I agree. It's called 'reality television', but it's nothing but.

Most of the time you can see examples where Sir Alan is making an issue of something just so that he can get rid of who he wants that particular week.

He'll already have had a good idea before even the series started who was in with a a shout and who the weekly fodder would be.

For example, the sending of Claire back to the house last week as though he was really angry with her, I think to many people here, could see it as acting to some extent. A kind of way to let her off the hook but at the same time make it appear as though he was being really harsh.
A bit like those 'punishments' housemates are given on Big Brother, where SOMEBODY ELSE is put up for eviction and the punishment is supposed to be that the person being 'punished' feels really guilty that one of their rivals has been put up for eviction....Yeah, right
That's the kind of thing the Claire incident last week reminded me of.....As far as I'm concerned Sir Alan had absolutely no intention whatsoever of firing Claire last week. She was safe as houses. There was no way she was going to be fired because he had already decided who he wanted to go.

The boardroom I believe is all about performance for the camera. I don't believe how well you fight your corner, if Sir Alan has already decided that you're going...then you're going and it's as simple as that, no matter what you say in the boardroom.

This exclusivity deal thing I believe is another example of performance pantomime for television.
Because I believe that the way things turned out this week was that both teams did well.
It wasn't that Lucinda's team did anything wrong really, it's just that both teams did well and somebody had to win, somebody had to lose, and somebody needed to be fired.
So for the sake of televisual entertainment Sir Alan needs to create a problem in order to create a drama in the boardroom.
So you invent a problem out of thin air so that you can apportion blame onto somebody you want to fire when you get the chance to do so anyway. Sir Alan provides the clues and reasons so that the losing team leader can make an easy decision on who they bring back into the boardroom. Sir Alan is practically telling them who they should bring back. The editing later on which we end up getting to see can justify or validate his decision later on to us.

I don't know if anybody spotted it in this week's show, but I think Lucinda is also living on borrowed time.
'I don't know what I need a risk assessor for'
Well as soon as Sir Alan said that I could see that the writing is on the wall for Lucinda too.
We've seen it too many times before in previous series. Sir Alan claims that he doesn't need another Doctor/Lawyer/Scientist/Academic/Army man,...but yet he still invites them to appear on his show.
The only reason I can see for that is that they are seen as fodder to get fired in the weeks leading up to the final.

Anybody remember Karen from last year I think it was?
I think many people found it unfair that she got fired that week, and it appeared that the main reason was that she was a Doctor or something and Sir Alan didn't want to employ a Doctor....Well,....what was she even doing on the show in the first place at all for if that's the case?

So if Sir Alan has decided that he doesn't need a 'risk assessor' then I guess that means goodbye to Lucinda within the next few weeks then, going by the history of the show so far.

I think that if there was a rule about exclusivity then I doubt that Jennie or Lindi would have broken it.
Surely if they'd been given rules then they'd know straight away as soon as the idea was brought up.
It did seem in the boardroom that even Lucinda as well was completely unaware of this being an actual rule until Sir Alan brought it up.

How many rules are there?
Are they up on the website for the show?

I don't know, maybe they are given hundreds of rules and there are so many that nobody can possibly remember them all?
But if they had a list of ten to twenty rules I'm sure that they'd have checked them and be aware of them.

But it's a TV show.
If it was real, and there were some very real legal ramifications from what Jennie and Lindi did...then Nick or Margaret are there to step in and stop them doing that.

If they genuinely broke the law in some way that they'd actually get their pants sued off, Sir Alan would also be culpable. Do you honestly think that either Nick or Margaret would just stand by in the background as passive bystanders for the sake of the game and allow that to happen?

As I've already said in this thread, it is not a rule of the game, it is a 'rule' of business, which ant salesperson worth their salt would have known.
Are you saying they should have had sales training before the task?
Perhaps they should. They could certainly do with some.

So what happens when the teams do these shopping channel tasks, live on air they make some ridiculous offer to the buying public. Would Nick or Margaret step in to stop it? I am sure the shopping channel wouldn't be happy about it and SAS wouldn't be best pleased that his trust in those candidates was abused.

My guess is that the farm and SAS made some sort of compromise, with the buyers in the Ice Cream task. Not completely negating the sales the teams made, but restructuring it to allow the farm more leeway in selling their own product within London.

