I was about to start a thread on this. I am really happy Simon won, I prefered Katrine's design, but Simon had a better pitch.

I think Jadine also did a good job helping him out, she cheered him on and kept him grounded.

I thought he was going to lose with the people he had in his group .

Simon only won this task because of Rory!

And he certainly is NOT 'loveable'!

BTW.. Didn't Sugar say to Jadine that he didn't want someone who still had things to learn..so why employ Simon??

Here are my thoughts. I'm shocked…

http://bmtv.blogspot.com/

I thought Kristina's design was very basic but loved Simons design - there are more & more abstract design buidling being built in London & I thought it would look good on the South Bank

It looked like three penises…

.. as I remember, the design looked quite phallic and less wave like on the computer rendering at the design studio, but when placed in the context of the river and bulked out a bit during the presentation evening, the wave theme came through much better. The dancers was not a bad idea as a way of setting up the wave idea.

When I think about last night's show, I'm more impressed with Rory for his creativity (the design work and the dancer idea) and more aware of how Tre is so utterly destructive and dismissive while at the same time claiming some credit.

hehe!

that may be the case...... but he still won!! yaaaaaaaaay!
i won a tenner out of it so its all good!

i thought the dancers reaked of desperation. kind of like hiding the bad presentation with something pretty and distracting.

I also think it became clear last night why Adam had to go.He occassionally does something good but overall is very limited and negative.

What do you mean "whining"? I'm allowed an opinion and since it's been less than 24 hours since the decision was broadcast I'm entitled not to be subjected to the "Get over it" comments. It's still pretty fresh. Kristina should have won but in a way I'm glad she didn't. Amstrad is a poxy little company and obviously the job isn't as amazing as is made out if both of the previous winners resigned. So wait till I'm still moaning after 3 or 4 days before the "Get over it" trash. Just for the record , I'm not annoyed that Simon won , I'm annoyed that throughout the competition we've been misled to believe that he's looking for a finished product and not someone who needs to be taught the basics , to the extent that he actually fired someone for not being a finished product , so why employ one? I feel pretty let down after watching for 12 weeks , so there. And again , do wait a few day before the playground taunts.

.. I thought it worked well, and seemed appropriate though when Rory pitched it he seemed to want it to be a distraction, to appeal to men's libidos rather than to connect with a wave theme. Considering both teams had a few days to get this together, to design an concept and a presentation they both did remarkable jobs - some of the architects and designers were very impressed that from little or no experience in the field they both managed to pull it off.

True. But what I didn't like was the condescending attitude of his team mates e.g. the the looks and the sniggers whenever he made a suggestion . Unlikely I know, but I suspect that if Adam had a really good winning idea they would have still dismissed it anyway because it came from Adam.

Do you think they chose the teams like thy have in previous years when they take turns to choose? Do you think Adam may have been last candidate left? It brings back the nightmare of games lessons at school where I was always one of the last ones to be chosen for a team, alongside the obese one and the weedy one with specs.

I agree. But I think Sir A should have brought that up with him – OK so it appealed to the men in the room, but shouldn't our product speak for itself? It shouldn't need gimicks that make people think you're desperate…

I think the press are reacting to Simon winning in an completley inappropriate way. Kay Burley was just interviewing him on Sky News and was just incredibly rude to him. It's not Simon's fault Sir Alan picked him.

Simon went with Rory's idea on the basis that the team preferred it overall - and it was a highly striking design. It may have resembled something slightly phallic - but that in itself would generate publicity for the building, which at the end of the day is what SAS wants.

The dancing girls were neither here nor there. However I thought that they made Simon's presentation look much more polished and professional than Kristina's. His team had planned all the aspects of their presentation, whereas it felt like Kristina just had a CD player and a speech.

Simon's presentation was alot stronger than Kristina's. At the end of the day, what the building looked like didn't really come into what Sir Alan was looking at. It was just a base for them to set their whole presentation around. He wanted to know who could draw up the financial plans, put together a presentation and sell something in a speech to a large group (which ultimatley is what the end job was based around)

Kristina relied too heavily on Paul - who as the unseen clips show on the website - completley mucked it up. And by alienating Adam and Natalie, I don't think she really generated any team spirit.

