Even though Daniel is involved with pub quizs it doesn't mean he is an expert on relationships . Pub quizs deal with Geography, History, Sport, Entertainment etc etc questions, while Daniel was tasked with writing questions about relationships which is an entirely different ball game .

He should have had at least one other person helping him, preferably female .

He certainly didn't deserve all the mocking but should get some praise for giving it a go .

Who compiled the questions for the other team?

He deserves credit for the questions, not abuse. He was saddled with shit and did the best he could with a concept not his own and that he abhorred. He was arguably the hardest worker on that team.

Pamela telling him to take 'ownership'...what a ****ing joke

with relationship style questions theres either the casual banter (aka slightly sexist) style answers or the scientifically done where you ask a large number of people of all ages/sexes/backgrounds etc and then you can say well we asked 10,000 women and 9,000 said men are crap at picking colours so theres some weight behind the game

I agree, to an extent. Daniel did a job writing the questions that no one else wanted to do, with no data to access. He doesn't deserve criticism for that, but he does deserve criticism for his consistent overpromising and under-delivery when it comes to sales. That's the reason why he has no credibility in the house.

The other team didn't have questions as such - wasn't the nature of their game. Roisin's concept (with some input from Solomon, it seemed) meant that all they really had to do was design the framework and the rules - just as is the case with games like Pictionary and Articulate. No cringeworthy questions required.

With this task it again highlights the "hidden rules" we all assume exist. It's funny that Geoknow which was aimed mainly at children, had a children's focus group and the "Guru" had an adult one.

Indeed. As I've said elsewhere, focus groups don't just magically arrange themselves. I imagine that in some tasks the teams have a restricted choice of options in terms of markets they could address. In this case, the production team had these two focus groups lined up (and possibly a couple of unused ones), knowing that they would have a big enough group of a suitable demographic profile at the appointed time in a location suitable to house the group, the candidates and the camera crew.

No, but you can organise your own market research as well. I will always remember the WOMAD task in YA3, when Ashleigh just went out on the street for a few hours, stopped loads of people who looked like festival-goers, and asked them their opinions. I always think that's one of the most sensible things anyone has ever done on the show. Why mess around with the (usually not very reliable) points that the producers set up, when you can do something like that?

That's very true, George, and it was a good move by Ashleigh.

But going back to the wider point, there are certainly restrictions placed on the teams that we don't always know about, for logistical and legal reasons. There's no way the organised focus groups are just pulled together at a couple of hours' notice - there's plenty of planning that goes on in the background on the teams' behalf, no?

I thought the same thing myself.

While I'm at it, the "winning game" actually made no sense at all.

I mean, how does the scoring work?
If the person giving the clues gets the point (or whatever) then what's to stop other players just deliberately guessing wrong?

"Okay, cowboys and indians"
"Erm, is it Mongolia?"
"No. The stars and stripes. Hollywood. Mom's apple pie"
"Erm, Lithuania? Ethiopia?"
"Gah!"

Conversely, if it's the guessers who get the points, what's to stop the person with the card from offering hopelessly obscure clues?

"Okay, it's got a vowel in the name"
"Erm, is it Malaysia?"
"No. They sell clothes there"
"Umm, China?"
"Nope. They have pavements"
"France?"
"Nope!"

It seemed like a good idea (which, alone, probably makes it worthy of the win) but the actual game, itself, made no sense.

With Articulate, the players are divided into teams, and the winner will be a team rather than an individual. So if the team gets one point for every answer guessed correctly (and the person describing is on the same team) it's in everyone's best interests to get it right.

Uhuh.

I suppose if it's a team game it's better except, of course, that it means you need at least 4 people to play it rather than two.
Still, I suppose that it'd be okay at stuff like, say, a kid's birthday party or something.

Honestly, it did seem like one of the better ideas that people come up with in TA.
It was a bit rough around the edges (and it'd be better if 2 people could play it) but it really was half decent.
Okay, the idea of guessing countries by giving clues seems very simplistic but it's obviously designed for little kids so, on their level, it's probably a decent enough idea.

YA mention clocked for today.

Good post though.

It is not an unfair criticism of anyone. Those questions and answers he put together was some of the most sexist crap I have witnessed in a long time and I cannot even believe that someone would come out with that stuff in this day and age.

It was a daft concept in the first place but he completely messed it up and quite frankly it gave us an insight into his thoughts about women that were so outdated and ridiculous it was insane.

I couldn't really believe what I was watching.

No argument from me there.

He was either deliberately sabotaging the task, secure in the knowledge that he'd always be able to say "But I was working my arse off, doing my bit" or he is genuinely an offensive moron.