While I think we all agree, that the decisions made by the candidates are in general good business ones. It seems there are some of them that are just loose cannons, when it comes to other people's money. One example is shopping at a supermarket/cash and carry, for produce when SAS has already lined up wholesalers for them. While the teams are free to shop where they like and there is nothing in the rules to prevent it. It would make common sense and good business sense to get the most for your money, to maximise your profit.

Don't know. Like I said it's a TV show.
Who knows what's gone on behind the scenes and what they have been briefed about?
Besides, did anybody actually watch these shopping channel sets that Apprentice candidates have done?
Do you really think Alan Sugar is going to risk breaking the law?

Sir Alan told Lucinda's team that they had broken a rule.
But people are posting to say that they may have done something which could get them sued as they may be legally breaking the law.
Very unlikely, as I doubt very much that Alan Sugar would allow that to happen. It's going to be very controlled.

Now somebody is talking about Lucinda's team breaking some unwritten rule of business.
So Alan Sugar was going to penalise them for breaking an unwritten rule that anybody in business should know about?
I doubt very much that he would penalise them for a vague rule of business etiquette which wasn't declared to them in the game itself.

But, if that's the case, then Alan Sugar really would be making it up as he went along and firing people based on some random 'rules' that are just unwritten rules of business he can make up on the spot if he feels like it.

Maybe next time he might dock a team points because Lucinda isn't dressed in suitable enough business attire.
He can just pull stuff like this up out of a hat if people are saying that the rules aren't necessarily real rules as part of the TV game, and instead are just idealogical business rules that anybody in business should know about.
That's what people were saying earlier on in the thread. He can make up all sorts of rules up to suit the situation.

I've seen a few posts speak about contestants potentially breaking the law and getting sued or something. But I doubt this very much and believe that there is a lot more control over the show than some may think, and a lot more preparation has gone into this than just what we see in the edits. Alan Sugar simply isn't going to be stupid enough to blindly put contestants like this into a situation where he can find himself getting sued.
It just simply isn't going to happen.

Some contestants may come across like loose cannons as you say, but I doubt very much that they are a risk to Alan Sugar as mostly the artifice of television is there just to make it all appear like they're creating real businesses and business deals as they would in the real world.

For example, their task was to go and develop some new Ice cream flavours....etc.
Whaaat?....Develop Ice Cream flavours?????
What on earth are these people going to know about developing ice cream flavours?
And the way in which it's just so casually presented to us as it slips off his tongue makes it appear as though it's all so normal and so real.

Does anybody really believe that these reality show contestants know the slightest thing about developing ice cream flavours, and are going to instantly go ahead and just 'do it'?
I would have thought by now that it's just so obvious that many elements of the show such as this are set up and there are a lot of other people there behind the scenes doing things for them and setting things up together to create the illusion of reality. To the point where many times what we're watching are just contrived scenes played out, edited, and the end product which we are watching is the artiface of television weaving it's magic onto us.

There's just no way that these contestants are going to know what the hell to do with some of these tasks. They're not just going to wake up one morning and simply go ahead and do it. And it's very unlikely in some cases where they're going to end up meeting the same clients with cameras all set up and ready there.

For example...take the 'exclusivity' scene...they haven't just made that deal as we saw it. It's obviously prepared and set up, lit correctly, whatever.
It's not like the production team set up cameras in local businesses hoping that on the off chance Apprentice candidates might turn up and make a business deal, so luckily there's a camera already there waiting for them.
Honestly if you think about some of these scenes...they simply can't happen. They must be prepared.

Watch all of these deals from most shows where Apprentice candidates are seen walking into an office or a boardroom to make a deal, and you realise that it couldn't possibly happen like that at all unless the BBC have strategically set up cameras in all the local businesses in town hoping to strike lucky.
I'm not necessarily saying that nobody has made a deal of some kind at all, but just that if a deal has been made it's been made off camera and what we are watching are recreations of the deal acted out again for the benefit of the camera...OR...these businesses have already been asked to take part in the show and permission has already been given for the BBC to set up these scenes and have these reality contestants come in and do a deal scene that has already been arranged for them.

Watch most 'business deals' in this show and you can see that apparently the Apprentice candidates are meeting the clients for the first time.......but obviously the cameras are more often than not already there in the building filming them.
There's even been scenes before where a camera is already filming in a room and we see the Apprentice candidates enter a room to meet somebody for the 'first' time, but we see it from the viewpoint seen from inside of the room as they enter.
How can scenes such as that be possible by any stretch of the imagination unless they have been prearranged?

