Was just a thought... say if Sarah (she's the obvious choice, but could be anyone) performed terribly in every task, but was lucky enough to be on the winning team every week, would Lord Sugar just say, 'You know what, forget about being on the winning team, you're fired!'? I wouldn't put it past him. He's never done it before (bar Haya in YA2, and that was something planned). Can anyone see it happening?

I honestly thought he'd do it tonight.
I thought she was an an obvious choice for a nice bit of shock effect.

I could see someone being fired from the winning team if they committed a serious rule breach, but I don't think Sugar would do that just because someone kept doing really badly. In fact, even the US version has never done anything like that, with the only time they even considered it being in a Celebrity Apprentice episode when Dennis Rodman got assigned the project manager role, then abandoned his team after about an hour and spent the rest of the episode bar-hopping around NYC.

If anything, I think Sugar would just wait until the candidate eventually did end up on the losing team, then fire him or her without bothering to ask the project manager who they want to bring back.

I'm pretty sure he said he wanted to fire Noorul the week of his miracle PM win but wasn't allowed, though that may have been an exaggeration on his part.

I suppose, but it is technically possible (although I realise unlikely) for someone to be on a winning team in every single task just by lucky coincidence. Imagine if someone like Sarah ended up at the interviews like that!

People have said something similar about Patrick from YA3, although I personally rated Patrick and thought he was given an unfair edit, so I don't buy that.

I've been advocating this recently too. It would really shake things up if someone lucked in to a win but got fired anyway - it would have to be a very clear decision though and probably a one-off, for shock factor or I think it might lead to people being less focussed on winning the task and doubly cautious about covering themselves individually.

I can recall an incident on an early season of the US Apprentice where the winning PM on task one gained immunity on the following task (as winning PMs do in that format). He was then on the losing team the following week but was so sure of himself he waived his immunity in the boardroom. Trump promptly fired him solely on that basis. Heh.

I've long suspected that one day there will be a big shock and this will finally happen. It should only happen when absolutely necessary though when it's the only fair result.

Noorul's win as PM was the time to do it. The other team were excellent apart from one genuine, easy mistake which had a knock-on effect that destroyed everything, and it was hard not to really sympathise with them. Despite that, they still beat Noorul's team on every other level and would have smashed them were it not for the mistake. Noorul was without doubt the worst PM in Apprentice history and I think just that once AS should have broken the format and did what literally every viewer wanted.

The narrow boardroom escapes of quiet characters all the way through to Week 9/10 has caused a problem at times as well. Howard from Series 5, Lohit from Series 2 and Paul from Series...3? made it virtually to the end just because they barely featured in the boardroom. AS perhaps should have demanded they come in to the boardroom at some point.

I think you mean Paul from Series 2. Paul from Series 3 was French cheese guy. And I actually think Paul from Series 2 deserved to get quite a long way - he had a lot of faults, but on task performance alone was a pretty strong character.

I don't think a firing from the winning team would happen on a one-off task. With someone like Noorul, Lord Sugar would just think that they've been lucky this time and fire them at the next opportunity - Noorul was fired just two weeks later. I think he'd fire someone from the winning team if they were a consistently weak performer, but kept ending up on winning teams. If something like that happened with Sarah, it would be foolish to keep her on a technicality beyond Week 6 or 7, because it would go down in history, worse than someone like Syed. We'd be saying for years to come, 'Remember Sarah? How on Earth did she get so far?'

Lord Sugar has shown in the past that much as he tends to stick to the rules of the 'process', he is able to override them if he so chooses, with the obvious examples being when he almost disallowed the girls' win at the start of Series 2, when he fired Jenny Celerier when she hadn't even been brought into the final three, and when he cancelled the winning team's treat on 'smell what sells' in Series 7.

With regards to Jenny C's firing she had blatantly broken the rules in a very serious way. She also had the bullying controversy hanging over her. So I suspect that the producers stepped in and told AS she was a liability and had to go sharpish, allowing him to bend the rules.

But it's all pre-recorded. Viewers might not like the bullying, but if the producers were worried about the reaction they could have just cut that out. I have no doubt that it was AS' decision to fire her. And in any case, he continued to be a law unto himself after that, because he didn't allow Jennifer to pick the final three. Instead, he said who was coming back himself.

Quiet characters usually means competantly getting the job done, rather than mouthing off whilst achieving little
Paul Tulip was an interesting example though - not quiet but had never been in the final boardroom. This actually counted against him as Sugar felt he nad no idea who he was and so didn't put him through to the final (though Paul also hadn't done well in the interviews either).
I suppose its a bit of a flaw in the "process" - Sugar only really gets to interact with the candidates in the boardroom so a series of good defences of your actions is going to gell more with him than smoothly progressing through the series.

I think that is what would happen as well (go the first time they are on a losing team even before the PM says who he/she wants back in) or if it gets as far as that, first one to go in the interview episode.

I think the rules are quite clear, you can't be fired unless you are part of the losing team in the Board Room at task end - if you are on the winning team you are safe, no matter how inept you were unless you break a fundamental rule - say using the Internet to find out what something is on the buying task.

