1. Good decision to get rid of Jemma, she was pointless.
2. Mark is good but he is starting to get a bit big headed - pride comes before a fall perhaps? He's gorgeous though!
3. James is cringe worthy to watch but very entertaining.
4. Best Karen moment yet looking to escape the coach.
5. Pamela is a right moaning minnie

I would agree that Sanjay was lucky. At times it felt more that James was the PM and Sanjay was just his smiley, straight-man sidekick.

On the subject of negotiations, this is one aspect of tasks that is always represented unfairly. On the face of it, it appears that Mark did a brilliant job ab Blenheim and James did a terrible job at Hever.

But no two negotiations are ever alike.

The lady at Blenheim was clearly much more amenable to discounting, and Mark did a thoroughly professional job of exploiting that. The lady at Hever was clearly not going to budge from her standard group rate. I have no problem with James continuing to push for a discount - he would have looked weak otherwise - but his manner was poor (and increasingly chippy) and his starting point of an 80% discount insulting. There's nothing wrong with going in strong and then compromising, but in a negotiation you undermine your own credibility if you open from a ridiculous starting point.

Personally I'd have got my facts straight first. James asked for £3.10. Admission price was £15.50 and group rate £12.25 (I think). So anything below £12.25 would have been considered a win. We can argue about the exact values, but I would have perhaps opened by negotiation at £7.75 (i.e. half price), hoping to meet in the middle, a conveniently round number of £10. Given the way the negotiation went, I doubt he'd have even achieved that, but he did himself no favours by alienating the lady,

The interesting question, of course, is this. If the positions had been reversed, would Mark have done any better than James at Hever (and James any worse than Mark at Blenheim)? I suspect the answer is probably not, or certainly not much. But for the purposes of TV, we are asked to assume that both situations are equal and therefore Mark is a better negotiator than James.

This series has been the saddest as far as butchery of the english language is concerned. There are still people in who can barely string a sentence together.

I always remember Ashleigh, the winner of YA3. She had a strong Yorkshire accent and frequently said 'were' instead of 'was'. This made me laugh because Lord Sugar does the complete opposite, saying 'was' instead of 'were'. So put the two of them together for long enough and you'll get a grammatically correct sentence!

Glad Jemma has gone, I got irrationally annoyed with her. Mostly because everytime Lord Alan asked who came up with the name, she said "I did Lord Sugar" in the most smarmy and smug way ever. Obviously she should say she came up with the name, but UGH, the smugness. Although I guess they all would be. Also couldn't stand the "everythink and nothink". I'm being very mean. That said, when James was trying for his 20% cost negotiation, I think she had a fair point!

Felt Bianca missed out on a golden opportunity to defend herself. Ok, she opened herself up to low costs when she slipped and basically said they'd let the tickets go really cheaply. That's a fair point. But even if she'd sold those 20 tickets for £60, instead of £40, there still would have been a shortfall, so her mistake did not cost them the task. She could have pointed this out, which would have placed the blame with Sanjay and there would be no come back - maths doesn't lie, it's either right or wrong.

1. I cannot stand James. Irritating little gobshite.
2. I agree with the decision to fire Jemma, she contributed almost nothing in five weeks.
3. Karren was amazing, especially when she wanted to escape from that hideous coach trip!
4. Roisin looked absolutely beautiful as usual.
5. I have taken a disliking to Pamela, she seems like a bit of a sourpuss.

Ok here are my 5 thoughts:

1) Mark has gone up in his estimations, he seemed to work hard, was on the nail about Daniel a lot but unfortunately he does seem to be sticking the knife in and really making it stick, I think there was cause for him analysing Daniel the way he did - no smoke without fire and all but at the same time he does seem a bit vicious. On the whole though I think Mark has been shown to be pretty good this episode, I'll be interested to see where this goes and there definently seems to be a bit of tension in the house between a few of the candidates.

2) James is an idiot having said that I have a sad feeling based on next weeks trailer that he is going to get one last final chance.

3) I'm not sure I like Katie much any more and I'm not sure I want her to win even though she is clearly a strong candidate because she is very much margins focused at the detriment to quality in the extreme which happens in The Apprentice unfortunately but I don't think it is a good thing even for the purposes of winning the task. I'm a firm believer that you should stay to your principles on quality etc no mater what even if it does mean taking a slight hit to profits.

4) Sanjay was very lucky not to get fired especially for not bringing back James but at the same time based on performance Jemma had to go as she hadn't really contributed very much in the 5 weeks she was there.