There's just so many examples such as this that it's absolutely impossible for the show to be real.

So my point is that this 'exclusivity' deal thing was no legal risk at all to Alan Sugar, nobody had a chance of getting sued whatsoever, and that what we saw was quite probably a recreated scene of a deal that was probably made off camera earlier (and that's even if it was a real deal at all). So anybody in the production team could step in at any moment if something was going wrong which may have been legally dubious, so they can shoot the scene again, which would be the one which we'd eventually get to see in the edit.

I can understand where some people are coming from, and I can accept the logic of the points which they're making....which I would agree with if this wasn't a reality TV gameshow.
I'm just very, very surprised that quite a few people appear to be talking about it all as though it's all real, and talking about things like they could really get sued and end up in court by this farmer for what is probably a pretend product which is likely only ever going to exist just for this TV show.

I think that this show will have been worked on so thoroughly with all legal angles covered, that there isn't a cat in hell's chance of Alan Sugar putting complete novices into situations where it would put him and his company at a legal risk of any kind.

You make a lot of good and valid points, probably too many to respond to in full. I will say that yes some of the show maybe staged, but the fact that to stage something like a business deal is unrealistic to the BBC time frame. They have a limited time to film each section of the task, so to have a mobile studio running around after the teams isn't practical.

Its more likely that they have 2 - 3 cameramen with stedi-cam systems shooting each team. Then we have several producers, soundmen and lighting guys; all of which have to fit into sometimes small premises the teams visit. You could see from the photo shoot task, that Simon was being followed by a cameraman when he lost it half way through.

What seems to be in question is whether the exclusive deal was a breach of rules, baring in mind there are very few rules. Or if it broke the law in committing in some respect fraud or the very least breach of contract. It would all depend on whether the deals made are legally binding contracts, or as you say, they are potential deals staged to look like real deals. Without this information it is hard to determine the legality of it, though my gut feeling is that SAS wouldn't allow his name to be associated with something like Bluewater (photo shoot task), farms (ice cream task) or various markets (1st week task); without him trying to get the best deals for these places.

And the desk-tidy thing they designed for Staples is still on the Staples website here.

I expect the channel themselves would. They stepped in when Kristina swore on air. In series 2 when Syed told a customer that a car would appreciate in value, the manager stepped in there, too.

That was priceless.

But that's not what happened here. It really was a serious issue.


It was series 2, and she was a lawyer. Sir Alan said he didn't need any more lawyers as he fired her. However, I think you are getting the TV thing all wrong. When he said that, it was just a quip, a sound-bite to use in the flashbacks, and not the real reason she was fired.

She was fired for three reasons. The first is that she was held responsible for failing to acquire a car tyre, which was the mistake that lost the team the task. There is debate about whether she was, in fact, personally responsible or whether Jo and Alexa were equally liable, but Jo said she was and Sir Alan believed her.

The second reason is that Karen didn't show much fire in the boardroom, apparently because she believed she'd done nothing wrong. She was complacent. The third reason is that Alexa did show fire. Alexa said, "Don't fire me, make me project leader instead so I can show what I can do!" and he did. This led to the infamous 100 chickens for 100 pizzas fiasco and she was duly fired then. I think Karen was a better candidate than Alexa and if she had fought as hard in the boardroom she'd have stayed. But she didn't so she was fired, and quite right too.


I did spot that, and it goes against your case that he said it, had the chance to fire Lucinda, but didn't.

I don't know if you watch the Unseen footage on the BBC site, but there are examples there of Lucinda being praised by Margaret and Lindi being criticised. Lindi was pretty rubbish, really. Twice allowing exclusivity to be given away was a serious mistake, but she wasn't just fired for that. The team lost on sales, and Lindi was in charge of sales, and Lindi reckoned she was great at sales but performed very poorly. Sir Alan had enough reason to fire her even without the exclusivity.

It was made clear that they were using equipment and expertise of the farms, who had existing ice-cream businesses and who would be fulfilling the order.


Of course there's some preamble in which the buyer was asked for permission to film and signed a model release form, and then some preparation so they could film the candidates entering the shop, or whatever. And this takes time and is partly why the sales figures end up so low. But we're only talking half an hour or so.

It's a huge jump from that to saying the deal was negotiated in advance off-camera and then recreated in front of the camera. What would be the point of that? Why go through it twice? Why rely on acting when you can capture the original moment?

