BIB: Why wouldn't you count Lee? He's as much a winner as any of the others.

I don't think Francesca was ever going to win, because she was a pretty poor task performer and didn't have a single shining moment on any of them. In fact, I find it astonishing that she got as far as she did. It was so cringeworthy on the 'Final Five' show last year when they kept saying things like, 'Francesca is so fair' because there wasn't anything else positive to say about her.

I wasn't overly impressed with Francesca during the tasks, but I did think Sugar was a bit too dismissive about her business plan when he said (I forget the exact words) that he couldn't see how it could scale. There have been a number of arts-based businesses which have successfully expanded through a franchise model (Stagecoach, for example) and, given the right model, I thought it had some potential.

Whether Sugar believed Francesca was the right person to take that forward - with her ludicrously made-up revenue figures and all - is another question. Certainly, I thought her business idea was stronger than she was - but she was never close to winning the series for me.

Yeah, I didn't actually mind Francesca's business plan - I work in the arts, and I could see her plan working as well. But whilst a strong performer on the tasks will not win if their business plan is weak - as Helen, Jade, Neil and Jordan discovered - that also works the other way around. It would be absurd to invest in someone on the basis of a business plan when their performance on the tasks had been poor throughout. It would completely undermine the point of the tasks. There are some people who argue that that was what happened with Tom, but the majority of fans agree that whilst Tom had a poor record on paper, he himself was actually a pretty strong performer. Francesca didn't really do anything of note throughout the whole series - she could have been fired in Week 2 or Week 6 and we wouldn't have remembered her as being anything special. Frankly, I'm astounded she made it to interviews, let alone third place. If she had won, she'd have been the worst winner ever, even though her business plan wasn't bad. The fact that she wasn't especially good on any of the tasks confirms to me that, as you suggested, she was not the right person to take it forward.

Completely agree. The winner has to have a sound business proposition - I think that's a non-negotiable for Sugar - but they also have to at least demonstrated some degree of competence that shows they can run the business. (If they were well-rounded, perfectly formed business partners they wouldn't need Sugar's help in the first place.)

It's much easier for Sugar to provide resources, contacts and guidance to compensate for deficiencies in his business partner than it is to rescue a flawed business plan. A bad business idea is a bad business idea but the people/skills side can be fixed with support, as long as some of the building blocks are in place.

I really want Mark to stay

... just long enough for Claude Littner to tear him a new one

Mark is an utter snake. I do think it will be between him, Roisin and Katie though. He's sly but he sure knows how to manipulate people to his own advantage. I don't like him but he has drive and plays the game well.

Mark may easily be the strongest candidate out of all the boys but he will stab you in the back and cannot be trusted.

Apart from being good at sales, Mark is a liability on most of the tasks he's been on. He's so focused on protecting himself should he end up in the boardroom that he forgets about actually winning the task. That's why he's been on the losing team so many times.

Tom was pretty hopeless on task - his more acute observations fell on deaf ears and there were not many of them. Buthe didn't need to show those skills - all he had to do was hand over his patent, and go and work in a cupboard- till he came up with another product. He had shown that he could do what was required on top of that by doing it already - failure in umpteen tasks didn't matter.

Things change if you have a proposal that needs more inter personal, selling, advertising, or financial skills. Lord Sugar isn't going to go into business with someone he doesn't trust, or who doesn't listen, or is impulsive, or will make cras mistakes either.. Nor is he going to take many of the proposals that set of alarm bells - like hedge funds, or call centres , or businesses with multiple other partners.

The problem area is people like, Francesca who come with a proposal that doesn't have a professional input into producing viable figures, or who just offer him fields he doesn't want to get into. There's zero reason to think she couldn't have added some more sites to her dance empire - scaling up meant doing the same again - he probably just wasn't interested. It can' be just problematic figures alone that decide it. With Tom, he ignored the proposal completely, and ignored Tom's show record too - because he saw a proposal he wanted. He also picked up Susan's proposal - ignoring her odd figures at interview too.

He's got that problem this year - as there's zero reason to think Katie or Solomon can't do what they are proposing. Katie has national awards for her fitness work, and Solomon has already set up one business at least. The question is, is he at all interested in their fields. Roisin is the one we know less about - does she have to prove she can do something she hasn't done , or not? . Mark, for me, has to many negatives associated with him by Lord Sugar to look like a winner - without a big redemption story arch . His Lordship has variously claimed he's played a game, avoided leadership, and set up people to take the blame, and he's now added that he doesn't know what Mark does, and noted that Mark doesn't actually sell or do anything creative in his day job .Fair or not, it just doesn't sound like how you would describe your winner.

Its obviously going to be between Roisin and Solomon. Mark will be caught out in the interview. I don't like Mark, but there is no denying he is a strong candidate.

I find him slimy and I don't think Mark is a strong candidate at all.

He is a one-trick pony; all he can do is sell......oh and lie.

Nothing else. He should stick to chucking prawns on the barbie!

And, of course, ignoring the fact that she lost...

Rather made a mockery of the programme that year. Or made overt how little the programme matters.

In fairness, it was the first time they had done the business proposal format, and since then Lord Sugar has taken care to only let people onto the programme whose proposals he had some interest in in the first place.

Firstly, you're arguing the opposite of what's being talked about. It's not the fact that there were contestants with business plans that Sugar wasn't interested in, it's the fact that Tom won because of a patent he held despite doing badly throughout the series and his business plan not involving the patent he holds, and Susan also getting an investment, despite not winning at all.

And, secondly, you're wrong. The year after Jade failed the interview round because her telemarketing business plan would have earned Sugar too much negative publicity. It wasn't something he wanted to get in to. Also Francesca being fired for her business plan not working has already been mentioned, and that year Neil was fired for his business plan being completely unworkable. More notably Jordan was summarily fired for not even owning any shares in the company he was asking Sugar to invest in, and for promising only a small amount of equity.

