i find it hard to believe between all them successful girls nobody brought up the fact that they needed money for the t-shirts and between all them successful guys nobody realized they didn't have the shirts, the last odd thing was when the girls received their reward for winning which was a ride on the london eye and when one of the girls was entering the london eye she said something along the lines of "i could get use to this type of living"...really? a ride on the london eye...everyday folk ride the thing all the time, it's hardly the pinnacle of living the high life.

It was proportionate to the kind of reward they generally get early on. Those exclusive pods with drinks deals are quite expensive.

It's not scripted, it would have come out if it was. There are a lot of past candidates who have a lot of bitterness with the process, someone would have blown the whistle if there was anything like that going on.

The only parts that are scripted are AS' monologues at the start of the series and possibly his cutaway pieces to camera. I'd say they are probably scripted by AS himself though and not word for word in any case.

The rest is definitely genuine!

Many candidates have stated that his statements are often very much improvised, and that he says similar things when the cameras are off to members of the production team.

The production team will nudge some things along. E.g. the 10 Years of the Apprentice special showed Melody's pitch where she quoted incorrect figures to the website, those figures were fed to her incorrectly on purpose.

EDIT: Also, one of the candidates from series 8 was fired midway through the process for being a poor seller, but it was shown on You're Fired that she was actually the best/top2 seller on her team in every task but that one.

Who was that? Was that Katie?

the show is heavily edited

eg someone asked Claude why he gave Luisa an easy ride over her accounts/business claims and he said he didn't + he had no control over the edit

Edited, yes, but that's utterly different from being scripted.

and did I say they were the same?

<rolleyes>

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you did. Apologies if it came across that way.

I don't understand your comment. You say that a lot of past candidates have been bitter about the process, but at the same time say that if the show was scripted then somebody would have blown the whistle.

So how does that work if as soon as a past candidate blow the whistle they are immediately disregarded as bitter? Who else is going to blow the whistle if not a past candidate?

Several previous candidates have spoken about their time on the show and much of what they said has been interesting and very plausible. And comes as no surprise in regards to how television shows are made in general.

Why don't you believe them?
Of course it doesn't necessarily mean that you wouldn't enjoy watching the show anymore. You may still enjoy watching it but with a different awareness.

If you watch several scenes in every episode it would be very naive to think that we see it as it actually happened.
Some of things that happen seem to be so unrealistic. So many things just conveniently happen and appear right in front of the candidates like magic as they flit from one scene to another.
For example a team suddenly appear in an environment manufacturing products as though they know exactly what they're doing as if they've done it all their lives. The right people just happen to be around to interact with, meetings are set up where the product is pitched, and a deal brokered, in minutes.
What about when the candidates end up holding an art exhibition, or end up pitching on a shopping channel, set up on the day they are given the task?
Try to do what the candidates on each show do in a day and I think you'll find it just about impossible without a lot of help and preparation.
It feels like the candidates are guided around on a preset assault course that has been fully prepared for them to play out the roles of being their idiotic selves. A bit like TOWIE I suppose.
Realistically you'd have to conclude that it is more likely that everything has been set up for them on a plate and they just have to turn up and either provide a reasonable account of themselves or completely collapse under the immediate pressure.
I think it's a massive stretch to believe that the candidates do it all themselves without any interference from production staff and helpers who are guiding the tasks in some way or other.

The right people aren't always around to interact with though - in one previous series, they were trying to negotiate a deal with someone, and it turned out they didn't have the authority to agree the deal anyway.

As for the mistakes of forgetting the shirts and the money, it is possible if no individual takes responsibility, and they all just assume someone else has it... really, the PM or subteam leader should have checked this first!

I think they get nudged in the right direction of course (including the boardroom, where it was painfully clear that if Felipe brought Steven back, Felipe was in LS's bad books - so he chose another).

I assume there's some guidance as needed, especially if they go significantly off track - but it's not scripted in the way TOWIE or similar shows are. We don't get to see the information packs they must be given at the start, so don't really know what limitations they have.

Haha im not sure scripted but a lot of it is set up, all the companies who are in on it and the contestants sure have a lot of extra help that we aren't shown on TV

But hey its all entertainment and they are all very forgettable after

The programme isn't scripted, but it's certainly "steered" in certain directions.

The biggest gap in what we get to see is the project folders the teams get given - these will almost certainly give "multiple choice" options for how they are to proceed, e.g.
"1) T-shirts - if you want to have them printed, go to XXX. We have pre-arranged selling sites set up at YYY and ZZZ, or you can sell them to any private organisation that gives us written advance permission to film.
2) Sausages - if you wish to cook and sell them, we have pre-arranged selling sites set up at AAAand BBB" and so on...

