You must have been watching a different show.
It was 2 weeks away without any contact with his family, not a couple of days.

How could he be using it as an excuse, he said it had crippled him and that was it, he didn't fight his corner promise to do better.
'I'll give you 110% on the next task Siralan' and all that sort of thing.
He was crippled, couldn't cope and wanted to go home.

How many jobs require you to have no contact whatsoever with your family, even prisoners get access to telephones and visiting orders.
In theory it's up to 12 weeks with no contact, that's a long time.

Everybody is different some people can cope with no access to their family for this length of time some can't, the only way to find out is to actually go through it.

I wonder how many weeks Siralan has spent with no access to his family whatsoever over the years.
I'd be surprised if it's more than a day and I'd guess that'd be down to flying all over the world and conflicting times zones.

I was wondering if he had been suffering from depression, or bipolar or something. You may not say it on the TV so 'missing my family' is a good getout if you know you're going downhill again.

There's no way they are away for 12 weeks solid. Each task takes 2-3 days max to complete. What would they be doing for the other 4-5 days of the week, and what would be the point of the BBC wasting money on renting the house etc just to lock them in it for 4-5 days at a time without getting any film from it.

Either they do 2-3 tasks every week, so it takes 4 or 6 weeks to film, or if it is one task filmed per week, they all go back to their regular homes for the non-task days.

Ifti in The Sun

"Watching the show back I felt humiliated.

Everything on there was true and that just makes it worse. It was a very bad experience for me.

Tre was actually saying to me he was going to lay into Rory in the boardroom and if I kept my mouth shut I'd be OK.

But I'm not like that. I think it is better to do something than do nothing and I literally did nothing so it would have been unethical to try and get someone else fired.

The one thing I could never do is go in the boardroom and lie - that makes me very different to all the rest of the candidates.

The thing that wasn't said on TV is that the night before I left for the show my one-year-old son was vomiting and not sleeping. I'd never seen him so ill.

When I left, instead of it all being hugs and kisses, my wife was crying with my son screaming in her arms.

We didn't have any communication in the house and I wasn't even allowed to call to see if he was OK.

I saw Tim criticised me in his Sun Online column, saying he used his daughter as a motivation not an excuse.

But under the circumstances in which I left my son - which to be fair he didn't know when he wrote that - there is no way I could have carried on without speaking to him.

Tim probably left his daughter smiling and waving him off, not throwing up.

There is a happy ending though. This weekend my wife told me she was pregnant with our second child.

That's just as good as if I'd won The Apprentice."

That says it all really - this would have been the image in his head during his every waking hour, no wonder he couldn't concentrate on any tasks. (I wouldn't be surprised if Sir A didn't know about this too, as he was relatively kind to Ifti when he fired him.)

Go to the other apprentice forum and ask the contestants what the score it or simply search it.
http://forum.theinternetforum.net/index.php?board=90.0

I've never worked in Television and even I would think it would take longer then a "couple of days" per task to complete principle shooting.

From the link posted by george chick, here is how the week (yes week) is broken down.


So yes Ifti was there for two whole weeks, which given the no contact and situation he left his family is understandable he put them first over what is essentially a game show.

The full-week shoots are usually something special, like when they go abroad or have a big reward or something. I doubt we've had any so far.

I'd guess there would be:
1 day of initial publicity shots with all housemates, including shooting them leaving the Amstrad building after they've been fired. Also the initial meeting, going to see the house where they live etc.

3 days for the first task.

So when Ifti started performing badly, it would have been the morning of the 5th day. Less than a week. He said he hadn't heard anything from home, and they get a phone call at weekends, so he can't have been there for a weekend yet.

I thought it was a bit more than a gameshow for the contestants - It's a life changing opportunity for them and for someone who wants to be a billionaire by the time he's fifty, it seemed a bit lame when he was in the car saying how he could have easily won it , but he put his wife and children first.

