Actually, no. The rope fine cost Tenacity £52 - they lost by £64.62.

He has, in several series though, referenced candidates length of education etc and there's always one candidate in there, at least, who reminds him or themselves of LS. He just didn't like being out smarted. I'm not saying I particularly favoured Felipe but the sheet didn't specify that it needed to be built or made of solid material.

Six of nine even - Yasmina was a graduate of LSE.

There seems to be an assumption that Felipe outsmarted Sugar. I disagree. Felipe took the piss in delivering a product which, if he had stood back and thought about it, was clearly not what Sugar intended.

You don't need a detailed brief to tell you that - just common sense. It's not the fault of the instructions, it was Felipe's fault. Someone who wants to run a business like this shouldn't need everything spelled out to them - that may be the case in highly technical and legal disciplines, but not in business leadership. When you're a senior businessperson, it's expected that you can read between the lines and fill in the blanks in a sensible way. An MD doesn't need hand-holding (even when crossing the road).

As Sugar said, this task was meant to be about negotiation - not about being clever.

The rope thing was harsh. He asked fir 1m he git 1m plus. Make the snarky comment about scisors if you want but fining them is extreme. At least he got the 1m he asked for.

The skelton was a paper kit that wasnt even constructed. I dont care if Felipe thought technically it met the definition, any common sense showed it didnt, certainly in that state. Had they constructed it then while it may not have been what sugar envision with the task it probably would have begrudingly accepeted.

Smacked of smart guy thinks he's being clever from felipe.

The rope thing was a bit harsh but it didn't lose them the task. I don't have a massive amount of sympathy though - the instructions specified 1 metre and they should have heeded it. Solomon did.

When he rejected the paper skeleton they should have presented one of the four other skeletons they brought into the boardroom.

Yes Al they are covered in clothes, skin and muscle but they are anatomically correct and fully assembled.

The worst thing was the women in the garden centre actually offered them scissors, she said as Katie was measuring the rope "suppose you'll be wanting a pair of scissors" to which Katie replied "nah your ok"

Sugar fined them over the rope because it didn't meet the given specifications - and fined them again because the paper skeleton did, but "that wasn't what I meant".

Either they live and die by the specifications or they don't. You can't have it both ways.

Exactly. A lack of attention to detail - one of the things James got hammered for.

BIB....You mean like the one the other team got?.

BOTH were "models" of the human skeletal structure, but as I showed earlier in this very thread Felipe was right and the skeleton they bought was perfectly acceptable under the instructions given to them in the binder sheet we saw.

If there had been extra instructions not seen by us this would surely have been brought up, either in the show or on YF, but it wasn't!.

^^ I have to agree, had they just been given these blind, without out any prior knowledge what would they deliver. Did it even say Human Skeleton?

LS must understand that when giving a set of instructions they must be clear and not allow for personal interpretation, if that's not required, and not use the "thats not what I meant" well what did you mean?

Had this task been for the usual customer task, then yes I would agree, as the customer wouldn't be able to use the skeleton as it was. This task was rigged, the Belfast sink acquired by the other team wasn't usable as it was, it would need re-surfacing, and a deep clean or whatever you do to them. Again had this been for a customer, they'd of rejected it as they wouldn't be able to use it as was.

Philip, this is what I posted earlier on this thread regarding the binder sheet description.


Now, not one mention was made on either the show, (or as far as I remember YF) where other instructions were given regarding the make up of the skeleton.

If another FM knows about these "ghost" instructions, please tell me when they were shown or stated either by LS, his sidekicks or another candidate (which the other team would have mentioned if they had known them) as I would love to hear them.

At no point does it say "anatomically correct" on the sheet, nor does it say the material it should be made of. As for some here say Felipe was "taking the piss" sorry but that is crap, plain and simple.

edit...As to the other teams Belfast sink I agree. If the one shown is the one taken to the boardroom then they should have been fined as this clearly wasn't useable with the damage seen on camera. Felipe's team got a useable sink at a good price (my neighbour bought a Belfast sink around the same size and he paid £90.00 for it)
Last edited by Tourista : 04-12-2014 at 12:47

Whilst I think Sugar was too harsh on them as what they did was correct in my opinion I think if they had built it they would have had a much stronger argument. Also the whole team turning on Felipe was just embarassing. They all knew what had been bought and all supported it saying it was a great idea. If they had presented a consistent argument supporting him and argued against him it would have made Sugar look foolish and probably resulted in no fine. Instead they all bottled it.

If the argument had been "I cannot determine if it is an anatomical skeleton as I cannot count the toes as it is still packed" then that would also have carried more weight.

It said anatomical on the box so he didn't need to count the toes. It's not like he counted every part of the assembled skeleton from the other team.

I don't think the issue was that it was made of paper, I think the issue was that whilst it was still packed it didn't fit the specifications. It wasn't as tall as it was supposed to be - it had the potential to be, but in the format it was submitted, it was not. The kitchen sink that someone else brought up is a different example - did it even say that it needed to be usable? I can't remember what the specifications for that were (did we see them?) Maybe they were more open to interpretation.

