Hi guys,

watched this again on iplayer yesterday and it seemed to me that Alex planned to take out a weaker team-mate all along.

HE is the one who gives only two jobs out, one to Raef and one to Nick, i.e. the weaker guys.
(Why couldn't more of them identify and price? what were the rest of them doing the whole time??)

He is the one who first prices the lobster at £4.90. (Unless he is completely challenged and can't see that a pound of cooked lobster is not going to cost the same as a whole fresh one!! - I don't think so)

and then,

He is the one who goes on and on and on pointing at Nick saying it was all his fault, until everyone, including Nick, has it completely clear exactly who's fault it was.

Very clever game play!!

I like it!!

Well what else would Sean Slater do after being sacked from Eastenders? It's all that SAS training you know.

I think he also did VERY well to jump on the whole class divide thing.

If Nicholas wasn't such a BAD speaker in that board room (perhaps the nerves of the boardroom REALLY got to him, he'd be awful in law like that) he could have easily got himself out of that. Sir Alan probably saw, like Sophie from last year, he was a bit of his depth in such a profession.

I think Alex was clearly planning defence in the boardroom from the word Go, and ensured he could blame people for anything that could go wrong.

They add up all the boxes (in my head, from the editing, it came up to roughly £110) and send them off to the solicitors...

Alex : "£130 minimum"

Turns out he needn't have gone so high, but you wouldn't expect them to make back even exactly the price on the boxes, ITS THE END OF THE DAY.

I hope he's off soon - I don't like people that delude what's really happening. I'd rather someone genuinely good that doesn't have to cover his tracks does well. I have a feeling, though, Raef may be next..

Would Nicholas go to work properly for Sir Alan though? Someone so snotty about being a barrister is likely to continue with that profession.

I don't think Nicholas had a chance - he is just not the type Sir Alan would or could work with,

Sir Alan realised it was a -perfect opportunity to get rid of him, as he may not get a second chance at it for ages and he knows he will get the chance to vote Raef (prig) off soon and Alex

I see him as responsible for the lobster mistake, but I do see it as a mistake and not a deliberate trap he set for Nick. No project leader wants to lose. I also think he allocated more jobs. For example, they only had 2 cash belts and it was surely he who decided who got them. He would have made a lot of decisions which didn't make the edit because they weren't important to the final boardroom.

I do think that when he thought a mistake was made, he highlighted who he felt was responsible in order to have ammunition for the boardroom later. A project leader needs to be clear about who is failing but should also be more subtle about it.

Finally, I think he was lucky that Nicholas effectively self-destructed. The reality was that the lobster mistake was mostly due to Alex, and the other mis-pricings were due Raef's mis-identifications, and Michael's poor negotiation with solicitors probably cost them more money than anything Nicholas did wrong. Nicholas shouldn't have been there at all.