I'm not necessarily expecting Nick and Margaret to report on every incident. I accept that they don't see everything. However they should see enough of the candidates to be able to provide a reasonable view of how they work and interact with the others. I suppose it is possible that the candidates behave very differently when N & M are watching them.

I suspect that ultimately SAS pretty well makes up his own mind and that N & M's input has minimal impact on those decisions.

I think he's more subtle than you give him credit for. For example, I expect he knew about Katie and Paul before Adam and Kristina told him about it, but he acted as if he didn't in order to get their account. When he asks a question, don't assume he doesn't already know the answer.

We've seen N&M taking notes, and eg Margaret referred to her notes when she quoted what Michael had said about the high-end dresses. I doubt the production team are that detailed or careful. So maybe this is just a question of degree? You say production reports but only on major events. I think they routinely recount what happened when N&M weren't there, but not in as much detail as N&M. Either way things can get missed, especially nuances.

[quote]Why do you think it is that so many lies go unquestioned?[./quote]Examples?

There are lies that have gone unquestioned when I am sure Sir Alan knew the truth. For example, when Syed was late back from a task and he blamed traffic, he got away with it despite it being blatantly untrue.

Why do you think Sir Alan would ignore a source of information? Part of his mystique is to appear all-knowing.

Nick and Margaret follow one team each. But teams often split into two for the bulk of a task. So Nick and Margaret only see roughly half what goes on.

Unless they are allowed to see what's recorded, they're going to miss a lot of what happens on any given task. In many ways this makes it a better programme, as it's less predictable.

However over a period of time, anyone who is a decent judge of character will be able to weed out the 'wrong 'uns'.

That's probably why the last 4 go through the interview process, as they are then all scrutinzed in the same way to the same degree.

Seems a perfectly acceptable process to me.