite Claire's behaviour, he was hands-on in all the wrong areas, and hands-off in the really critical ones.

Week 5: Lindi. I actually think Jennifer was more to blame for the loss, since she was the one who came up with the exclusivity deals and seemed to push selling to places that made their own ice cream, but Lindi didn't do any better on the task, and in previous tasks she was weaker than Jennifer and never took the blame for any of her mistakes.

Week 6: Kevin. Possibly the most obvious firing in the show's entire history, in fact. Even had he brought Jenny back, I'd have said the two of them should have been fired.

Week 7: Jennifer, Jenny AND Michael. Spectacularly inept leadership on Jennifer's part, combined with dishonest behaviour, poor negotiations and the kosher chicken incident on the part of the latter two. If ever there was a task that called for a treble-firing... well, it'd probably be Series 2, Week 4, but this would be a close runner-up.

Week 8: Helene. As bad as Michael and even Sara were, she screwed the team over right at the start by ignoring the advice of her team members and only going for the items she personally liked.

Week 9: Michael. If we were talking solely this task I would have actually said both Michael and Raef, as they were both involved to roughly equal levels on their advert, and Raef was in overall charge. However, Raef deserved a pass because of his performances on the two previous tasks, in my book.

Week 10: Michael and Helene. It was obviously Michael's time to go, but I would have gotten shot of Helene as well, as her attitude on this task seemed to be "Michael and Claire have sales backgrounds, I don't, so I shouldn't be expected to do anything."

Week 11: Lucinda, Alex and Helene. Lucinda wasn't really suited to working for Sir Alan, Alex needed more maturity and experience, and Helene had really fallen apart in the latter stages of the season and clearly wasn't as strong as Claire or Lee.

Week 12 (task): Alex and Helene definitely deserved to be fired. Helene was just awful in the final task, and while Alex actually did an admirable job of keeping the team on track when Helene was just sitting back and being a bitch, he let the designer railroad him into going with the bottle design that was too expensive.

Week 12 (winner): Close, but I think Lee did deserve to win, as he seemed to have a more well-rounded set of skills than Claire, and even with his arguments with Sara and Lucinda seemed to get along with people better than she did. I've also got a feeling that she wouldn't have lasted as long in Sugar's employ as Lee did, and would probably have jumped ship after the first year.

Para 1: I can definitely imagine that! Haha!

Para 2: I dont really remember Raef contributing much of any value to Task 8...

He struggled to sell on task admittedly, but advocated quite strongly that the team should go for the expensive dresses which pretty well won them the task on Day 1.

Hi George, genuinely only just realised that you wrote this, so sorry for taking so long to reply! Interestingly, I watched this episode two days ago and this is my opinion on the matter.

I thought that Claire was just awful on this task. She did try to point where he was going wrong, but she didn't do it in a professional manner at all (Unlike Kristina). She had no interest in helping him to succeed, she mocked him, she, Alex and Jenny were laughing at him behind his back and it was evident that she just wasn't going to try. Kristina's qualms with Paul were usually handled when it was just her or Paul, or the rest of the team there. Claire would, frequently, criticise Simon in front of customers and in front of the team, undermining him and his authority. There was one instance where she was slagging him off in front of customers and when he tried to respond, she said that it wasn't the place for a discussion like that - when she had started it in the first place!

However, the main difference between Kristina/Paul and Claire/Simon, for me, was that Paul was a terrible team leader and, looking back, I don't think Simon was as weak as reported. Paul made bad decision after bad decision and at least Kristina tried to solve some of the problems (By cooking the sausages for example). Claire wasn't interested in solving the communication problems between Simon and the sub-team (As she thought she could just scapegoat Simon in the event of a loss) and it nearly got her fired. Simon actually came up with a decent theme, that sold well and tried to control the sub-team (One of my biggest annoyances watching the early days of S4 again is that every losing PM simply doesn't take control of their team members; they delegate roles out and just sit back and do nothing - Alex, Jenny, Ian, Helene and even Claire are all examples of this). Simon tried to get the sub-team to run through their ideas with him, but they just didn't. Incidentally, I do think Simon deserved to get fired, but ONLY because he PMed a loss. In that event, the PM has to go - simple as that. Claire set out to undermine him and she was extremely unprofessional. She also got rather personal with Simon talking about how he has no concept of personal space, talking about how he apparently sweated a lot and comparing him to a toddler - Yes, Kristina got personal with the relationship revelation, but in that case it was task relevant as Paul hadn't brought Katie in for those reasons. Also, at the end of the day, Kristina at least gave Paul a chance - Claire didn't.


I honestly think they were divided up like that so there was actually tension on who would win the whole prize, once Lee/Claire won the task. It was more about watching the Alex/Helene implosion than creating tension over which team would win. Helene never could have realistically won over Lee and Alex winning over Claire would have been a travesty. Actually, it was for similar reasons why I was convinced Lucy/Ashleigh would win the final task in Young Apprentice Series 3 - Maria and Patrick had both had horrible edits and either one of them winning would have been unsatisfying and undeserving.

Really? Do you think Lord Sugar knows (or indeed cares) in advance what the edits of the candidates are going to be like? What would have happened had Alex and Helene won that task? Actually, I don't think it's a very fair set-up for a final anyway to dismiss half the candidates based purely on one task - it isn't quite as unfair as the semi-final of YA2, but it was close.

I actually thought that Patrick would do something incredible in the final of YA3, lead his team to a win and be awarded the prize himself. The reason was that whilst he'd had an awful edit up until that point, none of the finalists had had an especially good one, so I thought the winner would really prove themselves on that task. And if one of them was going to do that, it would make sense for it to be Patrick, as it would have explained why his edit was so poor up until then - for the shock when he showed his capabilities in the final. As it is, I can't understand why Patrick was edited to come across as such a weak candidate - I didn't think he was that bad. In fact, I thought there were a few tasks where he really was more responsible for the win than that week's PM, but it was always underplayed, while anything bad he did was emphasised.

I'm not going to bother responding to your point about Simon and Claire, just because I think you know it better than I do, you make good points that I can't argue with and I'm in a hurry to open my new thread, which I've put a lot of work into and am excited about (you'll see what I mean!)