Perhaps your right that it is more then just a gameshow, fame, money and fortune is a big lure to those that have other priorities in their life. Not sure where Ifti is from, but he could very well be a millionaire by the time he is fifty. Working closer to home, near his family and in a business he knows better then working for someone else it could happen. If it is any consolation to Ifti fame, money and fortune have ruined many peoples lives and families before so perhaps only he will know if he has made the right decision.

He could have used Tre and put us all out of our misery.

I think that he probably thought that he wanted this, and it wasn't until it all started that he then began to realise that it was all very superficial and that he was already perfectly satisfied with his family and current job. Ifti doesn't need to be a millionaire (no-one needs to be a millionaire) to be happy, and he no doubt found that he had less in common with the other contestants than he thought he was going to have. Not everybody wants the moon in the 21st century, but sometimes people are made to feel guilty if they don't think that way.

The other issue is Sir A himself, of course - what are you supposed to do if you get part way into the show, and realise that there's no way that you could work with Sir A?! Do you fail a task deliberately, do you go to the programme makers and ask to be removed - or what? 'Doing an Ifti' seems to be the best way out to me, even if that's not the reason why he did it.

Honesty isn't the best policy then? Business may be business, but humans are humans and that includes having emotions. If he was leaving his child ill and had no contact then that is good enough reason for me. He could have said nothing, but instead was completely honest that he'd done nothing and couldn't hack being away from his son and wife. Good on him.

Actually Ifti said that he wants to be a billionaire. Obviously a million wouldn't quite be enough!

I think that was probably a case of engaging mouth before putting brain into gear! Also he may have felt that he had to come out with that sort of guff because the others were too. Just a thought......

That's probably my fault, I put one of my posts that he wanted to be a millionaire. Though what's 9 million short, when your making a nice bundle as a millionaire

It takes one thousand million to make a billion, not just ten.

I guess those who said he was stupid for leaving don't have kids?

To be in a house full of bolshy idiots, knowing your year-old son is at home sick must be awful. I'd have done exactly the same thing. Family is WAY more important than business.

lol, probably the reason I'm not very rich in the first place.

Hm, he was sacked.

You wouldn't have done the same thing, really, would you: sit back on a task to let others carry you when they were all under severe time pressure and needed all the help they could get and you had expertise in the very subject they were working on?

And you wouldn't then claim that you would be a billionaire by fifty. Would you?

.....well you guessed wrong.

millions of people have had to leave there children for periods of time away from them when building a business and travelling for business etc. its kind of par for the course in business. It doesn't mean that you put business or work about your children...it means you have a perspective on it.

At the end of the day, he wasnt in war torn iraq...he was ensconced in luxury; and having worked in tv myself, if he was that desperate and/or distressed to make contact with his family - the producer would have allowed it on special grounds.

Sorry but he might be able to break bricks but for sure he walked out of there a loser with his balls busted!

His son wasnt sick and was at home with his wife. Pity those who may have to leave their children with strangers to do a twelve hour shift in a factory on a regular basis.

I haven't worked in TV, but I didn't need to, to work out that if someone's child or other family member was ill, they would indeed be able to receive or send vital messages through the production team.

No, sorry but I didn't buy his nonsense at all. If his child was ill, he didn't handle the matter correctly; he did sit back and let others put their backs into the work and he did take up a coveted place and a chance that someone else could have had. He deserved to be sacked.

he was weak, and he was an idiot and he deserved to go.

He should not have been there in the first place. He was wholly unsuitable to be placed in that position.

He may be able to crack bricks with his hands, but he cen't break lego with his head.

Quite frankly, I will eat my own liver if this guy clears a million by the time he is 40. A Billion? Not a hope in hell. Nice guy but ****ing useless.
Last edited by Wythrol : 14-04-2007 at 00:00

Oh absolutely, but if my child was ill I wouldn't have bothered going to the through the task or go through the whole boardroom scene, just for the sake of a TV show - I would have just left.
Last edited by Luxxy : 14-04-2007 at 13:15

Yes. But in real business you can find 10 minutes to phone home even if you are away somewhere. If Ifti had been allowed to do that, he would probably have been OK.


That's irrelevant. He was worried about his kid, not himself.


Maybe. Maybe not, or maybe he didn't realise it.