Am I right in thinking that, during series 9, Lord Sugar said in an interview that the next series, i.e. series 10, would be his last?

I haven't seen or heard any mention of this during the current series so am wondering whether he's changed his mind? Or, will he be making a shock announcement this Sunday?

Perhaps Claude could take over!

That's rubbish; applications for Series 11 are open atm and the BBC have commissioned the next series.

OK, that's fine.

The BBC may-well have already commissioned the next series, but it doesn't have to be with Lord Sugar at the helm, does it?!

Trouble is Claudes not a businessman and doesn't have the backing of a team or the money to invest.

Could imagine Duncan Bannatyne doing it. He loves TV exposure and has the necessary 'Don't mess with me' attitude.

^^ Peter Jones would be good, but he's already done something along those lines. The trouble with Duncan is, does he have a large enough team of experts behind him.

Oh, god. The image. Of him in the boardroom, staring at each candidate with a deep furrow of scepticism in his eyebrow.

Bannatyne's currently going through some fraud-related enquiries - one of his close financial directors is accused of all sorts and been arrested.

I doubt you'll see him considered for a new show on the beeb....

As much as i don't always like Sugar very much, i have to say the apprentice would be really weird without him.

I agree.

Not a big fan of Sugar either, I think there are other interesting entrepeneurs/business made out there that are quite interesting, but for The Apprentice I think Sugar makes good TV.

Every season he comes up with some one-liners that crack me up. I also think his personality fits very well with TV. In this case, 'Sugar, you are hired'

However in case for a replacement, I'd love to see Gordon Ramsay.

If Sugar doesn't have enough space in his existing companies to give the winner a job than I'd rather he went and the show returned to the old format with someone else in charge, the results last night showed how much of a joke the new format is.

I said a couple of series ago that I hate this business plan format, it makes all the previous rounds pointless as it's irrelevant how good you are if your business plan is not workable for Alan sugar. If he could not carry on with giving jobs they should have replaced him with someone who could. The show is not all about him.

In what sense is the new format a joke?

I agree but obviously the Beeb have not managed to find anyone that could replace him and who is willing to offer employment to candidates. Sugar obviously gets paid enough so that his 'investment' in the business doesn't effect him too much. If he really thought he was likely to lose money I doubt if he would do it.

The business plans were poor this year. When selecting future candidates perhaps they should be looking for people who are already running small businesses and want to expand/develop rather than people who are working as accountants or lawyers who may be good in their fields but have no real idea of how to run a business by themselves.

I think the fact that someone like Roisin got fired before someone like Daniel illustrates it perfectly. There's absolutely no correspondence between the first 10 weeks and the final 2 weeks anymore, the performance of the candidates and the events over the first 10 weeks were barely even mentioned last night. I get that the candidates' performance in the competition as a whole is not relevant to the final prize which is why it wasn't considered, and that Roisin should have been kept in with an extremely flawed business plan despite being the best performer throughout by miles in my opinion, but that's exactly the problem. What's the point in even having the tasks if they have no baring on the final result? Surely it would make more sense to go straight to the business plans/interviews and fire the candidates based on them? I know that wouldn't make as good television, but it really doesn't feel like the show has any credibility when it's made out that these tasks are of prime importance and the candidates go out of their way to perform in them as the best they can, only for them to completely dismissed when it comes to the final stages resulting in a completely random and unsatisfactory final 2. As a viewer, I feel cheated that I've been watching the shows for 10 weeks and have invested in particular contestants, only for them to be dismissed for reasons surrounding something I was not even made aware of.

Maybe I'm taking it too seriously as I know at the end of the day it is a television show made purely for entertainment, but the show always presented itself as a semi-serious business show and that worked with the original format: the process as a whole worked and made sense, if we didn't agree with winners or certain firings then that could just be thought of as a mistake on Lord Sugar's behalf, but the worst thing is that Roisin actually did deserve to be fired last night and that just shows how flawed the concept is. I can't comment on Series 8 as I've never watched that till the end but I think the flaws in the new concept are more obvious this year than in previous years as last year the final 2 made sense both in terms of task performance and business plan and in Series 7 the fact that the interviews were in the final episode kind of made it feel more satisfactory as candidates like Helen who were the strongest task performers but didn't have the best business plans were still able to make it right to the end (Although I wouldn't suggest bringing the interviews back for the final task, I just found that resulted in a completely dull and anti climatic final.) I really think something needs to be done about the format as it just doesn't work.

