She could have easily gone this week, based on her PM performance, but to be honest i don't believe Sir Alan ever intended to sack her. Gerri was a soft target and IMO an expendable contestant. In fact week 1&3 evictee's (Andy & Gerri) are almost certainly NOT what Sir Alan is looking for.

Naomi has the physical attributes of Michelle, not that i will suggest these might be helpful to her, and perhaps the ambition also? I failed to notice strong assertive qualities on Wednesday night and she really needs to stand apart from Kristina during future tasks.

A rift between Jadine and Naomi could be just what the series needs? If entertainment is going to be a key factor this series Jadine and Tre will almost certainly reach the penultimate week; but these loud, controversial characters require a foil, Naomi currently fits that role.

Do you know where to get betting odds from The Apprentice?

I'm not sure the bookies offer odds on it.

Bookies don't offer odds as some people already know the last 2 as it was recorded months ago.

Do you Know???

I don't know who the last 2 are, but loads of people do (BBC production team, othr contestants, etc).

Personally I think Naomi is a very strong candidate, and not because of her looks. She was an effective project manager, just different in style to what we're used to. She moderated and led group discussions, and formed a consensus that got the whole team going in the same direction. She stood up to Jadine - she was not weak.

She gave a great performance in the boardroom, too. She wasn't intimidated by Sir Alan or the other women. She made her points while keeping her cool. She stayed out of it when it degenerated into shouting. She was clear about what she thought had gone wrong.

I like her, but I wouldn't describe as one of the favourites to win at this point. She's not out of the running yet though.

On the plus side, she has survived being PM once, so she'll have plenty of time to redeem herself before she has to step into that role again. Unless she makes any major blunders we'll probably see her sticking around for a few weeks at least.

Sorry, I have to disagree. I think she was an utterly atrocious project manager. Firstly, she and her team had the evening before to plan their two businesses, yet they were still running round like headless chickens as dusk fell the following evening, wondering what on earth to do - before somebody else came up with 'kissograms'.
Her main business idea was face painting – on a school day. They made very little money, for which she blamed Gerri, despite the fact that full-time education for children has been law for several decades.
She was a weak leader with very few ideas of her own - her main idea being to do whatever her friend Kristina suggested. This resulted in her going down the very seedy 'kissograms' route for their evening business, despite having said earlier that she didn't approve of this course. However, having decided to proposition men in pubs with the offer of kisses for sale, the fact that her team could only get £1 each for them and still managed to lose the task, only serves to underline the utter uselessness of her leadership.
To my mind, Naomi is still in the competition for two reasons - she spoke up better than Gerri in the boardroom; had Gerri raised the above points, I believe AS would have probably fired Naomi instead. The other reason is that she looks pretty.
Last edited by The Swampster : 16-04-2007 at 10:20

Well, Tre's team had the same problem in deciding the evening task.

They targeted their face-painting at pre-school kids, so it didn't matter that it was term-time. Gerri had a long list of places they could find them. What really sank the team was that none of those places would allow them to film. (This is mentioned in, eg, Gerri's website - it's the kind of thing the programme tends to gloss over.)

I agree Naomi seemed to have few ideas of her own. She is not as strong as, say, Michelle or Ruth last year, or Katie this year, and they did lose the task. However, she's not "utterly atrocious" either and is one of the few who currently stands out to me in a positive way. As far as I can tell, the theory that she just did what Kristina said is something mainly put about by Jadine - it's not something we saw for ourselves in the programme.

Pretty much the whole team agreed to go along with the Kissogram idea. She didn't approve of it herself, but when it emerged as the consensus of the group she made the hard decision and got on with it, and it was successful partly because she had got them all on board. We don't have the figures, but I think they made more money in the evening than the boys did.

I agree she spoke up well in the boardroom, and that's a big part of why I think she is strong, because the boardroom is important. It's a shame Gerri didn't speak well, because Gerri was strong on the tasks. However, I think if Gerri had spoke up then Jadine would have gone. Naomi wasn't in real danger.