Margaret picked up on Simon having an A Team and B Team, but he toned his down and bought his team together, whereas with Kristina she always had Paul and Naomi as her A Team and Adam and Natalie as the B Team.

Simon was better than Kristina in the final task in my opinion and that is what gave him the edge over her when it came to picking a winner.

At the end of the day it's a tv show. In the long run who is employed by Sir Alan doesn't actually affect anyone.

Fair enough Kolakube , but since it is a self credited "12 week job interview", then Simon , who edged over Kristina in the final shouldn't have won as Kristina outperformed in him in almost every other task by a mile. I don't personally believe that the final task would have made a difference to SAS's choice anyway. He had chosen Simon about 3 weeks before .

Don't know if this has been linked anywhere else but here is Sir Alan's explaination

http://www.mirror.co.uk/showbiz/tv/r...9520-19293689/


And yes it is a 12 week job interview - however it only lasts 7 weeks. Nothing you see and are told can ever be taken on face value because this is a TV show.


Also on a separate point - I read Lohit's blog for last week. He said he was fired at 11pm, Tre at midnight and Katie left at 1am. Yet we saw about 20 minutes of what was obviously about 3 hours of talk. It almost amazes me what they had to talk about in all that time.

Sorry but you probably shouldny go onto a Apprentice Forum just after the winner is announced and expect there to be no references to the winner in thread titles. There are loads of threads on here that say who the winner is

Watch the interview here

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/...270449,00.html

There are some reasons given their that explain why he won!

I was surprised that Simon won, as Kristina was the better canddiate. But really I don't mind either way.

The fact is that whereas Simon is stuck working for Amsprop, Kristina is a free agent and will do very well, probably better than Simon!

This is certainlythe case with Ruth from last year, and maybe Siara from series 1, both have done pretty well without the '£100,000 contract'

Well wait a minute.Why does everyone say that Kristina was the better candidate over the 12 weeks? Don't think this is actually true.Name me a task where she performed well in any area other than pure pushy sales?

She pushed for the (horrendous) kissing task.She forced the parents at London Zoo to buy lollipops.She was prepared to be ruthless in the boardroom yes-snitching on Katie and Paul.And she had the bright idea of frying the sausages.

But otherwise? No.

Simon has far more potential

The question is not what Kristina did. The question is when Simon was ever outstanding in the show. How do you know that he has more potential than any of the other candidates?

I really wish him well and I am sure he will do well in a job Sir Alan invented for him. However, based on the show he didn't deserve to win. It is clear for everyone who actually saw the show that there were candidates who performed better than him in almost every task.

Can you really believe that all of the firings (and the eventual hiring) was done solely based on what the viewers saw on telly?

The liberal editing of several days worth of film into 20-30 mins (with the rest of the episode being preamble, post-mortem and firing) meant the producers could pretty much portray each person as they wanted to.

As I said before, I know Simon and I think he will do very well in the job that was given to him. Throughout the series, nobody knew what job was being given apart from Alan Sugar - and he knew from the start (if you disagree, do you really think that he would pick the "best" candidate and then work backwards to find a job that would suit them?)

Given the fairly quick moving on of previous winners, I suspect that the producers have asked that a decent sexy job be given this time around - not some under-lackey job at Amstrad (where Sugar's shareholding makes up less than 3% of his wealth) where the winner will get bored.

I completely agree, the press' reaction has been disgraceful, who are we to question it, we have only seen a small amount of what both candidates did. I have heard they have both been working for SAS for the last month or so until the final decision was made on Tuesday. I think people saw how Simon played the fool a bit and assumed he was a wally when he is in fact an intelligent/enthusiastic guy who deserved to win as much as anyone. I think it is really cruel to react this way. I could understand it if he had been like Katie or done something nasty but he didnt. I feel sorry for him now and how that he realises that a lot of people support him and wish him and Kristina well.

Now isn't that funny, I thought he would win because of his team! My only doubt was Rory, and my goodness was I wrong about him. In fact the person who let him down was Tre, who seemed to be the person who didn't seem to want him to win. What must have been preying on Tre's mind is that if he had taken Simon into the BR instead of Lohit it "may" have been a different final!!

Me too.

I was surprised Kristina made it to the finals, tbh. Just emphasises how poor the candidates were this year.