In the conversation just before Lindsay was fired, Lord Sugar told her she was taking up someone's space, not "she HAD taken up someone's space". At that point I thought they would bring in a reserve candidate for the next task. Unless they're holding it back, it didn't look that way from next week's trailer. Maybe they think that would be a bit Big Brother to bring in someone new, but I still think it would have been good to give another candidate a chance.

Sugar - although he gave a with regret to Lindsay - was unduly harsh to her, firing her before she could respectfully withdraw. I didn't like that.

She had all but withdrawn anyway, firing people is the way the show works.

I don't think it would be fair to bring in a new candidate after they'd started. Everyone has to prove themselves on every task, it's not fair if one person doesn't have the same amount of pressure to perform as the others. I don't mind on Big Brother, because that's a popularity contest and you don't necessarily have to do anything specific to win, viewers can just vote for whoever they like. On The Apprentice when they're actually competing through business tasks, everyone should be treated fairly.

When he said, 'You're taking up someone's space' I read it as meaning someone's space in the final boardroom. Nurun said on You're Fired! that she was planning to point the finger at Lindsay to ensure her own safety. If he hadn't fired Lindsay at that stage, Roisin would probably have brought her and Nurun back, letting James off the hook. Even if Lord Sugar had still done a double firing, James would have got off lightly and he wouldn't have been able to warn him about his attitude.

They were 20 candidates in all as it was - no need for any replacements...

I think she was out of his comfort zone. All his prepared lines are to do with firing people who are begging for mercy, not allowing someone to leave who wants to leave.

Actually I think she showed the major weakness about The Apprentice, because obviously in the real world she is a successful person who has built up a business based on trust and likeability. Only there is no room in the show for people who are not happy badgering strangers for cold sales. I would invest money in her swimming academy plan happily if I was in that financial area: it obviously works and she is an excellent representative for it.

Yep, this is the huge flaw in The Apprentice, especially now that the winner is actually a business partner and not an apprentice. The entire programme and all of the tasks is geared towards finding the best salesperson but selling skills are not the only, or even the most important, quality you want in a business partner. We need tasks that test other skills.

Indeed - especially if you think about the past winners and the businesses they've set up with Sugar - very little hard selling skills required at all.
Sure fire someone for not project managing or not understanding what profit margins are. But to fire someone for not being able to cold sell candles - nah!

I felt pretty sorry for lyndsey(hope I've spelt this right). Seems like she has her heart in the right place & did the right thing by basically forcing herself to get fired, I'm sure she'll enjoy her life much more without the hassle of the show which really didn't suit her at all, she just didn't have that ruthless streak that you seem to need on the apprentice, but which she doesn't need for her own business so best of luck to her!

I think that's an overstatement - I can't think of any series which was won by the best pure salesperson, and indeed a couple of winners I thought were notably poor at it. What matters is trying, not sulking around shuffling your feet all day like Lindsay did. It doesn't matter how good or bad you are at sales, if you haven't given up, you can shift more than one candle. Sarah managed it, and her entire sales technique on this task was apocalyptic.

I'd argue that the first few tasks are really set up as a camera test - if you don't speak up enough, or are noticably not articulate on-screen, you get cut, for "not contributing" or if you decide yourself (as Lindsay did) doing the show isn't for you once you're on it, you quit. It might be a bit harsh, but they are making a tv show at the end of the day. If it wasn't for type A self-promoters making the show entertaining, the money available to start a business wouldn't on the table to start with.

Yes, I get that. They have to make a show that people will watch. But that brings me to the second (related) weakness, in terms of selecting promising business people, which is the one-off nature of all the tasks. A huge part of most businesses in the real world is building trust: you have to gain regular clients, which requires the quiet, thoughtful skills of gaining feedback, dealing with complaints, knowing when to modify your product or procedures in view of what you have learned. For a short time, before Carphone Warehouse opened, I had a small business selling mobile phones to other small businesses. I should think the wham-bam pitch-and-sell was about 10% of the business: the whole of the rest of it was providing a good trouble-shooting service. I coudn't 'sell snow to an eskimo', but I CAN sit on the phone for half an hour listening to someone's concerns, talking them through, and arriving at a consensus decision.

This is true. However, it wouldn't be all that interesting to incorporate these concepts into The Apprentice - instead, watching a bunch of ego-driven goons flail around incompetently is hilarious.

Whoever has the most attractive business plan is the one who wins. Lord Sugar could make his decision without sending the candidates on silly tasks. Looking at business plans every week, however, would be dire entertainment tv!