"The other reason is that she looks pretty". That kind of comment really annoys me. It's unfair to Naomi and it's unfair to Sir Alan. Yes, she is pretty. This means if she fails, people will say she's empty-headed and just a pretty face. If she succeeds, they say it's because Sir Alan likes her appearance. It's not that she can't win, but that when she does win she doesn't get credit. Michelle had the same problem. It's part of why women struggle in business. Their genuine strengths are overlooked.

I guess we all see it differently, but here's why I'm still not convinced:
Yes, Tre's team had nothing lined up for the evening either, but his shortcomings don't make Naomi a good team leader. I think both team leaders' lack of foresight for the evening task was amazingly stupid.
I agree with you that it's hard to get the full picture of what really goes on, but based on what I saw in the programme, 'pretty much the whole team' was not behind the kissogram idea. Jadine, Gerri and Ghazal were all unhappy about it, as was Naomi herself. A lack of ideas made Naomi follow a distasteful and ultimately unsuccessful route for her evening business, and put her female fellow team members under pressure to do something which (some of them) felt very uncomfortable about. The fact that she didn't approve of the kissograms herself makes her all the weaker as a leader, IMO.
You suggest that the girls made more money in the evening than the boys - if this is true, how many people did they have to kiss, given that at one stage they were charging only £1 a go?
I made the pretty comment based on AS's preference for Michelle over Ruth last year. I wondered at the time how Michelle had made it through to the final four, and a combination of hard luck and a pretty face is all I could come up with (I still remember her team leader performance in Top Shop, swigging champagne and trying on clothes while everyone else did the work). She subsequently turned out to be a bit of a disaster.
If Naomi is pretty I certainly do not hold it against her, but I do suspect AS of having a weakness for nice-looking women. However, to my mind Naomi ran her task far worse than the unfortunate Andy, who got no second chances, and I personally believe that if Gerri had been the one sending the team around pubs soliciting kisses from drunks, while Naomi had failed to find good locations for the daytime task, the same person - Gerri - would have been fired.

The problem with the Apprentice, like all reality shows, is we only see what the producers want us to see.
So we tend to see a lot of 'big' characters like Jadine & Tre but Sir Alan (via Nick & Margret) will be looking at them all.
Thats why the virtually unseen Tim won series 1 and the fairly invisible Michelle won series 2.
I suspect the eventual winner of series 3 will be someone we see little of in the show - place your bets on Lohit now!

To an extent, I agree that Gerri may have been a soft target - like Andy - but not with the rest of what you say about Naomi or that her role is as a foil to anybody. I think her role is to be a contender based on her CV and qualities and achievements. If he never intended to sack her, it is likely to be because Margaret, Nick and Sugar made a reasonably positive assessment of her qualities and performance - which they did. From what we saw in that episode, she didn't appear to do well in that task, but Margaret's comments were positive compared with the very damning assessment they made of Jadine's contribution and Sugar said he thought she had something. Maybe those loud disruptive ones are a foil for the capable business achievers with the impressive CV.

How come that the ' very seedy' was on the list of permitted businesses? That would seem to make the programme maker/ broadcaster seedy and Sugar a hypocrite for criticising the team that chose it from the list that he would have had a veto of.

You overlook the positive comments and views that Margaret, and the team that chose her to lead them, seem to have of her. I don't know about Sugar, but Margaret pr her fellow team members would not be likely to give her any credit for her looks.

I agree with that point. Gerri was like a lamb to slaughter in the boardroom once the conversation with Sugar followed the pattern it did. I believe he was in effect saying that she wasn't macho enough which in itself is a questionable way to look at it, but also he suggested somewhere else that it was based on the three tasks so far. I'm not sure about that. I didn't see her much in the second task.

The real question is why Jadine survived. She undoubtedly undermined team morale and hampered Naomi as project manager so her overall effect seemed negative rather than positive. Yet she escaped being fired. Such is the Apprentice.

Well I've already explained why I thought her performance was spectacularly bad. Re the very seedy 'kissograms': I've mentioned this on another thread . I don't think the girls were being kissograms in the true meaning of the word; they were trailing round pubs touting kisses for £1.