Can you see it is possible to set up the cameras in advance, without making the deal in advance?


You seem to think the show is faked to a ridiculous degree. That the candidates are just actors following a script.

Obviously some things are set up in advance, such as the use of the farmers' ice-cream facility, or the wholesalers they were supposed to buy food from in the pub-grub task.

Others are set up by the candidates themselves. That's the point: one team set up 6 appointments, and the other 3. If you think that was handed to them by the production crew, I have to wonder why you even bother watching because it's the core of the show.

Part of arranging those appointments was getting permission to film. Indeed, getting permission is hard, and is probably why Lindi accepted the low-quality ice-cream maker leads, because at least they agreed to be filmed. (It's also the reason Karen failed to get the tyre in the series two case mentioned above. Loads of garages had the tyre, but none would agree to be filmed.) Having got permission, the camera crew could go in and set up relatively quickly, with no need for things to be planned weeks in advance. Maybe you are underestimating how good a modern production crew can be at making TV.


Generally they make it clear whether the product is real or not. The laundry business was just a one-off, for example. The ice-cream was unusually because it was a real business, and they made a big thing of that.

See previous messages for how it is handled when a candidate tries to do something illegal. There was one case where a candidate (I think it was Syed again) seems to suggest VAT fraud. When they go too far, they are stopped, but the footage is generally kept and broadcast because it is fantastic TV. We love to see them making mistakes like that.

It doesn't always make the edit, of course. There's a bit of Unseen footage on the BBC site where Lindi offers the ice-cream at below cost price. Jennifer stops her. You seem to be suggesting that that didn't happened and was faked up for the website.

So many conspiricies, so little time.

Even a shot of a car going past is 'staged', in that it has to stop whilst the crew get out of the car behind, and set up at the side of the road. But it is 'as real', so it doesn't matter.

They have to get people to sign release forms before they can be filmed, which is why they know to set up in their offices. That doesn't mean it isn't the actual deal being filmed though; it's just how television is made.

I'm sure Sir Alan didn't tell them about exclusivity, in the same way he didn't tell them not to have a piss in the corner of peoples' offices. It's just something you should know as a competent business person. Especially if you are the Best Salesperson in Europe.

The Apprentice is a TV programme, and the reason it's always nominated for BAFTAs is becase it's so well made. If it was all faked, do you not think someone would have sold the story to the papers by now?

Why not stop trying to pick holes in it, and just enjoy it for what it is: great television.

This post is mostly rubbish.

Firstly, Sugar is in NO danger of being sued by anyone with regard to the actions of the apprentices.

Can you think why? ........ try harder........ nope.. well I will tell you then.

He isn't employing them, he has nothing to do with their actions, the PRODUCTION company ( which may be the BBC ) employs him!!!!!! If anyone would be sued it would be the production company or the BBC.

And what is more the candidates did NOTHING illegal!!!! Sugar was simply saying what they did was stupid from a business point of view and he did NOT say they had broken any rules other than ones of common sense and sensible business practice! So you got that wrong as well!

As to how real this all is, you also got most of that wrong. I don't recall any specific scenes where they are supposed to be recording a first meeting with people that are not associated with the tasks. Some companies such as the shopping channel people, the calendar people etc are obviously part of a pre-prepared schedule of filming.

Where there has been spontaneous activity by the candidates I don't recall seeing any scenes which indicate some skulduggery. Your points about lighting etc simply are not valid, have you not seen programmes which follow police etc around which have much the same quality? And they are definitely not staged.

As for the ice cream thing, did you not see the ice cream technicians ( and farm and business owner ) who ran the ice cream production business dashing around offering advice etc? All the apprentices did was to have ideas as to what flavours to include and the technicians then informed what was and was not possible and what had to be done to produce the products they suggested. You don't seem to be appreciating what can be done with the advice available or the structure of the tasks.

If you look on this site you will see a link to a frank diary of Adam from last years series and he made no mention of the sort of activity by the production company you claim, instead he documents things that are much more credible such as his team losing an hour because the production staff wanted a lunch break!

The footage that is implied to be reality footage with the public all looks genuine to me. I suspect you can't tell the difference between the obviously pre-prepared parts of the tasks and the parts which are spontaneous.

Permission for filming has to be obtained of course, but have you not noticed that the filming always seems to begin half way through some interaction of apprentices and shop owners etc? I suspect the apprentices are allowed to enter venues and once they express interest the camera crews follow in and obtain permission.