So, at least last year, people could get on the programme while having plans Sugar wasn't interested in. Given that Lindsay's plan this year was basically the same as Francesca's last year, I think it's safe to say that they still can.

I think it is unfair to say that Tom won purely because of his nail-file patent. Who's to say that he would even have wanted Lord Sugar to get involved with that? He had done very well with it on his own. I have no doubt that there was a very strong element of that in Lord Sugar's decision, but his choice is often swayed by people's prior experience, either positively or negatively for the individuals concerned. I think that it had certainly crossed Lord Sugar's mind that he potentially could get involved with the nail-file, but he had no guarantee of that at this stage. He chose Tom because he was an inventor, had enough spirit to take risks, had done well in the actual business world and performed well on the tasks. Yes, I know he was on the losing team frequently, and both Helen and Susan performed better than him, but they were really the only ones who did. I think that Tom undoubtedly performed better than Jim, Natasha, Zoe or Leon, and whilst it is harder to make a case for him performing better than Melody, it is entirely possible to do so. As a matter of fact, Susan was not rated for quite a lot of the series. It is easy to rate her now in hindsight, but for at least the first half of the series she came across as a whiner and quite immature, and I admit that I thought that about her myself - of course, re-watching it it is clear how capable she is, and she is probably one of the most respected candidates of all time, but she wasn't when the series was actually on. Tom, on the other hand, came across as someone who was going to go far, as despite being on the losing team constantly, because his own contributions were pretty strong. I personally rated Helen from Week 2, but I also rated Tom, and can recall having conversations with friends for ages before the final saying, 'The final two will be Helen and Tom, with Helen winning,' and my friends would say, 'I think Tom might win.' Obviously in that instance they turned out to be right. His edit constantly portrayed him personally in a positive light, with a few exceptions.

Your other instances are easy to explain. Lord Sugar said at the start of this year that whilst he has seen the outlines of the business plans, he has not seen them in any detail and it is entirely possible that they will not sound so appealing once dissected. With a one-sentence description, Neil and Jordan's plans probably sounded entirely rational, and it was only when they were analysed in detail that they did not work or were not permissible respectively. As for Jade, I concede the fact that that is a hard one to make that argument with, but nevertheless, Lord Sugar said in the opening boardroom to Series 8 that he had already looked at the business plans and anything he had no interest in had already gone, so he must have at least had some level of interest in Jade's plan from the start. He said nothing to this effect at the start of Series 7.

With regards to Pamela, yes, she stuck with the idea, as Mark, Lauren and Felipe, forgot to ask the expert board gamers for any alternatives, suggestions etc., as would normally happen when you ask experts for their opinion. Pamela wasn't a cruiser or hiding in previous tasks, e.g. Ella with directing the video, Katie with calculating the margins, selling candles n diffuser for 52 pounds, no mean feat, Nurun with designing the jacket. I think maybe all the team members held back on ideas during brainstorming. I think the only one in the process who mirrors her work ethic is Mark and that's why I think, he will win!

If I was looking to appoint someone as my business partner to invest my money, he is the clear outstanding candidate.

A leader of men.

If Mark was to win it would certainly be a new 'type' of candidate we've never seen win before. Winners have been careless and sometimes unreasonable in the past, but they are never depicted as so overtly manipulative and arrogant. Unless the audience are supposed to be impressed by his tactics?
Despite his sales, I don't think many people finish the episode thinking 'Yes I would want to work with Mark. He'd screw me over good and proper' lol
That's not such a good thing when the whole point of the process is to see who would make the best business partner.

The edit has barely let up so it's clearly trying to derail Mark ever looking like a serious contender and isn't looking like it's planning on a redemption. Would be interesting if he did win as it would mean the show is accepting of that sort of ruthlessness now, but he really doesn't seem like Sugar's type of person at all.

Yes, Tom had the golden winner's edit that year, as Roisin is having this year. I found Tom likeable from the first episode and picked him as the winner then. I missed some of that series but watched the final and was unsurprised at the result.

He didn't want Sugar involved in it. He only agreed to Sugar being involved when it became clear that that was the only thing Sugar was interested in investing in and that he otherwise wouldn't get any investment at all.


Speak for yourself.

I love those interviews best part of the programme .

Yes no candidate comes out of that week well at all .

I think Roisin is the winner but that depends on her business idea.

I often wonder what happens if you get a bad candidate with a great idea or vice versa.

Not bad to look at either. He could come back to my boardroom any day.

I'm not just speaking for myself! I have no doubt that some people liked her from the start, but it seems many people didn't. This was before I joined the forums, but when discussing The Apprentice socially a lot of people didn't seem to rate her very highly. On You're Fired, at the midway through the series point where they looked at the likelihood each candidate had of winning, Susan's started out near the front (after Helen, she had the strongest record) but was moved back quite quickly after the reaction of the audience. There were many, many news sources around Week 6 or 7 that suggested that she was the viewers' favourite to go the following week.

Her edit was designed to make her look naive and foolish for quite a lot of the series, specifically the 'I'm me and you're you' app and 'Are the French very fond of their children?' Of course, in hindsight I can see that that edit was unfair, but back then I wasn't quite as savvy to the bias of the editors as I am now. Obviously when we look back now we see a really fantastic candidate, but at the time she didn't earn a lot of people's respect until around Week 9 or 10. Tom had a better portrayal onscreen.

Indeed. This is why I said that you should.

My understanding of it was that that was just my opinion, so my response was to put across that it wasn't just my opinion, it seems that a lot of others thought the same way. If that was not what you meant I apologise, but I fail to understand what you meant by that comment.