He knew exactly what it meant.

It's all just staged managed for TV; & cracking entertainment it is too!!!

The reason Alan brought the 'Outstanding' thing up is that for someone who's so conceited about their own intellectual prowess Nick didn't seem to be able to translate his ability to produce any results in a business. If Nick hadn't sold himself as a genius then Alan wouldn't have called him on it, that's all. Nothing to do with affirmative action on class.

Thanks for that information skyl1ght. I agree, he could have had a good career at the bar presumably - so why apply for The Apprentice which involves areas that his background hasn't suited him for? Well obviously he believed he was suited to it, but based on no real experience.

However he was selected from 20,000 applicants so at least was suitable in some regards - if only because the producers hoped he would make good telly.

I agree that he seemed dissatisfied with the career path available to him and seems to want some kind of high profile but has only succeeded in making himself look an idiot which surely can't be helpful for a career at the bar?

Also surely as a barrister, even if the discourse is within clearly defined boundaries, you have to have the ability to process a lot of information rapidly, assess a situation and make an appropriate response - in other words the ability to think on your feet which was conspicuously lacking in his performance in the boardroom.

Just reposting the above to see if anyone can answer for me thanks.

Of course he knew what it meant.

He was toying with poor Nicholas

The day Nick is in Sir Alan's position he can get him back

What a load of nonsense.

The whole thing was scripted. It was the punchline - a manufactured punchline for today's press - and it was rather funny and pretty much exposed Nic's flawed character.

Yes I suppose so, up to a point. But the thing with the Bar is unless you're dealing with live witnesses (and that is a different skill that does not necessarily require magnificent intellectual ability) then you're more or less dealing with a subject you already know. It really is very different from being asked questions in a normal way. I know teachers, for example, who stand up in front of a class all day but absolutely hate being in a Tribunal because the 'rules' are so different. Not to mention the fact that we also have to remember that the boardroom would have been edited to make him look like even more of a knob. And why not - it was great telly.


I can't quite believe I'm doing this (and I'm tempted to say just google) but training for the Bar is as follows:
GCSEs (realistically need a min of 9 at min of today's grade A or old grade B)
A levels (realistically need min of 3 at A-B; no idea how ASs work so can't comment on those)
Undergraduate law degree or other undergraduate degree (3 years full time) (min 2:1 except in exceptional circumstances)
If undergraduate degree is not in law then you need a graduate diploma in law (1 year full time).
After either undergrad law degree of grad diploma in law then you do the Bar Vocational Course (1 year full time) which is graded competent, very competent or outstanding. Very, very few get an outstanding so no matter how much of a joke is made of it there's no taking away from the fact that it's a spectacular achievement.


If it was funny, it was only funny because Sir Alan was playing to the gallery (because he knew the audience would also not know what it meant). It's like the grade being an A and Sir Alan saying 'you got an A, does that mean you don't even know your whole alphabet, you couldn't even get as far as B'. On no hang on a minute, that isn't funny because everyone knows what an A is. Well to those of us who know what an outstanding is (and I accept it's a small pool) the comment is equally as facile and as I said, presuming he really did know what it meant all along, reeked of inverted snobbery. Nicholas gets slated for his football comment - well the outstanding 'gag' is exactly the same thing but on the other side of the fence.

That was my highlight.

Not only was it funny but it harked back to my school days.

I was studying GCSE German (which I also got a B for only, for me, it was a good thing rather than a disaster!) and the teacher was reading out the list of pupils who hadn't handed in their coursework. She arrived at Leon's name and Leon (as per usual) was too busy concentrating on which end of the pen he was suppose to write with. She called him again and said "Leon, your coursework is outstanding".

Leon looked up, thanked the teacher sat smugly in his chair expecting the acclaim he deserved from the rest of us. Sadly, it never came, as the teacher pointed out that he had failed to hand it in.

My favourite SAS line was duing the firing of Karen in series 2:

"Who was leading the tyre negotiations? Because, to use a pun, that was what let you down."