They either need to go back to it being a search for an Apprentice or change the name and the whole format. Not sure how it would work though as it would just be an episode of Dragon's Den where they come to pitch and he picks someone.

Like some have said, it wouldn't be the same without Sugar. He has to stay.

Yeah, the show is slightly hamstrung by the odd title since the whole premise of the show changed. "The Apprentice" simply doesn't make sense any more.

A re-branding of the show was required and let's be realistic - Alan Sugar isn't going to do this forever. At some point he'll move on anyway. The BBC must already be musing over this.

I know they're already arranging next season, but I do think it's time for an alternative take on the 'reality business show' concept.

Perhaps do away with Dragon's Den and incorporate elements of both shows together for a new one? I don't know. There's no reason for them to just flog it to death in its current guise, they don't have to chase ratings.

Where to start?

1. Roisin's flawed business plan wasn't known about till it was submitted in full detail. All anyone knew before the semi final was she was planning a health food business. Her lack of business acumen in the flawed plan shows she was unsuitable for the job prize too.

2. The tasks do matter. They help Sugar and Co get an idea how everyone works under pressure, what their pros and cons are.

3. Performance on the tasks came up in the final three boardroom. There was mention of their relative ranking and Daniel raised the relative sales figures (not that that helped him). Clearly Sugar isn't going to forget everything that happened before. It all counts towards his decision who to invest in.

4. The business prize is potentially worth much more. The job previously offered was as a business development manager, managing a new product. He's now looking for someone with an entrepreneurial streak to invest in. But you need the same skill set the job needed too.

5. Going straight to business plans would turn it into a completely different programme and a much less interesting one at that. Why ruin a good, entertaining TV format, over contentious credibility issues? I don't agree that the credibility of the show has suffered, but even if it had does it matter that much? The only thing this affects is peoples' perception of who is doing well and who isn't. It adds an unknown factor in terms of how good the BP will be. Just enjoy the show and let it unfold.

I don't understand the anti Sugar feelings on here
Imo, he's as good as he's always been in the role!

The format works, it's still very popular. Why does it have to be changed to something more hard headed like Dragon's Den? It's still about discovering new business talent, only now not as an employee but as a partner. So in a sense the title is even more appropriate in that the Apprentice can actually become like the Master, rather than remain the Master's employee.

Sugar is 67. That's not a great age these days and he looks fit and healthy. The show doesn't put much of a demand on him apart from his time, and he has more of that now as he isn't actively involved in running the businesses he owns. If he wanted to he could carry on for years. A replacement that could match his larger than life character would be hard to find. I think Duncan Banatyne would be a good choice but he's not much younger. They would need someone like that, with a media profile already plus the feisty and outspoken attitude.

Richard Branson would be a great high-profile entrepreneur to take the lead role if it went back to 'the apprentice' rather than 'the business partner'.

Although I always think of Branson as a nice down to earth guy, so I can't imagine him being a dick to people in the boardroom the same way Lord Sugar does.

Therefore this post is completely pointless lol

Haha funny post & you're right it's pretty pointless.

You know Branson had already done similar concept but hell lot better as the setting was on Nectar Island, show called The Rebel Billionaire, I was glad I got to watch that, it was soooo long ago don't even think it was show on mainstream channels.

Fair enough, but I think the issue for those of us who think the business plan format is significantly flawed, is the fact that the show is basically 10 episodes of task & 2 episodes of business plans, whereas LS's decision is apparently 95% based on the business plan, so the emphasis is fundamentally reversed...

At the risk of getting into conspiracy theory territory (i.e. does LS fire people early because he knows their business plans are rubbish?), the question to ask is "Could any of the earlier-fired candidates have had a fantastic business plan?" If so, then the show becomes more of a survival test, to simply stay in long enough to get to the stage when LS starts seriously considering the BPs in his decision-making process... or maybe that's what it is already!

I've never met Branson personally but I have worked with a few people who have dealt with him, and I'm told by all of them that he is horrible to work with because he won't compromise or even talk about it - you either do what he wants or he storms out of the room like a child throwing a tantrum.

Just goes to show that how a person appears in the media isn't necessarily how they are in real life.

^^ TBF a lot of successful businessmen are like that, "my way or the high way", thats probably why their successful, they don't spend days in committees discussing the colour red to be used on the uniforms.

Sugars the same, got to be, how else would Amstrad come up with some of the crap they produced.