Okay, so the whole candle and baked bean tin idea was pathetic, no denying that. However I watched Paul on BBC Breakfast news and he pointed out that they couldn't find anything else in the shops because it was the run up to Christmas. To be fair to him I can see his point - not many people want to buy disposable BBQs at that time of year!

Not excusing him completely, you understand

If he hadn't had a great amount of time to think his carefully planned responses through, i'd have gone with that, but (unless it was editied out), there was no mention of this on the show last night.

You still can buy them in the shops as Christmas presents etc. You can always buy a little calor gas stove from somewhere. I think he wanted to show off his idea predominately.
Last edited by kimindex : 03-05-2007 at 10:19

You can get a camping stove any time of the year. They guy's a total idiot in denial of his own incompetence.

Oh yes, that's why I said I wasn't excusing his stupid idea. Just something that I hadn't thought about given that that kind of stuff is all over the shops now.

The show was filmed whilst Ramadan was on which was at the end of September/Early October so it was hardly the 'run up to Christmas'.

OK a disposable BBQ might have been hard to come by but any decent camping store would still have camping stoves available. Argos probably still had them available too.

I don't think they were allowed to go to just any store though. Siralan said tey had a list of suppliers they were allowed to go to, and he put Macro on so they could get pans and cocktails sticks and stuff. So if there was nothing in Makro they might have been screwed. OTOH maybe Paul was just being an eejit. Both explanations seem plausible!

Last year Syed broke the rules and got away with it (he was late back after their selling task because he was closing a big deal).

So, if Paul had broken the rules and got the BBQ or whatever from another supplier would it have mattered much? I doubt it - SAS might have even seen it as a good thing as he used his initiative to get the tools needed for the task.

Didn't the other team have to cook their fish? And didn't they have one of those little camping stoves to cook it on? And didn't they pick up said small camping stove in Macro?

Camping equipment is sold year round, there really is no excuse

I thought their smoked fish was bought pre-cooked - like you buy smoked mackeral ready to eat etc.

Smoked fish is already cooked, with the smoking process a preserving agent to prolong the life of it. I've been a scout, I've done buffets and catering in some unusual places and I can say that those spirit burners do work.

I know for a fact that you can get spirit (meths) burning baine marie's* from Macro as we have used them for our buffet service. The reason they didn't work for the contestants is that they had only one burner and they are more for keeping food hot, then for cooking from scratch. To cook with them they would have needed more then one under the frying pan.

*glass/metal dish in a basin of water to keep food hot.
Last edited by Scots_Dragon : 05-05-2007 at 07:51

***ignore this post***
Last edited by Andyscouser : 06-05-2007 at 11:12

I think the one Paul was using burned jelly, not meths. I've used both types (and others). Paul was right to realise he needed a wind-shield. What he missed is that he needed a lid for the pan. Without a lid the heat is lost quicker than the burner can supply it. With a lid you have a chance - you can certainly boil water with them.

I'm sure that it's because Paul is a twit that he decided to go with the jelly burner thing. He was trying to show how "inventive" and "resourceful" he was and it backfired spectacularly.

Added to that, he had a really affected way of speaking - "more plummy than Prince William" that no-one uses, and certainly not any of the aristocracy. A desperately aspirational minor public schoolboy in my opinion.

In the art task he gave that away, by asking a punter about his money. He schmoozed comfortably in that task, another indicator to me of a social climber. Happy to see my tax money is being well spent at Sandhurst.