There was a touch of "The Passion" about that picture wasn't there?

It was totally repulsive.

Post edited out of immaturity

The art was poor and I hate the way he clearly viewed it as being part of "higher culture." It makes his snobbish outlook even more irritating considering his work was so poor.

Right back at ya

Seriously, I'm glad I got kicked out of art college, I'm happy with the knowledge that my work wasn't self-indulgent tripe like that!

Sorry, have just noticed that you did say him and Raef.

I think he's talented, kinda... I mean, the painting was well constructed 'n' all... it was just a tad indulgent, self-pitying and unoriginal.

No, I agree with you! I'm not sure what Nicholas did wrong in the task. He priced up the monkfish wrong because it had been labled as something else-definitly not his fault imo. He didn't price the lobster-that seemed to be a group decision, and although he should have known it was far too cheap, so should the others. And??

I strongly suspect that it was his dismal performance in the board room that got him fired. He really did show himself up badly there.

I'd have sacked Alex. They took a long time to sort themselves out, got a poor pitch as a consequence and didn't start selling till midday. I don't know whose bright idea it was to sell the remainder to a solicitor's office, but I didn't hear anyone say "No, try a restaurant", the obvious solution

I know, that's what astonished me. I thought having qualified as a barrister to such a high standard he'd be able to cut the points of argument down to essentials and deliver them persuasively. Instead he went off on some discourse about class division, football, and art. I have the impression he doesn't have experience of a broad range of people (too self focused perhaps). Doesn't he know that this sort of subject is likely to be alienating? It enabled Alex to score points by reacting in the role of basic and unpretentious bloke with his feet on the ground.

Nick just doesn't seem to have social awareness - disastrous if you need to work effectively in a team or handle clients.

It's probably because he doesn't have any actual work experience. Just education. Which is great and all but there's nothing quite like real world experience. He'll probably grow out of it.

Remind me to shoot you if you ever produce crap like that

No worries - the excitement of the new series is getting to us all

Don't tempt me

*Knits CS a (wonky) crown of thorns and a lobster*

I think it was a ridiculous thing to say. If you looked at his CV he had 'A's and some A stars. If he'd had a universally excellent performance at GCSE he'd have had numerous GCSE's all at A star. What the does it matter? It was probably a matter of a few marks - not something that's a lifelong crisis. He'd have been better making a more realistic assessment of his strengths and weaknesses rather than getting hung up over a grade B in GCSE French.

Good point Lemon Dracula.

You and me both.

I agree I think he was made a scapegoat too, anyone should know a lobster costs more than £4.90 each, I know and I've never eaten one I too think it was his boardroom performance that got him fired, if he hadn't been so bad in there then Alex might have been fired.

Alex did actually deserve to be fired as he was the manager but refused to take responsibility for any of the mistakes I'm surprised more people aren't saying Alex should have been fired

As someone else has already alluded to, he's probably fine so long as he stays among his 'own sort'

I agree

Sir Alan, like the rest of us, probably found Alex the more likeable and so was willing to give him a second chance.

I didn't like Nicholas, but I agree with you, Alex should have been fired. I did actually think there was a bit of reverse snobbery going on (Nicholas didn't get that point across though - he clumsily referred to educated versus less educated - Raef didn't help when he made his Prince and Pauper comment ). I actually thought Alex DID create a split in the group, and I thought he was a pretty crap PM.

I think people are swayed by Alex's looks rather than his business skills, which does defeat the object somewhat, but hey it's only a show

I agree, what Nicholas was trying to say was correct and Alex did split the group (and was too arrogant to see that), with Nicholas it just came out wrong. I agree about Raef too, bless him

Alex, I found was the worst for continually blaming others and refusing to admit what a rubbish PM he was and rabbiting on to deflect attention from their points. I was so annoyed when SAS fired Nicholas.

The problem is of course that we only see edited extracts of the tasks rather than live them for hours as do the teams so it's difficult to analyse who's more at fault. My opinion is that as PM, Alex had to delegate and to some extent had to rely on his team conveying accurate information to him - a very basic task with which you'd think any adult could be entrusted. Having delegated the pricing task to someone, it wouldn't be efficient for him to cover the same ground himself. However what he might have done, as someone commented elsewhere, is delegate the pricing to two or more of the team so that presumably there'd be inbuilt checks from the others against individual error. It depends on what other tasks there were for the team to cover really as to whether it would have been effective to allocate pricing to more than one person. It was a fairly essential task so perhaps more resources (in terms of people) should have been devoted to it.

I was slightly disappointed when Nicholas got fired, because I think he would have been interesting(/amusing ) to watch on subsequent programmes.

I agree with what you say about Alex (and I couldn't give a monkeys about his so-called good looks :yawn - he was a shit PM, but somehow managed to garner favour by saying he was the only one to 'step up to the plate'.

Oh well, it's early days yet, so I don't really know who I actually like or dislike yet. Roll on the next 11 weeks