Constantly being on the winning team can be a disadvantage in that Sugar doesn'( get a 'feel' of what they are like. He's never seen them have to fight their corner in the Boardroom so can't gauge how much 'fire they have in their belly' so is more likely to go for somebody else in the penultimate round - the first time it is purely down to individuals.

I think it would undermine what the show was about, what would be the point of winning a task if there was still a chance of you getting fired? People wouldn't try as hard although that would certainly be an improvement with some of the lot we have at the minute.

Besides, it is only a matter of time before someone incompetent is in the losing team especially since they all have to be PM at least once. If someone is constantly on the winning team, the odds are that there is a reason for that.

Again I agree. Whilst the 'shock' of it might make good tv I think it would ultimately undercut the integrity of the show to change the rules at such a fundamental level and the viewers would feel that it wasn't 'cricket'.
As for the candidates it would take away almost all incentive to work as a team for the sole aim of winning to ensure you don't end up in the Board Room even if you don't like the PM, product or the way things are being done and it would be all about making themselves look good as individuals even at the cost of losing the task as a team. The balancing act they have now (register their disagreement so they can say they stated it was a bad idea if they lose but then do their best to win anyway) would disappear and that is one of the most interesting aspects for me partly because it is true to life. On team building courses which are like mini apprentices the worst thing you can do is not support the PM or be a disruptive influence but it is no good turning round and going "I knew it wouldn't work" in the debrief at task end because the question is "why didn't you say so when there was time to get it changed then?". It's also true when you are actually at work. Your voice needs to be heard but not at the cost of undermining your manager.

I can honestly say that I wouldn't complain about it if someone was fired from the winning team, if they deserved to go. I don't consider the format to be especially important - I am happy for Lord Sugar to do whatever he likes, so long as there is a good reason for it. After all, you could say the same thing about Robert's firing. There's an argument to be had that only people in the final three can be fired, but I don't buy that - Sugar didn't want to go into business with Robert, what was the point of having him around otherwise? The twist in YA2 did annoy me though, when the entire losing team was fired and someone from the winning team, because I thought that was unfair to fire three people simply for being on the wrong team in one task without any consideration as to their performance throughout the process. Having said that, I think that if four candidates had been fired on merit, it would have been a very similar result, in that Lizzie, Haya and Harry M would still have gone. Harry H possibly deserved to get into the final over James, but I think Zara was the right person to win.

It's also an interesting point you raise about people being on a lot of winning teams being a disadvantage, because it means that Lord Sugar doesn't get to see them so much. I think that there is definitely something to be said for that, however the majority of the time it doesn't really cause an issue. The only candidate ever to suffer for that properly is Paul Tulip, who is one of only two people in history to go through all the tasks without ever being in the final three, and he had a really poor interview and was fired immediately. The other person who was never in the final boardroom is Lee McQueen, who went on to win. There is an argument that Helen was a bit of a victim of this as well, but that was not why she lost. She lost because her business plan was surprisingly disappointing for someone who had performed that well on the tasks, and Lord Sugar said himself that had it still been a job she would definitely have got it.

Good to see you on the Apprentice forums, by the way! I frequent them more than any others, and in fact they were the main reason I joined Digital Spy.

Thanks George. I've always been an Apprentice fan (partly because I have been on several of these hideous team building/leadership/time management residential courses which are structured in a very similar way except lasting 1 week rather than 12) but have always tended to discuss them on HTV ot with friends or colleagues.

I think the format is important - if you start mucking around with it too much to the extent that anything could happen then it undercuts the whole thing and I no longer invest emotionally with the candidates or sgow. That's what happened with me and Big Brother when they started mucking around with nominations, giving immunity if you gave up a phone call to your family, allowing somebody that entered 2 weeks before the end to win etc. Maybe it made it more enjoyable for somebut not to me.

As far as I'm concerned the basic principle of the Apprentice is that if you can not be fired if you are on the winning team. The first time you can be fired if you have always been part of the winning teal is at interview process when it becomes about individuals. It's not as though Sugar doesn't have the chance to 'fairly' fire them before the Final stage.

Robert was on the losing team so his firing before the selection of the final 3 was legitimate as far as I was concerned. So is firing everybody on the losing team if the loss has been bad enough. That could happen in business. If a department screws something up badly enough, everyone might go even if certain individuals did nothing wrong. Trump did a similar thing once when they had managed to return 75 per cent less sales at a department store than the equivalent week the previous year. That was appalling from a business point of view and everybody involved with it, even if they had a good track record until that point deserved to go in my book. If you lose (or are part of a fairly small team that lose) yout company thousands and thousands of pounds on a project you face the consequences.

I agree with you to an extent. I think that the majority of the time the rules need to be stuck to, but on certain occasions it may be appropriate to break them. If it happened all the time it would completely ruin the format, but just occasionally it's not a problem for me if Lord Sugar overrides the rules, such as when he fired Robert last night.