I hated Nicholas. Pure upperclass snob who looked down on everyone else even remotely lower to him. I am glad he went he was so offensive and it was his mistakes that cost them the task imo.
The way he started going on about are and football to defend himself was a complete joke. The guy is a recently qualified barrister for goodness sake, i thought he would argue his case well and the other two were worried he was going to shoot them down in the board room. I thought it was pure big headedness when he was devastated with a B in French. I love Sir alans sentence. "Your going to be even more dissapointed because you've just received a big fat F...you're fired!" Great!

He isn't a qualified barrister. He hasn't even done his pupillage. He's done academic courses back to back and has no experience of work at all. I've no doubt he will now do very well; he obviously has intellectual ability and the Bar will love the fact that he divided people into educated and non educated (no I am not joking).

Yes I take your point regarding editing. I fully believe they chose to show the most inept bit of Nicholas's defence of himself. Unfortunately however, even though it might have formed a small part of what he said overall, it had a large impact on those in the boardroom (and also on the viewer). It also enabled Alex to score points in response by assuming the role of ordinary bloke with his feet on the ground - in other words someone with whom most people could identify. Nicholas misjudged it spectacularly in social terms.

Adding insult to injury by dissing football - as that guy on YBF said, it was like going in to the boardroom, waving your hand and shouting "Fire me, Sir Alan, fire me."

He did indeed. As I watched two thoughts went through my mind 1) what a prize tosser and 2) now at last people will see why I hate the Bar so much I'm seriously considering teacher training.

Publicly the Bar will say 'we're not a bunch of toffs' but privately they'll think he is the dog's big fat bollocks with a cherry on top 'one of us'.

I think you're reading a little too much into Sir Alan's comments. It was an obvious scripted gag which most people (lawyers or not) could see hurtling towards Nic like a steam train. Sir Alan's scathing put-downs are usually a play on words - if it wasn't going to be 'outstanding', then it was going to be a 'First degree but last in the competition' type comment. But the 'outstanding' gag worked so much better. It was facile, it was obvious, it's a well-trodden play on words, but it hit Nic exactly where it would hurt him the most.

If anything, Sir Alan is a faux inverted snob. He likes to play the barrow boy but he flanks himself with ex-City players (one being a lawyer) and is only too happy to accept his honorary degrees.

That's the point you see, I don't think it did. No way does someone making him have to admit that outstanding is the grade he achieved on the BVC hitting him at all. Sir Alan could easily have made the gag without having to set it up with a stupid line about not knowing what it meant.

Anyway I won't go on about it anymore because I'm getting repetitive.

A spectacular own goal

It wasn't the explanation that was meant to hit him - it was the whole process of exposing the dichotomy between his stellar CV and his crap performance. The invitation to explain was merely the vehicle to patronise and set up the punchline (the likes of Katie Hopkins would have seen it coming....sigh...I'm already missing her banter with Sir Alan).

(Will also stop going on about this now, and wil return to pursuing my less than stellar law career) .

Barrister or solicitor?

I did have contact with barristers specialising in Family Law in one previous job who seemed OK (probably as a result of the area in which they'd chosen to specialise) but otherwise my experience would agree with yours. I attended a lecture and reception at the church in the Temple a couple of years back and the barristers who attended seemed to me rude, arrogant, excluding of people outside their group and oblivious of the courtesies usually extended to others in a social situation.

Wouldn't the Bar be rather criticial of Nick however because he'd applied for The Apprentice rather than pursuing a conventional career course for a barrister - or would they view that kind of self promotion as desirable? Will the fact that he was seen to be inept in The Apprentice affect their assessment of him in his career as a barrister?

I don't think it was obviously scripted. I think Sugar came up with it himself, he often says a lot of his humour is cut out.

Loved his firing line, 'you just got a big fat F.'

A lot of them won't have seen it. It's a tough job with long hours and 'watching the telly' isn't high on the agenda of things to do in spare time.

And those that have will not be put off by the fact that he couldn't get on with Sir Alan (Hackney boy) or price fish. The CV will speak far more than an hour long TV show. He came across as a prize knob and that will go down extremely well in many ways. According to the DS news (which granted is often marginally less reliable than Wiki) he has pupillage lined up. If he wants a sparkling career it's there ready and waiting. Given what we've seen of him though it may well be that like many people when you get up close you realise that a career at the Bar ain't all that.

Yes, that's why I disliked him so much.