No she had the best record on the show. Good at most things, and had strong business strengths. Roisin has just pulled ahead. The rest are pretty bad or invisible.

Saffron diffuser

I do hope so after his behaviour.

My weekly thoughts ... Link

Audience would have Hired her.
Pressie is a Saffron Diffuser.
Next week's trailer looks very interesting, bring it on, and one of the best tasks ever.

Hey Claude, look very closely at Mark, as he cheated with those 7 hottubs.

Was that Ricky wossname the part-time wrestler and previous winner doing the interviews next week ?

edit: Ricky Martin was it ?

i meant that it didnt matter if she won every task at a canter she would not win the show with that plan.

raisin was a cert to win from the board game task and it doesnt matter who shes up against unless of course they have some genius plan

7 candidates left going into tonight's task, but 'The Final Five' had already appeared on my Sky planner for next Tuesday.

What a surprise double firing THAT was!

To be fair to him, he did notice that the 2nd pitch was stagnating and jumped in. Same with the 3rd pitch.

Maybe it wasn't what Roisin wanted, but it worked and they got orders from both.

As much of a prick as he's been for a lot of the series, he's been pretty good in the past couple of weeks and I can see him in the final against Roisin.

Least impressive final 5 that I can remember though.

Roisin and Bianca's self-assurance that they were the strongest two on the team with no credit to Daniel and Solomon was grating this week, glad Nick stepped in to say Solomon did well with the branding.

seriously the fact she didn't know how expensive Saffron is didn't bode well for her catering knowledge. Gok Wan was in Prague a few weeks ago for This morning and the Saffron market out there sells the stuff much cheaper it trades as expensive as Gold in some countries and she wanted to try and make that a main ingredient in a supermarket desert?

Oh, and Brady calling out Sanjay for what he said about Bianca was unnecessarily bitchy and out of order.
She wasn't even there at the time and essentially told tales after watching the footage.
The candidates always slag each other off, but this is the first time that I can recall one of the aidea deliberately bringing it up in the boardroom - and for no productive reason either.

Never liked Brady, but congratulations to her on her peerage for services to the porn industry...

Nope, Karren was in the room when Sanjay said it - we switched directly to a reaction shot of her screwing her face up in distaste.

Which was probably edited in later to back up what she said in the boardroom.

Really? It's fairly clear she's sitting in the same room. Also, no one sees the footage in the immediate aftermath of the task - it isn't edited together, even in rough cut form, until much, much later.

Waffling in other words


She has a big head to keep.


She chose the wrong two to take in with her


People go to a gym. End of story.


but only as a potential employee.


Mark was kind enough to tell this to the others


Primarily, it's an entertainment show


True


Not to be called Baron Karen


Not enough good ideas.


The purpose of the program is entertainment, not to give someone £250K

She's not a cook. Nor is she ever going to have saffron on her menus. She just needs a chef and a nutritionist, an idea of what price range to aim for, and some food tasters to check the result.

His issue isn't that , from what he said, his valid question would be if its wise to change direction, or to offer something you know inside out? But he's all over the place on that. He chose Yasmina for moving into a different field, but told Helen she should have stayed in baking, and Roisin is trying for the same move into the same new field as Katie was - and logically equally doomed.

Equally, he came up with argument last year that Francesca couldn't scale up her dance clubs - which made no sense -but which almost certainly would have been reapplied if Katie had offered to expand her fitness clubs. Katie didn't have a real option there either.

i think the big issue is becoming clear - and its maximum returns for little effort. Tom had the nailfile ready to go at minimal cost. Leah offers her services at twice what my overpaid dentist or solicitor charges. .. There's no doubt any of his winners can do whats needed. He's just not interested in internet ideas that might take off, or bridal shops, or restaurants-, or fitness or dance clubs, or old folks homes, or specialist services he can't iunderstand. .
.

They really need to change the format. Felt bad for Sanjay

Lord Sugar's put down about having been to McDonalds was brilliant but I felt a bit sad that it was directed at Katie. Would have been a good put down to one of the egos of the series - Mark, Daniel, James - but Katie seems a nice, humble girl so it was a pity she had to be on the receiving end of that.


The business plans shouldn't be relevant at this stage. That is what the interview week is for. Fair enough the producers of the show seeing their business plans when selecting candidates to appear on the show in the first place but Lord Sugar shouldn't even see their business plans until the interview week at the earliest or possibly even the final otherwise it renders the whole process pointless. He certainly shouldn't have been using them as criteria for firing people this week, that defeats the purpose of next week. Bizarre.

It was late in the series and he had to get rid of 2. She was i/c and lost.

As a restaurant owner, she would need to have a decent palette though, an idea of which of the dishes taste good, confident decision-making, rather than relying on her chef. She got her product wrong tastewise AND she chose the priciest ingredients. He'd be nuts to invest given that these are two key dependencies her business would rely on. As I watched her tasting ingredients then in the kitchen even I was thinking "uh oh, that's not good" given her business idea and I'm not the one investing in her.

I said weeks ago I thought Katie was limited and would struggle to lead a more complex task but she would make someone a great 2ic. I agreed with Sugar's decision and his rationale. She's a grafter, a pragmatist, a good steady teammate, she follows instructions and she can negotiate, but intellectually and strategically, she never shone for me. Not to the tune of 250k. She hasn't demonstrated the experience and skills he'd need to be assured that not only could she set up and run ONE business but scale it up nationwide.

She'd need to be extraordinary to make her business plan work and Sugar knew it. Is there a gap in the market for healthy restaurants? Yes, good idea, but it's niche and the location/demographic would be critical. Do I think she could run one small restaurant in Sunderland? Maybe at a push, although more experienced folk than her, including michelin chefs, have had great restaurants collapse. Could she turn it into a profitable nationwide chain? Absolutely no way. If experienced foodies and restauranteurs can't do it, there's no chance Katie would.

I'm surprised more people don't see Sugar was ultimately right.

I agree with you. I thought Katie had potential but she proved not to have a broad enough base of business skills.

The restaurant trade is a tough one to crack - you only have to look at the rate at which they close on the high street to know that - and it's hard to see what Katie brings to the party other than the initial idea. I just couldn't see her plan working myself, although I would hazard a guess that it would have the best chances of success in one of the big cities such as London or Manchester - nothing against Sunderland, but I'm just not sure it's where I'd choose to start.

Why? For a programme in its tenth series, the ratings are holding up very well. The show doesn't need a hige amount of fixing (even though the format is flawed).

I don't understand why people feel so bad for Sanjay. What has he done over the course of ten weeks to show any real business acumen? And his two stints as PM have been unmitigated disasters - he was terrible on the coach tours task and equally bad last week.

You go grazing round food stalls in, e.g., the Far East


I'm old enough to remember "Cranks" (health food etc restaurant chain) that was all the rage from 1961 till it went down the pan, (well only one outlet left)


I had a Lord as a client, and he and I were totally relaxed about being on Christian name terms


"They were rubbish", then 59 minutes of filler, I guess

It's not so much "litt;e effort" as "minimising risk" - risk versus return being the standard investor's mantra. Sugar tends to fall into the category of investors who prefer lower risk (not always, but usually) - he likes familiar markets, products rather than services, businesses which have an intrinsic value (such as having inventory).