There are also all of the apparent unstated rules, like only being able to split into 2 groups (they obviously only have 2 cameras following each team), no internet access (e.g. to look up comparable pricing) and so on, but that's just the nature of TV - if they left things too open, it would just be too impractical...

Laura

Fired on the Art task for being the worst seller on the team, but it was revealed on YF that she was always a strong seller on whatever subteam she was on.

Not exactly like TOWIE, I meant in respect to them being provided with a prepared situation (to some extent) just to throw them in there and see how they react.
Some of the situations look as if they would require a lot more preparation than the team themselves would be capable of organising in a day.
I think there must be a lot of intelligent people on this forum and even they if given some of the tasks really wouldn't know where to start if we're being realistic.
Now and again one or two of them in the team may have a little bit of knowledge of the subject, say for example they have sold cupcakes or worked in a pub, but they end up in a task which covers the entire production process of something very alien to them from the very start to the very finish, and the editing makes it appear as if the team themselves know how to go about doing everything as if it's all natural to them. And in one day, with all the pressures of the team themselves arguing with each other.

I think the term 'scripted' is one which can be read quite literally. But I think most people don't mean that they are literally given a script to read lines. Just that the events for the most part are contrived by production to facilitate scenes which play out somewhat naturally.

Its heavily edited of course to justify the firing the decision, whilst it wouldn't surprise me if the production team guide the task a certain way (In the Series 8 design task, Maria O' Conner said on her You're Fired that the boys were assigned to do a kitchen gadget whilst the girls were stuck with bathroom, a much more difficult niche)

However, it almost certainly isn't scripted as that type of thing just couldn't be kept under wraps for ten years. George's point (I think) was that certain previous candidates (Gerri Blackwood, Simon Smith to name a couple) have been extremely critical of the show following their firing and if they were so upset at the show, it is likely that they would have revealed if it was scripted as that sort of thing would have massively damaged the show. I think you're veering dangerously into conspiracy theory territory here.

I've been following the show pretty much since the start, and I don't remember ever hearing any accusations of the tasks being scripted. The worst accusations I recall were both from Series 2, firstly with Mani's calender pitch, which was chopped up in editing and re-ordered in order make it look even more rambling and incoherent than it already was, and then with Karen's firing, where the entire bit with Sugar accusing her of not defending herself was filmed later on and added in.

Besides, the reason why they don't script anything is simply because a lot of the time, the truth will be stranger than fiction. After all, who could write something like Paul deciding to try cooking sausages on a baked bean can?

I think some of the candidates idiocy is possibly 'suggested' to them for dramatic reasons...

would the girls sub-team REALLY go off somewhere without any cash?

Yes I agree with that. As I said in my last post I think the term 'scripted' conjures up an image of the participants literally reading out lines which have been rehearsed from a script like actors would in a drama, which I too obviously don't think happens either.
I think most people use the term 'scripted' more loosely and are speaking in more general terms of something which is very controlled in how it plays out.

Why do you think I'm veering into conspiracy theory territory? What I said doesn't sound any more remarkable from how much television is made anyway. Sounds quite plausible and rational to me.
As for being 'dangerous' I would think the most danger involved would be that I'm wrong. Surely it would be more dangerous to believe that everything you see in a show like this is all real?
Does it sound like a conspiracy theory to suggest that reality television isn't really as real as it is presented in the final edit?

It's been said before that when it gets to the final 'You're hired' bit in the final they film two separate endings where AS tells both candidates that they are hired, and only one of them ends up in the final finished show.
Is this true?

If it is then wouldn't that suggest something in itself?

Yes, but the implication of the OP was that this control included getting the contestants to deliberately make the mistakes for which they would lose the task or be fired for later (such as the guys forgetting to get the shirts or the girls forgetting to get the seed money). This would definitely not be the way television is usually made with respect to a supposed competition!

That sort of thing is highly unlikely and would definitely have been uncovered by now.

In Series 1-6 they did that because Sugar would have the candidates work for him between the end of filming and the airing of the series, and make his decision before the finale aired. Since Series 7 Sugar apparently does decide who he's going to invest in during the final episode, but they still film two endings both to prevent the result from being leaked to the press, and in case any deal-breakers turn up after filming ends.

Oh I see what you're driving at now. I admit I saw the word 'scripted' and I came up with the idea of a scripted drama show in my head. I think maybe scripted isn't the best word, maybe manipulated or misrepresented?

I agree that it would be naive to accept everything the show tells you at face value. I personally try to see beyond the edit when I watch the show and it's for this reason that I tend to value certain candidates that the edit lampoons (Tuan Le and Jordan Poulton to name two)
I think actually broadly you're right. Even Big Brother (as supposedly real as reality TV gets) has to edit hours down for the highlights show and skewing what we as the viewer see about certain housemates.

Again I apologise somewhat, I was blindsided by the word 'scripted'.