Yse, that's how i understood it too.

The skeleton was a bit cheeky and Sugar might not have liked it, but they'd probably have got away with it if they had built the thing and brought it into the Board Room assembled - which is what I assumed they were planning to do. But of course, they wouldn't have had the time to do it, as i understand it, it takes qualified people like Med Students or even Junior Doctors who understand anatomy hours to build a skeleton even when made of sturdier material than paper.

I did think there was a danger of the toy boat being another skeleton but provided it was long enough (which it was) and it floated, they will have been within the rules.

It was exactly the materials that bugged him, cos it was made of paper and not a fully made up plastic skeleton as he expected. Felipe saw a loophole, identical to getting a toy boat and exploited it. Not a single thing wrong with it.

I think Sugar was never letting that through, because he didn't allow for it. But yes, had it been fully made up, it wouldn't have been so 'cheeky' as you put it.

Yes, first thing i said when having trouble finding the snails and mussels was why not just go to Carrefour at CitiEurope (or any one of the large hypermarkets they'll have seen signs for on the roads). Hardly ideal re getting the best price but they would have got the product at the Fish Counter.

It probably was the discount issue as a cashier or even the person serving at the Deli wouldn't have been able to negotiate a discount.

I said on another post I'd much rather someone get the items quickly and cheaply but get no discount, than spend 3hrs getting a 50p reduction only to pay more than the supermarket prices.

Yes.

I think the crux of it with the skeleton was that it was a possible loophole that he hadn't thought of and he felt that made him look a bit of a mug and he just got really angry about it. He didn't like being outsmarted, even though Felipe was not the sort of person to do so maliciously. He was jst doing what he'd been trained to do - think laterally and look for loopholes.

It not being made up, made it much easier for him to say it didn't meet the requirements, he might have found it harder to argue if it had been although I suspect he would still have done it.

It is, however, as somebody said, the same as being presented with a flatpack still in the box rather than a ready made Wardrobe.

That said did anybody inflate the sodding dinghys?

Thats the thing, they would of had to of called over the supervisor who would of called over the manager who would of called the regional manager who would of called the head office who would of taken hours to get together let alone make a decision and when you have a return ferry to catch you can't really hope that they'll be nice to us brits.

Yes, only small stores where the person there is likely to be the Manager or even better Owner are going to have the authority to make a decision re discount, even a nominal one like 50 cents.

Aside from anything else, how would a cashier put it through the till when the price is barcoded? It sounds stupid but that alone would probably take ages to sort ou.

It wasn't a toy boat. It was bought in a toy shop, but it was a perfectly usable inflatable dinghy large enough for an adult to use. The girls boat had a wooden structure which wasn't specified. No doubt worth the price paid but over the top.

The cardboard skeleton kit could not have been made up to make an anatomical model.

Yes it could.

Lord Sugar was clearly annoyed about it, but that wouldn't have made any difference had it fitted the specification (which, as you correctly say, it didn't). If it had been built, it might have annoyed him, but he can't just disqualify people when he wants to. The Apprentice is a game show at the end of the day, and game shows have strict guidelines that need to be followed - these include that the rules need to be made extremely clear to the participants in advance. They will get a much clearer set of rules to read through than merely Lord Sugar explaining it, going through all of those additional details that aren't mentioned. I recently took part in a television quiz show, and there was a lot more to read than you'd think. It even included things like, 'If you have a question about a song, please do not sing any of the lyrics.'

A weird decision indeed. I was surprised a penalty wasn't incurred.

^^ why, was it a boat yes, was it inflatable yes, was it 1.6m yes, that was all the product description asked for.

Now if it had said an inflatable boat capable of being rode across the channel or on to be used as a tender for a larger boat, then yes I'd would be open to a failure.

This task is all about identifying which products will cost the most should you fail, reading the description and fulfilling that, working out what a product is, or more importantly finding out what a product is, when google isn't available and it's about getting the best price.

It didn't not fit the specification.

Actually I'm not at all surprised by that. Contracts are always very long and detailed things and the example of singing a song will be due to copyright issues.