Having said that, I do think that they could have argued the point better. Lord Sugar is not unreasonable. The only other time he came close to disqualifying a winning team was in Series 2, and Karen managed to argue the point on that one and he grudgingly allowed them the win. Of course, it didn't work out well for Karen herself in the long run, but she was able to get Lord Sugar to allow them to still win on that task. If you argue your point well enough, you can get him to listen to you.

BIB...Yes it did.

Here is what it said exactly on the binder sheet.


Sorry George, but you really made me giggle at your "he isn't unreasonable" comment, as apart from the one example when has he shown this "reasonableness" in these shows?.

I wonder what Lord Sugar did with 2 sinks, 2 100m ropes and 1 skelton?!

I wouldn't have counted that as a skeleton. It was obvious what he meant. For me, Felipe is a nice guy but has never showed me anything useful in business - his speech on the boat was terrible, his leadership was terrible. He lost his first as PM and his second which he won was a shambles.

I don't think Felipe set out to outsmart LOrd Sugar he just assumed it met the specifications. Daniel, Mark and Katie all knew it was wrong.

If memory serves, back in one of the Young Apprentice incarnations of this task the teams had to buy a second-hand car. Suppose one of the teams bought a car that'd had the engine, gearbox and seats removed, and then pointed out in the boardroom that the list didn't say anything about the car being drivable. Would we have congratulated them for their ingenuity, or facepalmed and said "That's obviously not what Sugar wanted, you pillock!"

I can definitely see what Felipe was trying to achieve, but it was foolish to try that sort of rules lawyering on the most expensive item, since that was the one where they'd be hurt most by a fine. And let's face it, a flat cardboard skeleton that you stick up on the wall is NOT functionally identical to a full three-dimensional skeleton.

Either way, it's actually kind of funny seeing all this, considering the last time one of Lord Sugar's decisions provoked such a major firestorm (no pun intended) was probably back when Stuart was canned in the Series 6 interviews.

Okay. I hadn't realised that, and it's a good point that probably escaped a lot of people. Maybe if Felipe had pointed that out, it would have affected the result. Then again, was it thoroughly unusable? I think you could just about get by with using the one that that team bought, even if it could do with a bit of repair.

Lord Sugar has always been reasonable. Quite irascible, but reasonable. It's what makes him different to Donald Trump, who apparently fires people quite randomly from time to time (although I don't watch the US shows). With Lord Sugar, what people say in the boardroom does actually tend to make a difference to the overall result. He is very firm in his views, but it is entirely possible to sway him if you argue your point strongly enough and make enough reasonable points to counter his own, which numerous candidates have done throughout the years. His firings nearly always make sense on some level - many, many times I haven't personally agreed with him, but I do tend to see his point most of the time, and there have been a couple of occasions that he has even gone on record and admitted to being wrong, such as with Miriam and Liz.

Sorry, I do still believe Felipe was taking the piss. While I accept that the paper skeleton passes the pedantry test, to me common sense dictates that it fails the "is this what the customer wants?" test.

To put a different spin on the cake analogy Sugar used, if I ask for a birthday cake I shouldn't have to specify that I expect it to be baked, not uncooked. Common sense dictates that.

In business, there are no detailed instructions. A senior manager or business partner would not expect a detailed brief when given a task - a couple of instructions and then 'business sense' would fill in the gaps.

I take nothing away from the creativity of Felipe's solution, but it should have occurred to him that what he was providing might not be what the customer, Sugar, wanted. Instead he was too busy congratulating himself on how this showed what a great businessman this made him.

Nice guy, poor decision. And Sugar could never let this loophole exploitation stand - allow it once and you invite others to do the same in the future and make a mockery of a process that often stretched credulity already.

He wasn't taking the piss and it wasn't a loophole - it was a purchase made to fit the remit.
We all know that the tasks on The Apprentice don't really mirror the real world, but a business contract is something that's set in stone.
Felipe's dissection of what could and couldn't be done under the terms that had been given to them showed an attention to details worthy of praise, rather than scorn.
Be it Sugar or the producers who created the remit, they were shown to have produced a tardy document that Felipe used to his advantage.

The rope! Now why didn't someone say "But you asked for a metre of rope! I gave you 1.7m of rope. In that length there does indeed contain a metre of rope!" If it was a foot long, then fair enough. There was a metre of rope provided.

Actually, they are meant to mirror or simulate real world business skills - just within the artificial constraints of a task.

Sugar said up front that this task is a test of negotiation. As I've said, Felipe didn't violate the letter of the task rules but he did violate its spirit in my view (and Sugar's). You're entitled to believe otherwise, of course. I just happen to disagree particularly strongly.

With regard to the sink Bianca did emphasize to the vendor that it needed to be usable. I suppose, again, there could be a bit of interpretation there as some people would say it needs to be almost pristine. But I would say if the sink were for an outhouse a few chips/crazed enamel wouldn't matter so long as it held water.