I think you are some sort of conspiracy theorist!

I'd agree with Alan that the exclusivity deal was a dismissbale offence becuase it is suicide for a business to do that without a business plan but... I don't normally watch TA and after I saw the snippet about exclusivity deals I reaffirmed my intention not to watch again - the woman who made the exclusivity deal should definitely have gone the poor girl who got sacked seemed rather lovely to me but then I wouldn't build a business empire full of aggressively competitive bullsh*tters - and of course neither would I make any money!

Excuse me?
One,...it's a TV show. Of course it's a conspiracy. Every single TV show is. TV shows don't show all their decision making ideas and plans. They think about what elements in a TV show will have the required emotional effect on the viewer. It's not 'The Making of The Apprentice' where they show all the little details that went into making executing every single idea, it's just 'The Apprentice' OBVIOUSLY it's a conspiracy. How can a TV programme be anything but. You'd have to be very naive to think otherwise.
But I can see that you are trying to spin what I'm saying into a negative context. People who use the term 'conspiracy' in the what that you did always do.

Two,...It's probably one of my top 3 favourite programmes on TV at the moment. I already think it's great television. I thoroughly enjoy it every week.
I see that you also want to spin my opinions into a negative context by making out that I'm 'picking holes in it'. All I'm doing is using my opinions in order to contribute to the issues brought up in this very thread.
Everybody 'picks holes' in the show if you want to put it like that. Every single thread where people assess and judge what they have just seen.

I can always see this hostility crop up when somebody gets angry at something shattering their illusion of reality.
Sorry,..but it's not real, it's a TV show. Don't blame me, it's just the way it is.

I wasn't slagging the show off, I was just being realistic when we are all discussing a particular event on the show. I absolutely love this show.
All I was doing was reminding people that it is just a TV show and what we perceive as being real isn't necessarily so. In this case the prospect of a couple of contestants doing something unlawful which would potentially end up in lawsuits and court appearances.

It's EVERY TIME a TV show is discussed regarding the mechanics of how it's made, somebody always gets all annoyed and angry at starts bleating on about 'conspiracy theorists' or something like that. Or 'if you don't like it don't watch'.
If that's how you feel then maybe you shouldn't take the show so seriously that you're going to get angry when somebody undermines this little illusion of reality you have about a TV show.

Most people here are pretty laid back and mostly accept the show as not being as real as it is presented. Plenty of conspiracies have been revealed which have turned them from being conspiracy theory into conspiracy fact.
But most people I see on here accept it and actually laugh at some of the things which appear to be contrived setups, yet can still manage to enjoy the programme without having a go at each other calling each other conspiracy theorists.
That's actually one of the things I love about this forum, that it's not like a Big Brother or some other reality show forum, where people get angry if somebody questions the reality of a situation on the show and start going on about conspiracy theories. People simply don't get angry at that sort of thing on here, not with each other anyway.

In fact when somebody on here suggests that something was maybe a bit bent people are probably more likely to say "Yeah, probably" in a casual way and yet we are all still able to enjoy the show.

Mind you with ever improving impressive ratings I can see a possibility of that changing.
At the moment it's not considered heresy to question the realism or the reality of it all as most people accept that it's probably a bit bent to some extent or other.

Oh FFS
Christ give me strength.

Read my post again and you'd see that was exactly what I was saying....that Alan Sugar is in NO danger of getting sued.

That was my entire point. How could you possibly be thinking I was saying anything different to that?

I honestly can't believe that you've managed to distort my post to such a extent that you are actually arguing against me and saying I got points wrong by actually countering my points with the exact same points

That's just absolute madness. It makes no sense whatsoever.
You've so obviously not even bothered to read my post.
It's the clearest case I think I can remember of somebody getting the wrong end of the stick and posting in haste.
It's not so much that I got things 'wrong', it's more the case that you've read what you've wanted to read and ended up reading it wrong.



Deary deary me.
Oh no, I'm a conspiracy theorist. Hold the front page.
I suggested that the show may be just edited for entertainment purposes and that it may not be some investigative business documentary realistically depicting a serious search for a new business genius to be employed as an important figure in Alan Sugar's business.
This is terrible news, what have I exposed?

I can't believe that in the previous post I was just saying how laid back and relaxed people are on here, and here you are being very rude and patronising, but doing so because you completely misunderstood my post in the first place and are speaking at crossed purposes on the main points in your post.