I didn't agree with his choice of Michelle over Ruth either, but how can you say Michelle turned out to be a bit of a disaster? Maybe Sugar was the disaster. How come he picked Michelle but didn't give her a project that was viable? A disaster of his? How do you know Ruth wouldn't also have been portrayed as being a disaster? Maybe the first year's winner was a disaster, but we don't hear that said, even though there is no sign of any great success out of anything he did.

A 'kissogram' (now, why is it called that? Ah, yes, I know ...I've got it!) is a kiss for sale which you choose to take a benign view of; a kiss for sale is a kiss for sale which you choose to regard as a mild sexual service and very seedy.

Selling a kiss is either seedy or it isn't.

As I said above a lot of what Sir Alan sees/hears is not what we see on the show. We saw a lot of Ruth on the show, but very little of Michelle - maybe she just quietly got on with the job like Tim did in series 1?
I feel a lot of Ruths fans ignore her real weaknesses - she herself admitted she had no creative flair and IMHO she was not good at getting the best out of her team - she really lacked empathy.
Sure Ruth was a killer saleswoman, but Sir Alan wasnt looking for that - Michelle had more general skills that he could hopefully build on.
What went wrong?
The role Michelle was given was rather a lame duck and presumably Sir Alan couldnt find another one that suited Michelle going forward. Of course suffering a miscarriage wont have helped Michelle either.

If you think wandering around pubs offering kisses to drinkers for £1 is the same as sending someone out in a costume to an unsuspecting recipient, to sing a birthday song and deliver a peck on the cheek, that's fine. I don't – any more than I think an actress who performs a nude scene in a play is as seedy as a pub stripper. Perhaps in your world, stripping off in public is either seedy or it isn't?
Clearly Naomi thought the 'kissograms' idea was tasteless because she said as much; the fact that she went ahead with her "kissogram" business anyway merely underlines her weakness as a leader IMO.
Last edited by The Swampster : 17-04-2007 at 16:42

I'm not misled by the wrapping - offering a kiss for sale is offering a kiss for sale; a kiss is a kiss and a peck is a peck whether it's dressed up or not. It is you who made a point of judging the kiss as sexual and seedy and a kissogram not. Kisses for sale are not sexual so long as they are dressed up, according to you. Don't, however make personal remarks about my world with imputations about stripping. We are not discussing 'my world' and that is merely offensive.

The fact that Naomi went with the kissogram idea showed that she listened and went with what the consensus was in the group, which may have been the right decision at the time - we don't have full information and it was quite hard to follow what was going on and why things came about.

I'm not making personal remarks, merely drawing parallels with other types of performances – which I notice you don't comment upon.
Re Naomi running with the "consensus" of the group - Jadine, Gerri and Ghazal all made comments about feeling uncomfortable with the "kissogram" idea. It was only Kristina and Natalie who seemed enthusiatic about it. As it turned out, it was unsuccessful as a business strategy, caused embarrassment among some members of the team and was described as the "oldest profession" by AS (perhaps, like me, he sees a distinction between singing telegrams and hawking kisses for £1 to drunks in pubs). Other contestants have been fired for less.
Last edited by The Swampster : 17-04-2007 at 17:39

Drawing parallels with other performances has nothing whatsoever to do with me personally or 'my world'.

Singing telegrams weren't what we were discussing either. They are quite different from selling kisses (kissograms).

You don't seem to have an answer to my points.

Kissagrams are singing telegrams with a kiss at the end (which singing telegrams tend to do anyway). Flogging kisses in pubs aren't any sort of 'gram' because they're not sent by a third party. They're just selling kisses. In the way that sending a telegram used to involve a third party, rather than merely walking up to someone and shoving a note into their hand.

is it true that there is a compromising video of naomi about to do the rounds? I read on the HolyMoly.co.uk mailout this week that an ex-boyfriend of hers is trying to sell it to the tabloids.. or is this all just TOTAL nonsence, or does it have SOME truth to it?