She may be successful in her chosen field and have 'her heart in the right place', yadda, yadda, yadda, but she demonstrated sheer laziness and a willingness to be carried even before the cold selling bit. Not forgetting the bold claims of success of candidates' businesses pre-show is always to be taken with a shovel of salt...

I don't think that's necessarily the case. In Series 7, Susan's business plan was far superior to Tom's, but she didn't win because at that time she was too inexperienced (Lord Sugar has since gone into business with her separately). Tom's business plan really wasn't very good (it was to do with a kind of workplace chair), but he won partly because of his personality and work ethic, and partly because of his previous success with the curved nail file.

When you think of some of the unlikeable, untalented people on this years show, I don't see how Lynsey deprived someone of a place.

Would the 21st candidate have been any better than those that got on? I doubt it.

And- sometimes you can really think you want something- only to discover fairly quickly that actually you don't really want it after all.

What was different about Lynsey is that she is clearly happy and content doing what she does. Which, in one sense, probably makes her the most successful (in the real world) of all this years candidates. Didn't they say she had 300 children at her swimming academy- and employed 6 staff?

You have to be good at what you are doing to build a business to that size- but it has nothing to do with screaming the loudest, or being the best at bartering with a prospective buyer.

Quite simply, she realised she was very good at what she does (and most important of all, happy) so just wasn't hungry enough to want to get into a battle.

That's pretty much what Dragon's Den is!

In my opinion, I should have qualified...in fact I don't watch DD because I find it a bit dull.

I agree Susan's smellies plan was better than Tom's chair, but he won on the basis of his nail file. I don't think anything Tom did in the actual series was any good, whereas Susan was awesome.

I disagree. He was on the losing team a lot, but he often seemed to be the member of the losing team talking the most sense, was a decent salesperson and was creative. He had some flaws - he wasn't very assertive and was a weak team leader - but he did also have good points. I think the fact that he was on the losing team for the first five tasks, but wasn't in the final three for any of them, speaks volumes. That says more about your capabilities than being on the winning team for five tasks, because if you've done that it may just mean that you've been lucky enough to be on good teams. If you're on the losing team and aren't brought back, you have at least done enough to earn the PM's respect.

(Following on from above, I thought of something else and too late to edit)

And besides which, his nail file is irrelevant to your point. You said that the person with the most attractive business plan wins - and Tom's was not the nail file.

I thought Tom was a pretty weak candidate all the way through; he did well on the pie task but other than that, he often sat back and watched things go wrong time after time or was a key reason of things going wrong i.e. he was partially at fault for loss on treatments task and he was a very indecisive and disorganised as PM. He also never volunteered to be a manager. His business plan was boring and poorly put together from what was shown; Lord Sugar didn't invest in that so it was a disappointing outcome I thought. Helen and Susan did so much better in process. In terms of Season 8 and 9, I thought Nick and Neil were the best through tasks. Ricky and Leah did do better than Tom but it wouldn't be that hard.

In Series 8, I thought Nick did the best on the tasks, but I also really, really liked his business plan. Quite honestly, I think it's a disgrace that he didn't win. I was happy with Ricky, but Nick deserved it so much more.

While I think Tom did do better than a lot of people give him credit for, I think it's fair to say that he won mostly (if not entirely) because Helen and Susan blew it in the final.

In fact, I actually get the feeling that Susan was Lord Sugar's first choice for the win going into the final, as she was a young, dynamic entrepreneur in a highly profitable market sector, whereas of the other three Helen had a brilliant track record but no actual experience setting up her own business, Tom had the most experience but a track record that even outside the show was a little shaky, and Jim was really just there to be humiliated in the interviews, told that he was full of shit and fired (which didn't even end up happening, probably causing Sugar to wish that he'd put Natasha in the final instead).

Had Susan offered reasonable financial figures and treated the investment as a gradual continuation and expansion of her existing business, instead of making the all-too-common mistake of thinking she was going to be the next Body Shop right out of the gate, she would likely have walked it.

I agree, Susan came very, very close to winning that. I feel that Helen was left to come second just out of respect for her astonishing performance throughout the process, as Susan was definitely a more likely candidate.

I really, really wish Melody had got to the interviews, just because I so wanted to see that. Why oh why did Lord Sugar deny us that pleasure?

His hands were pretty much tied in Week 10. Unless he completely threw the show's rulebook out the window and fired Natasha despite her being the winning project manager, keeping Melody would have entailed either firing Tom despite him being responsible for most of the team's sales and actually defending himself strongly for once, or firing Helen for what was really the first time she'd put a foot wrong in the competition.