Bought this a couple of days ago and a few interesting bits in it regarding some of the contestants...

Regarding S2 Ruth: Says that at one point during the gap between filiming and airing, during a meeting Ruth told him that 'If she should win, if he could find a role for her in Manchester given that's where her partner lived' (Sugar reminding her that there's no Amstrad/Viglen offices anywhere near Manchester) and was a bit taken aback that she had gone through the whole process for a job in London only to start with that.

S6 Paloma: Apparently Paloma was due to be fired soon regardless of her surviving her boot ep as it was found that she had broken house rules, leaving the cast house several times to see her boyfriend, have a haircut.

S7 Tom: How he got annoyed at how he would often just nod away at everything like a nodding dog through each and every single boardroom session.

Nice - is that it?

Looks like Badger talked herself out of a victory there.

Most of the contest bits and pieces are quite short, a lot of the book is more about conflict behind the scenes, issues with BAFTA wins (who got what awards), Media stories and such. The only series to get any real broad insights are series 1 (naturally given it was the first) and the most recent one (again, natural given its the one he can remember the most from).

He mentions that with the final episode, Lee was always his choice to win and unless he and Claire had ruined the task, he was always going to give the win to Lee

Oh and the Celebrity versions.. Jeez. In the book he claims the main reason he quit doing them was because of the chaos and bitter behaviour surrounding the third go-around. When the boys team was told that they lost, they acted up a lot, were insulting, made repeated nasty remarks about Sugar at the boardroom and were even spurred on by the then head of Comic Relief telling the boys that they shouldn't have lost off-screen.

If that was the case, why didn't he just fire her in Week 3 alongside Shibby?

I think it was mostly because a lot of the info only reached Sugar's ears after she had already been fired.

He shouldn't be saying that about Lee, because hundreds of viewers tuned into that final in good faith with four people that could win, now we know it didn't matter what Alex, Claire or Helene did, Lee - the CV liar - the pterodactyl impersonator - was going to win regardless.

It makes you wonder who on the other team Sugar had earmarked as the winner in case Lee and Claire botched the task so badly that there was no credible way they could be named the winners. For some reason, I've got the feeling it would have been Helene, given how unusually positive Sugar, Nick and Margaret seemed about her in the Final Five episode.


Bear in mind that they'd just lost Raleigh. Even if Paloma did those things before the Week 3 task - and I suspect that if she had, Sugar would have fired her instead of Shibby - Sugar might have been wary about the prospect of getting rid of too many candidates too quickly.

They had, but the process allows for two double firings in a series (or one triple firing). They'd just have to have four people at the interviews instead of five, but that can work. They did it in the first two series.

(Alternatively they could have a week where no one was fired, but I can't see that happening. I think in the fifth episode of Series 8 - Duane's firing - could have fairly done that, but that's the only one.)