I wouldn't have a problem with firing the whole losing team either if the loss had been bad enough, but that wasn't how it happened in the second series of Young Apprentice. I'm not sure if you watched that series, so I'll explain it just in case. (If you didn't see it check it out on YouTube because it was really good - my favourite series, despite this horrible twist.) Basically, there were six people left at the penultimate week, and Lord Sugar said that he only needed two people in the final, so regardless of individual performances the whole losing team would be fired and someone from the winning team. I thought that this was unfair, because at that stage of the process it should be on merit. As it was the semi-finals, most of the people left were really capable and both teams did a very good job, and it annoyed me that three were fired on a technicality. To cap it all, it was a really stupid task to enforce that twist on - any task would be rubbish, but it was one of the 'design a new brand of something and pitch it to three retailers' tasks, so it was basically down to a hypothetical decision of a supermarket as to who was fired. There was a lot of criticism for that task, and the format changed the following year so that in the semi-finals, two people were fired from the losing team and there was a four-person final instead.

I've often screamed at my telly that someone from the winning team should be fired, then I calm down and think it would probably ruin the show, because what's the point of a "winning" team if you all don't get your pass? You could see the task failing, know there's a clear person to blame then give up and take your chances in the boardroom on the losing side, you've the same odds of being fired.

This year though I can see that a particularly bad winning PM might be marked for when (s)he loses for an instant "you're fired".

^^ I agree with the above point about them being in groups of 2/3 (like the semifinals) they should not be fired as teams.

I did see YA and I do remember that and whilst I wasn't keen either because we lost my favourite candidate of that year (one of the Harrys) I did think it was fair. As I say, sometimes in business, whole teams do go regardless of individual performance and they'd done something similar in Grownup Apprentice when they'd had 4 people in the final, losing team both went (regardless of individual performance) and then he chose between the 2 on the winning team. I also don't really mind it being down to the industry opinion on a product they have had to design rather than pure figures but then i've spent most of my working life on the Finance side in Advertising or PR so am used to and comfortable with pitching in abstracts to Corporate clients.

I don't think it is any more unfair that a PM being fired instead of a disruptive element within their team which is ehat happened in Season 1 with Miranda (was that her name) who went the week before the Interviews in the QVC task. Fact is that Managers do have to carry the can for their teams in real life so whilst it stinks, it is right that Sugar should reflect that.

Yes, that is my point as well. The incentive to make sure your team wins, supporting your PM even if you don't agree with the decisions being made completely goes if the 'immunity' from firing isn't there.

As far as i'm concerned it doesn't matter if the rule is broken once or fifty times. Once it has been broken the candidates and audience know it can be so the rules become meaningless.

Her name was Miriam (there was a Miranda in that series as well, but that was someone else). But that isn't a very good example, as that is often regarded as one of the most unfair decisions of all time, and is one of only two occasions when Lord Sugar himself openly regretted his decision later.

True, Sugar did admit he made a mistake fairly quickly but I think that was because of finding out what a sister Paul was at the interview stage a week later. A little like Stuart and Liz (was it) a few years later. His logic for letting Miriam go remained the same though - that a PM must be in control of their team and deal with insubordination and she didn't manage that with Paul.

I don't think that's fair actually. It was absolutely not Miriam's fault that they lost. She was a really fantastic presenter on the channel, as was James on the other team. Sir Alan, as he was then known, said that the reason was because both Paul and Tim were talking to Miriam through her earpiece at the same time. I disagree. I think it was due to the fact that Miriam's team just had worse products. As the presenter, Miriam passed up the chance to choose the products herself, so she had to leave it to Paul and Tim. Neither of them had a clue what products to choose, so they attempted to play a trick on Saira to get her to reveal her choices first and then argue that they wanted them as well. It backfired, as Saira completely saw through what they were doing, had done her research a lot better than they had, and outsmarted them at their own game. Paul argued in the boardroom that they took Miriam back a lot more products than she could sell, so she would at least be able to have some input into the product selection, but none of the products that they brought back could stand up to what the other team had, so there wasn't really anything that Miriam could do at that stage except go all out to sell them on the night, which is what she did. Maybe she could have said that she only wanted one person talking through her earpiece but a) I don't think that would have made a blind bit of difference and b) that would have left one of the boys in a very fireable position if they lost, which neither of them would have taken lying down. Neither of the boys gave very good feedback to her anyway, but Tim's comments were at least mildly constructive - Paul just seemed to be saying whatever came into his head. As Nick accurately pointed out in the boardroom, Miriam could have done that presenting without either of the boys being there. I think Paul should have been fired, but even firing Tim would have been better than firing Miriam. I think Miriam should have won the whole series actually, given her performance throughout the process. She only really had one poor task, which is when she spent too much on cheese in Task 8.

If anything, the mistake that she made on the TV task was taking on both the presenting and the PM job as they clashed, but that was pretty unavoidable. They chose the Project Managers before they chose the presenters - I don't think that was the best way to do things, but maybe they were instructed to by the producers - and it made sense for Miriam to do it, as Paul and Tim had both already managed two tasks and she had only managed one. Then when it came time to choose the presenter, she was the only person who was naturally able to do it. And actually the other team did exactly the same thing - James was both Project Manager and presenter.

Great suggestion. I hope it happens.