I've always liked her. She's not at all devious and I don't know why people say she is. She doesn't try to undermine anyone, she tries to help them by giving her advice - which is usually right.

She's good at spotting problems and fixing them, as she did on the Fish task and the Morocco task. The problem is that the other candidates have such big egos they don't like to listen to her. Lucinda just showed what happens when you do - you win. Similarly if she is team leader herself she wins - twice now. Had Sara listened about the pub theme they might have got lunch served. Had Kevin listened to her about who should do the pitch, they might have won the Cards task. Had Jennifer listened to her about planning, they might have won the Morocco task.

She's shown she can take on board criticism and advice when it's valid. Not just from Sir Alan, either. When she heard Raef's argument for the high-end dresses, she changed her mind and agreed with him. She has great tenacity, as shown by winning the late sale on the Ice Cream task, and the late sales on the Wedding task; she keeps her energy going to the end of the day.

She's not perfect, but she's by far the strongest candidate there.

I agree that she is not devious and that she is a strong candidate. However, I think like the rest of the candidates she made a few mistakes:

1- When Simon was PM, I don't remember her gaving Simon any sound advice on that task. She was disruptive.

2- When she was a team leader for the ice cream task she didn't perform well as a PM at the first day. She should have planned for the appointments and for the tasting session but she didn't.

3- Like others, in the greeting card task she didn't listen to Sara's ideas (in fact Sara said Claire was the main opponent to her ideas in her exit interview), and she didn't recognise the major flaw in their idea. There was no way they could have won the task.

4- Claire didn't advice Jennifer to plan in the Morocco task. In fact Jenny C did but no one in the team supported her. She also made a few mistakes interrupting Alex in his negotiations.

5- In the wedding task, if both teams went for Ian Stuart, he would have chosen Michael over her. I don't think he liked the way she asked the questions.

However, there is no denial that she is strong in terms of her business accumen. But that didn't help Tre last year.

Over the last few weeks i decided that i do quite like her! I would hate to work with her, but as an indivual player she is very talented!

Yes, like I said, she's not perfect.


She gave him lots, but that's probably what you mean by "disruptive". For example, she tried to stop him lashing out at Alex in the morning, saying it wasn't the time or the place.

Later she tried to explain how his system for identifying photos wasn't working. She recommended a new system, which he ignored. He continued using the old system. Eventually Claire goes back to him physically and he seems surprised to discover there's a problem; she has to remind him that she and Alex had told him about it on the phone. Then Claire ends up having to ferry information back and forth between the studio and production. This system also has problems, but they aren't apparent at Claire's end. Simon knows, but apparently he doesn't tell anyone else. By this time he's more or less given up. Eventually it seems like Claire takes over the leadership role; she tells Simon to just concentrate on the photography. They have a last push for sales and it seems to be their best period, but there's not enough time left to win.


Like I said, she's not perfect. She had problems sourcing the ingredients and that took up the time needed for other stuff. Despite that, she did get 2 appointments, which was only 1 less than the other team if we discount the 3 poor leads who were never going to buy. She (or her team - it's hard to tell) continued to make appointments through the second day, and it was an appointment booked in the afternoon that led to the winning sale in the evening.


Sara's ideas were not viable. They weren't original enough. I'm sorry, but the ideas we saw should have been ignored.

They lost largely because of Kevin's poor pitches. However, he got better with practice and with the last pitch he won £6,000. This suggests the idea was viable. If they'd got £6,000 from the other two they'd only have lost by 20%. It's possible that if he'd followed Claire's advice and got someone who was actually good it pitching to do it, such as Jenny (or even Claire herself), they'd have made that 20% and won.


Sorry, yes, I misremembered Claire for Jenny C. Claire did other stuff, though - she was the one who saved them a fine on the clock by suggesting they double-check the list. When she interrupted Alex's negotiation she was following a script suggested by Jennifer. Alex was a lousy negotiator anyway. (And there's a bit of unseen footage in which Alex jumps into Jennifer's negotiation; Claire wasn't the only one doing that.)


Agreed. She can be quite abrasive personally. Even Sir Alan had to send her back to the house.