I actually think he could still have fired Felipe for just not liking what he'd done. He could have said something along the lines of "it may technically be within the rules but it is not in the spirit of what i was asking for and i don't want to be in business with somebody that will bend the rules in such a way - after all if you can do it to me, you could do it to somebody we deal with, piss them off in the same way and i don't want to gain a reputation as somebody that doesn't play it 'straight' and will use 'clever' loopholes". I don't think that would have been against the 'rules' of The Apprentice.

Yes, of course there will be very detailed contracts that the Applicants need to sign on joining the Show which will be designed to protect Sugar's businesses, the BBC and the applicants but I'm really not sure it will cover such matters aaas "in the negotiation task, the description as to what needs to be bought must be so precise that we can't get the wrong thing". Sometimes, the point of it, is that it is something very obscure (like the product in Dubai a few years ago that some thought was a perfume and others thought was a food) and part of the test is finding out who can work out what it is and how to source one without the benefit of the Internet.

So, really, with something like the skeleton or the boat, the Applicant is just thinking outside the box and frankly, i think it depends on whether it is something sugar would have thought of himself. If it is, he likes it, thinks they've done a good job and is in 'tune' with him so wants them to stay. If it isn't something he would have thought of, he gets annoyed and angry (maybe subconsciously at himself for not having thought of it) so doesn't want to deal with that person.

The thing about saying that there have to be 'rules' so Sugar can't fire certain people is that a lot of the final thing is subjective. It is not like a 'standard' quiz show where the rules are very clear and can't be massaged - ie - people answer questions, the person with the lowest score gets knocked out until you are left with a winner.

Yes, the Apprentice has to follow the 'rule' that there is a 'winning' team and everybody on that winning team is safe for that week and that the PM of the losing team must be in the final three and gets to choose who goes in with them but Sugar can actually fire anybody he wants to within that for pretty much any reason he chooses even if it doesn't seem 'fair'.

Even which team wins is questionable as with the Advertising task, it is subjective. He receives advice from Industry experts but he actuaLly decides which he prefers and doesn't really have to tell us why.

I think the crucial thing re the 'rules' here is that although it is a tv show which is financed by the BBC so needs to be entertaining, the actual investment comes from Alan Sugar - so he has to have ultimate control and will sometimes mean he makes a decision on gut instinct or personal preference as to who he does and doesn't like and want to work with, even if they could be deemed to have done everything right and played by the rules, or even won the competition element of the process.

Exactly - the specification did not rule out a paper skeleton. As i've just said in my last rambling post, arguably it did not fit the spirit of the description but I don't actually think it went against it - from what we saw.

In some ways, it is a little like Karen and Matalie's conversation last week about it not mastering that Natalie didn't mean "women over 45 are scared of new products" to be offensive, she said it and it was.

From memory, Sugar said something about it being obvious that a paper skeleton that hadn't even been built was not what had been meant but who was that obvious to? Him, clearly but not Felipe.

The reason being if you sing they have to pay royalties.

The dinghy was within the size specified, therefore fit for purpose.

Felipe presented a bag of cardboard, that did not fit the specifications.

Had he presented the article completed then I expect there would have been far more discussion that we wouldn't have seen.

Could you even find a 'proper' boat inflatable boat that was 1.5m ?

Can someone quote me the spec verbatim?

where did it say - 'Skeleton MUST be presented fully constructed'?

I think that's a very fair point. One which I haven't seen mentioned before.
For them to not assemble the skeleton just makes it look like Felipe was taking the piss out of Alan Sugar. He was probably penalised because Alan Sugar thought he was being a clever dick with him.
If the skeleton was still in a flat packet then it could be seen that the team had failed to deliver a full skeleton.
If it was brought into the boardroom fully assembled it might have been a different story.

It was anatomically correct a bag of cardboard is not anatomically correct while it's still a bag of cardboard.

Well a plastic would is hardly correct either, unless they went grave digging they were not getting a 100% accurate skeleton.

Course it is. It said so on the bag of cardboard 'this is anatomically correct' - The spec did not say that the skeleton must be made up to prove that its anatomically correct,

It could be made of chewing gum and be anatomically correct, it's the dimensions and the fact that it's multi layers, not a 2d cardboard cut-out.

It's all irrelevant though and probably one of the reasons we watch