5) I thought I was in hell watching that trip so I can't imagine how awful it was but at the same time I think that the other team got very lucky that there margins saved them because what they provided for lunch was frankly disgraceful and I'd be wanting my money back or at least a partial refund if I paid that much for the trip and got cheap food barely able to fill a child and nothing to drink? Disgusting!

Did you dislike Yasmina, then?

Iain hasn't seen that series - or at least, he hadn't a few months ago when I spoke to him about it.

1. James has no idea how bad he is, even in hindsight. He just doesn't get it. He should have been fired, and I'd have fired Sanjay for not bringing him back.
2. Jemma and Bianca had all the ammunition to get Sanjay fired, but they let him off the hook, going on what we saw. So I wasn't that sad for Jemma, though she seems a nice person.
3. I felt sorry for Daniel. He might not be the best but I don't think that's the issue. I think that as a group they look for a scapegoat, and bond with each other by blaming that one person, and now Steve and Sarah have gone, next in line is Daniel. I don't think Daniel shone, but Mark and Pamela criticise every PM every week, so I think their attitude to Daniel says more about them than him.
4. Shame Mark is so nasty as he's able and did a good job on the negotiation. But his need to pick on Daniel twice in front of everyone, with the attitude that it was for Daniel's own good, was classic bullying. I wouldn't want to work with him or invest in him.
5. It was good to see the yellow team do a relatively good job on the task, even if I then disliked all of them in the boardroom.

I haven't no, your quite right George, I have seen 6 since we last spoke (really should talk on Skype more) but I still haven't been able to find series 4 or 5.

I'm pretty sure Mark is at the pinnacle of his estimation and has been and will be for some time

I meant in my estimations and I'm sure you are quite right in that.

I've covered my views on Daniel and Mark in the other thread but as much as James is the 'character' of this series, his aggression both during tasks and in the boardroom is preposterously unacceptable, he doesn't pitch his ideas, he harasses people.

You just cannot, absolutely cannot have that brand of aggression. How he hasn't been fired for the way he has spoken to members of the public, let alone his team mates, is beyond me

I mean lets face it, he's a joke!

I was just waiting and waiting for Bianca to point out that if she HAD sold those 9 tickets for £60 each the extra 180 quid would still not have been enough for them to win the task as they were over £200 down on the other team. Didn't happen.

So really it was Sanjay setting it to £60 in the first place that screwed them over from the start. Why they didn't peek into a travel agent's or call the yellow pages to find an average coach trip price and base their pricing off that is beyond me! Also considering they were dealing with foreign tourists who might have no idea how British money works they could have (unethically) upped the prices.

I suspect not bringing him back helped save Sanjay. Lord Sugar doesn't like it when you try to second-guess him, and bring James back might have looked like an attempt to do that.

I have a long-standing theory that Lord Sugar doesn't like firing PMs, and this episode reinforced that.

But last year he fired the PM in all but three weeks (assuming that you count Jason as the PM in Week 8 - if you don't it's all but four weeks, but that's still a lot).

But that argument goes both ways
The series before he only fired the PMs twice out of 11 and the first nine PMs escaped!

True, but that is a lot more unusual. The only reason that that was so notable was that it's pretty rare.

I think the fact that he's done both shows that he has neither an automatic instinct nor an aversion to firing the losing Project Manager.

My thoughts are simple:

1. Mark is turning into a typical Aussie gobshite.

2. Daniel doesn't just have a chip on his shoulder, he has a full sack of spuds on it!

I've looked at statistics over the show from the start. It's not that clear-cut. Also, when he does fire the PM, it's often because the PM screwed up so badly there wasn't much choice.

I don't think it matters a great deal to him whether he fires the Project Manager or someone else.

Firing the project manager was what Trump would do in the US version almost every time. It got so boring and predictable. What happens is that the team members would pick a scapegoat, then the team would all gang up on them. The team leader was the obvious candidate for scapegoat. People love to blame their boss. Lord Sugar isn't keen on this because, well, he sees himself as the boss. He's alert to any kind of scapegoating, especially of team leaders, so it doesn't happen nearly as much in the UK. He will fire a PM if he has to, but there have been a number of episodes, like this one, where the PM has made serious mistakes, been called on it, but not fired, and instead someone on the sidelines was. A lot of famously "unjust" firings have been like that, where it wasn't the PM that got fired. Basically, if he wasn't careful, he'd end up firing the PM every time, because the PM is nominally responsible for everything that happens on their team.

anyone wanna make one for Week 6?