Funny thing is, the interview snippets, where he was saying "I didn't really think much of the questions I was writing but it had to be done" suggest he wasn't oblivious to how ignorant, sexist and offensive they were but, even so, he didn't consider upping his game and writing different questions instead.

Thing is, even so, it's still Pamela's fault for not realising he was destroying any chance they had and either getting him to do better or giving him something trivial to do.

It wasn't just women dissed, it was men too.

Seriously! How could he have made that game any better? How could the questions have been any fairer? He had no factoids or statistics to go on, they are forbidden to use the internet?

He was tasked with shit and therefore could only deliver shit! The hope (Marks) was that he'd be the fall guy and be fired...and it didn't happen!

Why would he do this, though? Even though he won last week, he would have known that he was not exactly in Sugar's good books. Why deliberately try to lose the task knowing that he would inevitably be in the final boardroom and not exactly in a strong position? It makes no sense to me - and while Daniel isn't the sharpest tool in the box, I doubt he's THAT stupid.

I think the point is more that people who're trustworthy and competent in business tend not to just do a shitty job, shrug their shoulders and say "Oh well, I did my best".

If he did think it was doomed to be a shitty job, he could have, at least, drawn people's attention to the issue, got some assistance, and made it into a group effort.

As it was, he took sole responsibility for the task and, unwittingly or not, made a complete train-wreck of it without making any apparent attempt to get assistance.
Smart people don't do that.

Thing is, if we assume that it was deliberate... it worked.

Obviously, the most straightforward course of action is always to try your best and try to win.
Trouble is, if you're convinced that you are going to lose, it's possible that more underhanded tactics might come into play, such as doing your "best" at a task you've been given and ensuring that somebody else is more worthy of blame.

In this case, it seems like Daniel knew it was a crappy idea and, once he realised he was being left alone to come up with the questions, he just came up with some horribly offensive ones, safe in the knowledge he'd always be able to say that Pamela had the opportunity to proof-read them and that, as a manager, it was up to her to make sure that she was responsible for ensuring that her team were performing adequately.

Thing is, I've worked with people like that in real life.
They either don't agree with the way something's being done and they try their hardest to undermine it or they're just morons who aren't capable of producing the results.
In either case, as a manager, it's up to me to spot the problem and make sure the person can't screw things up.
If I fail to do that, it's my responsibility.

I think Daniel knows that's the way business works and I'm sure Alan Sugar know it so that's why I think it's plausible that Daniel might realise he could get away with deliberately screwing things up for Pamela.

I can assure you that had Ashleigh been a candidate on the adult show and done the same thing, I would still have mentioned it. For the point I was making (and you yourself said that it was a good post) I needed an example of someone having organised their own market research, and this was the best example that came to mind.

I don't understand why you are making notes of how many times I bring up Young Apprentice, or why it seems to bother you so much. No one else seems to take issue with it. As I have said to you previously, I will refer to anything that I feel is an appropriate instance of whatever we are talking about.

I understand where you're coming from, Si - I just don't see it myself. And, of course, this isn't the real world (I've come across people like this too). In a competitive situation like this, if Daniel genuinely wants to win (and I think he does), why would you jeopardise your own chances just on the off-chance of getting someone fired who at no point has ever appeared to be a strong contender? It's cutting off your nose to spite your face, surely?

375 mentions this year alone. 7065 in total

(just laugh along mate, don't be so touchy)

What are the stats on my references to each individual series?

Sure thing dude, here you go

Series 1 - 42
Series 2 - 56
Series 3 - 104
Series 4 - 63
Series 5 - 46
Series 6 - 76
Series 7 - 81
Series 8 - 89
Series 9 - 71
YA - Series 1 - 1,692
YA - Series 2 - 3,195
YA - Series 3 - 2,178

I dunno.

Thing is, in the end I think it was right that Pamela got the chop.
Regardless of whether Daniel did it deliberately or not, it was up to her to prevent bad things happening and the questions he produced were a bad thing.

When I was watching it I got a distinct "vibe" that he was trying his best to sabotage the task though.
I guess it was just a convenient set of circumstances, whereby somebody else was responsible for championing a bad idea (a bad idea originally put forward by Daniel, himself, incidentally) and then, when he realised that she was going to let him go ahead with pretty-much anything he wanted to do, he thought he make it into a total train-wreck, safe in the knowledge that he'd be able to say he was doing his best and that nobody'd criticised his work or helped him out.

It's kinda like the old saying about escaping a bear attack: You don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to be faster than the guy next to you.

In this case, I reckon Daniel knew that, however much of the blame was his, Pamela was going to deserve more of it.
At the end of the day, it's another task completed, another competitor down and he's still there.
Score that as a victory.

Daniel deserves criticism because he spouts cliched rubbish.