I can speak with about some of the reality aspects which you claim to have proof of because you've seen them for yourself and they look fine to you (Great evidence there), and what Adam apparently says in a diary (despite evidence on this site which cites a very specific incident which was very creatively edited in order to manipulate a perception according to Adam)....but not right now as it will take this thread off topic and you appear to be quite hostile and not receptive to discussion right now. Maybe in a different thread when you're in a better mood.

I can see that you love the show, but there's no need to get angry with me. I like the show too.

Yes, but that was what was said in the earlier part of the thread,...that Alan Sugar can just make up any old arbitary rules up on the spot if it suits him.
If he wants rid of somebody or wants to keep somebody he can turn a positive into a negative, or vice versa.
For example if Sara's team lost the other week he could have made up some rule where it was against his own business ethics to sell the menu tickets to people for a fiver for them to get reimbursed if they turn up for the appointment.
If they won, it's a great idea. If they lost it can be made to look as though it isn't the way he does business and liken it to asking for tips (Which is bad according to Sir Alan). There's just no way you're going to know where you stand with him if he has his own unwritten code of ethics that aren't written down as guidelines for tasks.

Yes, the thing about the business deal situations. As I said if you keep your eyes peeled, there are particular scenes where you notice that the only way they could have done it is by prior arrangement. Permission to bring cameras in, to film, to sign things, to set it up.
There are scenes which on the surface appear as though the candidates are making a cold call and have just walked into a premises as though they are meeting some business rep for the very first time.
The cameras are often already there waiting with the business person as we see the Apprentice candidates enter the room. So it's not as though the cameras are going in there for the first time with the candidates.

Yes, they have hand held shots too, but they also have scenes that are obviously set up with multiple camera angles.

As I said before, I won't claim that the business deals are necessarily fake. There may be some sort of deal made, it may be made beforehand and they refilm it to get it right, or it's all set up and they make the deal as we see it, but what I'm saying is that often the deal comes across as an artiface of television, and that maybe we shouldn't accept everything we see as absolutely real and take things with a pinch of salt.

Some of these businesses of the kind which the candidates themselves set up I'm not sure about how real they are, for a start they'd need extra staff to run them and that would possibly mean that something like that farm would be obliged to become an employer for the sake of one task for a TV show...that's a big ask. In other shows like 'Dragon's Den' we see follow up shows to show what happened next. But I get the feeling that at least with some of these businesses on 'The Apprentice' that they are just to portray a representation of a business, they make the deal, sell some products, then the 'business' is possibly closed down as soon as the task is over.
I'm not saying that's how it is, I'm just saying we don't know so it may well be like that.

So this ice cream thing, I'm not sure if that would be a real business that would continue after all the task filming has finished.

Anyway, in terms of punishing the candidates for the exclusivity thing, lets say it was real, it was a product that didn't even exist before, the candidates created a brand new product, they got an exclusivity deal...hey, the farm have got a deal with a brand new product which didn't even exist before. So what do they lose? It's a win win situation isn't it?
What does the farm lose? As it was a product which didn't even exist before.
Does it lose potential sales due to the exclusivity clause?
But again, it was a product that the farm didn't even produce before. It came from nothing so anything it makes is a bonus.
Maybe the exclusivity deal was ideal for the farm because maybe they had their hands full before this new product got invented by a TV show. Would it be able to even cope with producing for a big chain of pubs or cinemas? Maybe it has enough of a workload as it is, otherwise they'd already be making avocado or toffee ice creams before anyway.

So many questions, we don't really know the ins and outs of what goes on behind the scenes. We can only judge something on the show as being good or bad based on what we get to see.
I just doubt very much that the show would get into any legal problems as there would be so much control over what goes on.
When it comes to the exclusivity in regards to the game and the task in question, like some have said it just seemed like such an arbitary rule and Sugar was just making a rule up to suit him at the time.
Normally he docks teams sales and profits in a task if they break any rules regarding the actual rules set in the game. Here he said he would have cancelled a load of sales due to them being bound by a rule which he just pulled out of a hat.
Yes, you could say it was a bad decision. I can go with that. But it's when Sir Alan made out that he would have cancelled a load of sales over this if they had won which made me think that he was making it all up just to create a dramatic scenario for the sake of television in the boardroom.
Because I believe that both teams did well, and if Lucinda's team had won I don't think Alan Sugar would have cared a jot about the exclusivity thing.

