She is a complete funking arse.

She's trying to outbitch Katie from last year. She won't win this, but she'll end up on cirque de celebrite or Celebrity lardass club or summat like that.

Katie although not the nicest of people at least was intelligent & quick witted. Claire just seems undermine people & genrally just go on and on at the team leader wearing them down.
I think the people at her previous place of employment must have been ecstatic when she left if this was the was she treated them.

imo she is the most obnoxious candidate ever - and God we've seen some irritating apprentices. For as long as she stays in I'll probably record the programme, just so that I can fast forward over her bits; otherwise I'll be in danger of putting my foot through the tv.

hahaha I have a mental picture of Claire leaving the office at 18:00 on her last day. Everyone wishes her all the best and gives her a card and her gift. She feels touched and walks out.....

She gets downstairs and realises she forgot her Ipod. She walks back into the office and they all have streamers out, champers, dancing, party poppers...... they all turn and look at her and freeze.

. .

I think the problem is now, people are trying to out-bitch Katie. Knowing they probably won't win the thing, but could forge a tv career out of it instead. I really don't know why SAS keeps them in, we've got 3 or 4 bitches this year, so we can just rotate them each week. It would be far more satisfying seeing them get their just desserts one by one than having them go on for the rest of the show

I just think she's boring, and her voice does my head in - she's clearly not unintelligent but sometimes when she speaks she sounds so thick.

That's why I loved Simon, he literally didn't pretend to be anything he wasn't. It always shocks me when people like Claire honestly seem to want to come across rough and ready. Fair play to Raef I say, he might not be popular but at least he's a snob and he acts like a snob!

What on earth is that accent?

I'd sure as hell would not give my 'investment portfolio' to someone speaking like that...

Seriously.... where in the UK do people speak like that?

If she learned to keep her mouth shut for 5 seconds I might actually be prepared to listen to what she says; as it was last night I just switched off half the time she spoke.

The BBC site says she was born in South Africa. Sometimes there's a bit of a West Country there, I think, which might be from her time at Bristol University.

I'm just looking forward to Claire and Jenny going head to head--that will be a real cat-fight.

Sir Alan seems to hate her and its no wonder. I hate how she's got a smirk on her face at all times. I think she is covertly evil.

Nothing covert about it. She is the very spawn of not-very-niceness.

This has to be one of the the best posts on here.....

i think she is quite hot

http://www.specsavers.co.uk/cgi-bin/...name=home.html

I'm going to stick up for her.

She was team leader in the first episode - selling the fish - and was far better than Alex (men's team leader). She wants to be a leader - that's why she was arguing with Simon, so I don't think she'll fail next week.

She hasn't actually failed in any of the tasks she has been given, she just undermined Simon during this week's task. But at least she was open about her undermining and belittling of him, unlike the useless backstabber Alex who takes no responsibilty for anything he does, and that ginger freak Jenny who, although she wasn't bullying anybody this week, still had that look of utter disgust and sneering on her face from start to finish, and who did absolutley nothing to help the team even try to win.

Claire's accent is the same as Helene (both from Wakefield) but she has lived in London for a few years, so her Yorkshire accent has been Cockney-fied a little.

I also think Claire was right about Simon's management style, and the point about people flying under the radar was spot on. She's making herself vulnerable by giving her opinion, a brave move IMO

She also has to show she can work as part of a team and undermining the PM in order to clamber up the greasy pole is not the way to go.

She'd better hope her team show more respect and loyalty next week - or she might find that it's easier to slip down the pole than it is to climb to the top.

What you don't seem to appreciate is that she does work as part of the team - but likes to think that she is controlling the team. That was why she was eager to jump into Alex's shoes as deputy to Simon when he shirked responsibility, as she feels that she is a team leader every week. As she will be team leader anyway there is no reason to think that she will do anything different to what she has done in each episode so far - do a lot of shouting and telling people what to do, but getting results because most of her team will do what she tells them to do.

She's already been Sara and Jenny's boss once this series, and won the task by miles, so I doubt that they'll argue with her. Jenny might, but she doesn't normally get mouthy when she's not team leader, she just wants to tell people off when she is.

I don't suppose Alex will do anything that she says anyway, seeing as he just sulks and doesn't try, but I can't see him lasting much longer anyway. As far as that Michael goes, he does try, even if he's a bit rubbish in everything he does.

So, there's no reason to think that her team will turn against her, even if one of them doesn't exactly pull his weight. But if he doesn't pull his weight again, and Claire loses and pulls him into the boardroom with her, it'll be him who goes, not her.

Of course it's possible that the teams get totally reshuffled again, but I don't think it will happen that quickly. I think we'll be stuck with the same teams for a while, unless one team loses lots of its tasks over and over again, so ends up with very few members left, at which point one or two from the winning team will be transferred across.

In which case, it'll almost certainly be someone from the other team who goes - either useless Lindy, the only gay in the village Kevin, useless Lucinda or even Raef, who hasn't done anything but stay in the background and not open his mouth for the past couple of weeks. It might even be the other cockney wankah Lee who goes, seeing as his mate went this week and he's no longer got anybody to witter on abaht jellied eels and wotchoo on abaht and going dahn the 'ammers to any more. Whichever one of the other team is elected team leader next week will probably be in the firing line.

Well I hope she has two members of her team doing all they possibly can to undermine her and F*ck up the task and see how she copes...

Why should they - trying to balls up the task just makes it fairly likely that you'll get dragged into the boardroom along with the leader, and may well get you fired.

Nobody tried to balls up the task yesterday, Alex didn't try at all but he wasn't trying to screw the task up, it was purely because Simon wouldn't listen when his team (well, Claire) was telling him that things weren't working and he needed to get his numbering fixed. He didn't listen, he was the leader, he had to go.

But neither Alex nor Claire tried to screw it up. What would have been the point, they were obviously the two who were going to be called back with Simon, and either of them could have gone if Simon hadn't pretty much admitted that it was his fault as soon as he walked back into the boardroom.

Sara wasn't going to be called back in, she basically just said yes to everything Simon suggested. Michael wasn't, as at least he tried in his own clown-like way to drum up customers, and Jenny wasn't as she didn't even open her mouth.

Claire wasn't going to get sacked for being bossy - and let's face it, she was at least trying to win the task, no matter how many enemies she made in her own team along the way. If Simon had listened to what she was telling him and done something about it they would have won, no doubt about it. He didn't, he ignored his team's advice, he had to take responsibility. So ultimately, she was the best of the three dragged back into the boardroom, not the worst. The only question is, was Simon's inability to listen to what his team told him worse than Alex's inability to show any enthusiasm or desire to even try?

I had to laugh. When I clicked on your thread title I expected to be greeted with some in depth psycho babble. I like the direct approach though.