http://www.radiotimes.com/content/fe...apprentice/01/

Bang on. Like her, I'm amazed that more hasn't been made of Simon's 'property developing' = 'buying a house with family money, sticking a lodger in it and leaving her with a broken washing machine and TV' Yes, very 'innovative and visionary'.

And what I found even more shocking was that when that came out during the interview, he just sat there and laughed nervously - didn't even bother to try and defend himself.

Love that thing as well about him looking like Ardal O'Hanolon in Father Ted - I knew he looked familiar from somewhere!

Have to disagree - a rare off note from Miss Dent. I think Simon suffered from the editing and Kristina benefited (they were determined to present him as Tim nice-but-dim and her as "I am woman - hear me roar!"), but there were moments when he showed more substance. For example, I don't think anybody can deny he won the trainer task virtually single handed - don't forget he only ended up dancing on the video because whoever's job it was to get dancers completely messed up. And as Sugar said he had a room full of property professionals virtually eating out of his hand on the final task. Typically though we saw virtually none of this on the main programme (though we did get a sight of it on "You're hired"). Whereas Kristina on the other hand showed signs that underneath she wasn't very nice at all. Not just the child lollipop thing (which was certainly unethical if not downright illegal) but also the selling kisses in pubs thing - a lot has been said about her strong family bonds, but did she show any sign at all that she considered how her son must have felt watching his mum doing that? I got the impression at times that the most significant difference between Katie and Kristina was that Kristina knew when to bite her tongue.

So yes, the best man won. But the best person did too.

That article made me laugh out loud. Yes, I loved the Ardal O'Hanlon reference too - he's just like him! .

"...whenever he spoke his eyes swivelled like Ardal O'Hanlon's in Father Ted when he was trying to tell the difference between "small cows" and ones that were "very far away"."

I loved this one too... "My parents bought me roller skates when I was seven. It didn't make me a shoo-in for the chorus of Starlight Express."

Her take on Kristina, Simon and also Katie is spot on. Mind you, Grace Dent always is, with bucket loads of humour attached - even though this time she was as fuming as the rest of us, she still managed to be funny.

[quote=Amrywiol;15352769] Whereas Kristina on the other hand showed signs that underneath she wasn't very nice at all. Not just the child lollipop thing (which was certainly unethical if not downright illegal) but also the selling kisses in pubs thing QUOTE]

In the pub thing Kristina was strongly reluctant to agree to that but the team and PM decided to go with it-she only did it to benefit the team total.

Also the lolly thing-anyone who has seen the previous two series will have seen Sugar bang on and on and on and on about sales.It has been a huge difference between Apprentice USA and ours.USA is looking at all round talent,including sales,Sugar has been sales at the expense of all else.The money raised at the end of the day wins the tasks.

If you criticise her for that then you really shouldn't condone the very heart beat of the programme.To see an abject failure was to see Simon in the Shopping Channel task.As soon as he was retained after his woeful performance in that task,the name plate for his door at Amtrad had already been purchased.

Yes, but i think even he would draw a line at near on exploiting children. The way she went about that was horrible. A good salesperson shouldn't need to employ tactics like that to sell their product. Even though Lohit was taking a long time - his approach seemed much more "family friendly" and he did sell quite a lot from what I remember.


Everyone had a bad task on the shopping channel task - even Kristina. I think singling out who was worst is down to what people consider the purpose of the task to be. If you see it as a sales based task, then yeah, maybe Simon was the worst, however if you view it as a product buying task then I think Naomi - or even Tre was the worst.

The shopping channel task was about a lot more than who would fit in at Ideal World the best. Simon suffered from a bad edit that week - however his decision to go with the wheelchair saved the team from a complete walkover.



Don't think the column is that good this week. It just seems to be adhering to all the cliches the rest of the press have put on the show.

For once I agree with the woman. There were far better people than Simon in the competition who could "handle real estate". And at the same time be moulded (despite them telling us that he didn't need someone to mould this time )

I didn't see anything in Simon that made me think that he was a good business-person as a whole. By SAS's own admittance he's not a good team leader. Then why fire the people who can't manage their teams? The whol thing reeks of hypocrisy. The right man certainly won. A mediocre man for a mediocre job.

The edit can only mislead to a certain extent.

Anyone else doing as badly in a task in any other series,especially as PM has been sacked.The fact Simon wasn't sacked then meant at that point he had pretty well won the thing

Doing badly? How? Before the task Sugar explicitly said it wasn't an audition for the shopping channel, it wasn't about how good a TV presenter you were, it was about being able to pick stuff that could sell - and the stuff Simon picked made up well over half the sales of his team. It clearly wasn't stuff Sugar would have picked, but it's equally clear he was impressed by Simon's ability to defend his choices. So once you've ruled out all the stuff they were told IN ADVANCE the task wasn't about, just what exactly did Simon do that deserved a firing?

As for the others - Tre at least did his homework on the stuff he was selling and worked hard at it, but Naomi picked a probably unsellable item and then didn't bother to explain anything about it when it was blindingly obvious that she was the only one who had a clue what it was. Given what they were told - again, in advance - the task was about it becomes rather more obvious that Naomi deserved to go that week, especially as she didn't even seem to feel she needed to defend herself in the boardroom.

That episode was actually a very good illustration of one of Sugar's favorite tactics, namely setting a small trap for the contestants to see who is listening to what he actually wants as distinct from merely doing what they think he wants. On that task Simon was the only one who listened - he concentrated on picking stuff to sell, the others concentrated on just the selling. Why on earth should Sugar have fired the only contestant on the losing team who listened to his instructions?

As for the edit - each episode only gives us about 30 minutes or so out of at least two days of extremely hard work. With that sort of selectivity you could make Myra Hindley look like Mother Theresa

How do you know that Naomi explaing what the things were and her defending herself in the boardroom weren't edited out?

Bang on the money as usual from Grace Dent

To me it seemed like posh Simon got his team mates to do the final task for him, mainly the other posh bloke, who's name I have forgotten. I don't think Simon had any ideas of his own, not even the boat shaped building, because that was Tre's idea. He is definitly going to need his bottom wiping in his new job.