It makes me wonder that even in every single task, the winning team may well make loads of bad calls throughout the day, which only come to light and become an issue if they actually lose.
If they win they'd probably get a pat on the back for initiative.

I remember somebody, Sayed I think, getting a slap on the wrist for doing something similar in a previous series. But I think his team won so it didn't become that big a deal.
There's probably several examples of salespeople on winning teams using dodgy practices but getting away with it because they won the task.

I don't think you have read the post you are replying to properly.

To Alrightmate and Hotelier

You seem to think I have not understood alrightmate's post because I reiterated Alrightmate's statement that Sugar would not be sued.

Consider the following statements by Alrightmate




Alrightmate seems to think that Sugar would have to take measures to avoid the risk of being sued as a result of the actions of the apprentices. Alrightmate then uses this premise to justify claiming that much of the programme is therefore fixed because to ensure no illegal acts were committed all actions by the apprentices would have to be sanctioned by Sugar's monitors prior being enacted.

This is is ridiculous and completely misunderstands the structure of the relationship between the programme makers, Sugar and the apprentices.

The production company ( possibly the BBC) that makes the programme EMPLOYS Sugar to do his pieces to camera and they also employ the apprentices. They are responsible ( in as much as any employer is responsible ) for any actions by the apprentices NOT Sugar. Sugar is even contracted to say "You're fired" on the programme although he apparently would like to say other things. Presumably Sugar is also obliged to offer employment to the winning candidate.

Sugar CANNOT be sued, not because he sanctions the actions of the apprentices prior to them doing something, he can't be sued because he is not in the slightest bit liable for their actions. You both don't seem to appreciate how television production works and you have both misunderstood the comments in my post as to why I rejected the points in Alrightmate's post.

Vivid...

All I'm saying is that people should maybe take it with a pinch of salt, not everything is as real and as serious as it may appear, and that nobody is going to end up getting sued over anything.

All it's about here was the seriousness of that exclusivity deal.
I don't think it really was.
I concur with other posters that it was just a piece of theatre set up for the boardroom for dramatic television as Sir Alan needed something to be angry about in the boardroom when it came to the firing stage of the game. I doubt very much that he would have cancelled their sales as usually candidates have been merely ticked off in the past for mistakes like that.

Forget the Apprentice, its a TV show as you say. Lets put this completely in the hands of Amstrad/SAS company for a moment.

SAS gets two of his best sales teams to go out and sell his own products; he tells them to get the best deals they can and the one that gets the best deals will be have dinner with him at the Ritz. (Basic premise and rules of the Apprentice, right?)

They come back, tell him they got all these great deals. Then announce that, they have this great exclusive deal as well with Joe's Electrical shop, who have 4 stores in the London area. Deals done and signed, do you honestly think SAS will be happy as larry about selling his own products to only 4 stores in the London area?

It doesn't take a genius to work out that somewhere along the line the deals they have made have all be negated by this one exclusive deal. They would either have to go back to Joe's Electrical and tell them they can't have the exclusivity or cancel the other deals to make Joe's Electrical the sole supplier in the whole of the UK. Some great deal that would be for SAS.

To say SAS, picked on this one thing; just because he needed an excuse it ridiculous. He could just have easily fired Jennifer for the same thing, so why didn't he? He could have fired both Jennifer and Lindi, but he didn't, why?

I think in part Lindi was fired as she was pretty useless, had some of the stupidest ideas and attitudes I've ever heard. Plus she was a flunky, not a leader. The way she copied Jennifer's idea was perhaps an indication to SAS that she wasn't what he was looking for, whereas Jennifer could potentially be.

Good post. There will always be people who believe that reality TV is "all staged" with "stooges" etc etc, failing to realise that such staging would involve infinitely more hassle and expense for the production company. You could hire writers and actors to invent this stuff, but the results would be sh1t.

The phrase "you couldn't make it up" rings true because fact (aka reality), given canny enough casting, context and, yes, editing, is infinitely more entertaining and dramatic than fiction.

Don't think reality TV is "all staged", but it is evident that they (i.e. reality tv generically) "replay" some scenes based on actual events and feelings.

Take a look at 'Shipwrecked', for instance: "Jenny has noticed Joe appearing preoccupied, and has met him on the distant beach to ask him about it"; and, hey presto! The camera just happens to be there...