Although I accept some of your arguments I want to point out the followings:

1- I don't think Claire was that useful in the photography task. She reminded me of Tre last year in his first task with Jadine. Even if Claire was giving useful advice, she treated her PM with disrespect as poined out in the boardroom. Their problem could have been solved by deleting the unwanted images immediately from the CD before printing them. I don't know why no body pointed that out to Simon.

2- I don't know how Sara's idea's were "not viable" if they were rejected as soon as she said them. No one took Sara's ideas seriously. They all just followed Jenny's ideas. Compare for example with the other team, they listened to Michael's idea of cosmetic surgery cards, discussed aliens, national joke day, etc !!! You have to listen to many bad ideas to get one good idea.

3- There is no way they could have won the greeting cards task because the idea was fundamentally flawed. At least one of them (Claire included) should have realised that or at least point out that there is a contradiction in terms. To be honest, I think Tesco was just trying to reflect the image of an environmentally friendly company by buying the cards.

4- Claire should not have interrupted Alex's negotiation especially after they all agreed to leave Alex to negotiate for the spread. To be honest I rate Claire while I don't rate Alex. I don't think he could have got a better price as I didn't see any negotiation skills from him. However, Claire's mistake saved Alex from being in the final 3 in the boardroom. I think the Morroco task was Claire's worst task so far.

I agree her personality was abrasive and she deserved the telling off from Sir Alan. That said, my feeling is that Simon was a lousy leader and didn't deserve a lot of respect. I'd rather have someone like Claire, who tells it like it is albeit without much tact or "respect", than someone like Michael who oozes insincere charm.


I don't think it would have been enough. They weren't just printing pictures onto paper, but onto mugs, plates, jigsaws etc. They needed to track which picture went onto what medium, with the pictures that weren't printed at all being a subset of that.

However, it does seem like there should have been something on the camera that would identify the pictures on the PC, if only the timestamp. Failing that, they could have streamlined the options they offered and, eg, only sold traditional prints and not the mugs etc. That plus your deleting unwanted images idea would have allowed them to make at least some money.

Apparently Claire didn't think of this, but neither did anyone else. Simon was leader and kept control of the camera, and was geographically distant from Claire, making it difficult for her to get to grips with the problem. (Like in the Morocco task where Jennifer kept control of the list.)


I just rewatched this. Jenny put forward several ideas, most of which were rejected in a similar manner to Sara's. Eg Jenny's graduation day idea was not so much rejected as ignored. Sara's put forward a non-British religious holiday idea, and said herself that they were already available. Given that they needed to create a new day, not to promote an existing one, that kinda ruled it out. Claire starts drilling deeper into the environmental idea but I think she'd have done that regardless of who came up with it. It seemed like the best idea on offer.

And that's it. Claire and Sara are separated and it's Jenny we see being unresponsive to Sara from then on.

To be honest I don't trust the edit. Obviously a lot happens that we don't see, and I suspect there is a chunk cut out from between Sara talking about her idea and Claire asking about Jenny's. We see do Sara mention a pets idea in the car, and presumably she had raised it during the meeting, but we don't know what Claire said about it and I don't want to condemn her for something we didn't see her do. (Nor do I especially trust Sara's view of what happened.)


Yes, that's what Jenny said to Sara in the car, and Sara mentions a list of 15 ideas. I think both teams had similar approaches. Certainly Sara gets to put forward her ideas and explain why she likes them. Ultimately Michael was the team leader; we don't see how he picks the idea, whether it was a vote or what.


I think we'll have to agree to differ on this one. It wasn't a great idea, but neither are any of the other ones we saw. We don't know if the flaws were discussed and that bit cut from the edit - I'm reluctant to judge on what we don't see the candidates do. I do think the quality of the pitch mattered.

Singles Day wasn't great either. Do you realise how close Kevin's team came to winning? Michael's team got 1,500 and 1,500 off their first two pitches. Had Michael not switched the date from 13th Feb, they might have got 1,500 off the last pitch too, for a total of 4,500. Kevin got 6,000 off his last pitch. So were it not for Michael's late moment of brilliance, the environmental card would have won.


I mostly agree; as a fan of Claire this was painful to watch.

I detested Claire in the first few eisodes but she has really grown on me now - she's not my fav but she is really good I think, and become a bit more likeable. She was awful to Simon, really nasty to him when he was PM and undermined other people but I think she has made few mistakes and probably deserves to get to the final two IMO.