Great panto it's turning out to be though now, isn't it? I think he knows what he's doing, he knows we'll hate Michael! Lee the footy hooligan, Raef charm personified etc, they all have such character.

I personally wouldn't employ any of them, they'd all do you over as soon as look at you (with, perhaps the exception of Lucinda and Raef to be fair).

Hi - I'm not stirring, honestly - but surely the whole purpose of the exercise was to see who would win the contract - if both teams have to sell seperate products then it's vital to get the best contract. (I think)

The maker of the high priced dresses said he would have gone with Helene's team (due to Michael!!!)and the maker of the panties went with Lucinda because she had the high-priced dresses. So if Helene had gone for the high-priced dresses, she would have had both products, and Lucinda neither.

I'm surprised at this thread.

I was surprised SAS didn't just fire Sara and Michael from the start. They were both Awful.

At the start Michael was the one who stated, North London is near Central so it would be easier for two to cover those areas and two to cover the rest. Obviously Helene didn't have to disagree, but in the short time they had, it may have seemed the right thing to do to get everything seen to.

Sara showed very little to no opinions of what she saw, other than the cakes which she really wanted. AND Got.

Sara and Michael were quick to claim they wanted the high-end dresses, which was a total lie. They laughed at them basically faking everything they said to the guy.

After the products were picked/thrown on them, Sara and Michael showed their ineptitude at sales. Alex was selling loads and from what Helene said, she sold a couple of dresses too.

Helene seemed to be the one bringing in the customers by wearing the dress, whilst Sara seemed intent on alienating and scaring even the most interested potential customers. As did Michael.

To say the task was just about Product choice is just rubbish basically. If that were true it would have been a one day task. Day 1 they failed badly, Michael and Sara failed to ask the questions to the high-end guy and didn't know he was award winning and in the wedding industry world famous. They laughed at the dresses and made no attempt to make them the choice of the group, Helene can't be blamed for not choosing the high-end dresses because Michael and Saras description made them sound ugly. Then the Cakes were forced up on (Which Sara and Michael wanted) them because Helene wasn't given the information correctly about the high end dresses.

The second day, on sales, its clear Sara and Michael failed. They basically just shouted at the customers and seemed to be thrusting contracts and paper work on anyone who sat down, giving them no room to breathe and trying to bully them into buying things.

Sara turned on the victim card again, despite sitting there ganging up on Helene with Michael, and SAS saw through it so she went. Fair decision really. Michael should have gone aswell though.

Helene may have gone for the high-priced dresses had michael not slagged them off as hideous or had Sara told her Michael was wrong.

She can't be blamed for a wrong decision when Michael and Sara didn't provide her with the correct information.

But if the same one or two people had seen all the dresses, they'd possibly have been better able to make a correct decision. That's how the other team did it, and Sir Alan made it plain he thought this a big error. And that was Helene's decision, made on Michael's prompting.

But it makes it so unsatisfactory when the viewer feels that the wrong person went!

What LadyHawke said.

He said he wanted to fire all three of them, so he'd be thinking more of which ones to keep in the programme (for entertainment value) than their suitability as candidates for the job.

Let's face it - if he followed his instincts as an employer, he'd probably be able to fire at least 10 of them after the first task, but that would be going against the demands of the show.

I don't think anyone would be pleased if the show had to be cut after two weeks because SAS had been over-zealous in the boardroom

But what great TV that would have been?

No, of course she can't when she was only team leader and it was principally her decision to allow only half her team to view each section of dresses. Michael, despite slagging certain dresses, did actually say that he thought that was the way to go (much as I hate to give the little slug credit). Helene was totally sold on the mid-range dresses she saw. Unless she'd seen the other dresses for herself, she was always going to go with that collection whatever her team told her. Let's face it, her assessment of her team prior to the task told us everything we needed to know about how she rated their judgement. She had nobody to blame for the failure of that task but herself in my view.

I think you were watching an entirely different show!

Helene was the team leader - why was she allowing Michael to dictate who went to see what in the first place? Because she didn't have any better ideas herself.

And it was Helene who was adament that the team chose the mid-priced dresses. The fact that Michael and Sara thought the dresses they saw were a tad peculiar was neither here nor there.

Yes Alex sold a few frocks, but he got the easier task. If the roles had been reversed, I doubt he'd have been able to shift the weeding cakes either.

And finally, I don't remember Sara ever playing the victim. She never once complained that she was being ganged up upon. She remained silent and dignified. It was the public and Sir Alan and some of her fellow candidates that suggested she was the victim of bullying.

Either of the three could have gone, but people on this forum seem to think this is big brother. Just cos Sara's an alright person, her selling was appauling. Sir Alan simply didn't want her working for him after seeing that, so he fired her. Michael should have gone too though.

I agree that the expensive dresses were the golden fleece, and the idea of flogging wedding cake at the NEC was like trying to sell Everton shirts to a Scouser....

Not sure I'd have picked up on these, though, any more than most ordinary people.

On the matter of the thread topic, I think SrAlan's getting a bit caught up in the "bright lights" thing of being on telly. To me, though, he always seems a bit uncomfortable when briefing the contestants (according to the script)...

Which programme were you watching?

Michael did slag the high end dresses off but NOT to the designer! He schmoozed the designer no end.

There's no evidence that Michael's 'north London/central London' statement was related to who in the team should see what. And even if it was, had the others - especially the PM - taken leave of their own common sense? Not only did Helene display amateur planning and team logistics skills, she also unilaterally made the choice of which dresses to go for. I disctinctly remember Michael expressing real concerns over that decision straight after she made it. He also knew the other ones were tacky. Yes, he ought to have made this very clear to her at that point but who's to say he didn't? We don't see everything. For that, the PM should have carried the can.

Siralan's no fool: he immediately identified team logistics and product choice as the reasons the task was lost. The fact he then used completely spurious criteria to fire someone else is why this thread exists, to answer your first query.

Your defence of Helene, whilst admirable, is totally non-factual.

Most of this post is utterly delusional.

Helene was the one responsible for deploying the teams, not Michael. He may have suggested they split up, she didn't have to agree. She had the responsibility to consider all aspects of the decision and consider it carefully. Michael simply made a suggestion.

What has Michael laughing at faking got to do with issues? You seem obsessed by specious irrelevancies. Clearly Michael's pitch worked because Ian Stewart wanted to select Michael to sell his product!! So a major thrust of your argument is utterly invalidated. Michael clearly did want the high end dresses and no doubt if he had seen the low end dresses he would have wanted them more.

Helene decided she wanted cheap and cheerful, and she seemed to be alone in that decision, and that was the most important decision that was made. Michael clearly didn't agree, but as he hadn't seen the other dresses he couldn't really argue.

The cakes were impossible to sell and therefore Michael and Sara became more forceful as sales evaded them. One can say that perhaps they were too pushy but perhaps their attitude was in response to the scale of the difficulties they faced. Alex would have fared no better and if Helene thought he could have she should have used Alex in their place to see if he could be more successful. She did nothing to resolve the problems that she perceived. Useless.

Your points don't connect with any sort of reality!

She was the team leader, but the team was splitting in two to see all the different possible suppliers. Michael possibly shouldn't have been allowed to dictate, but still it was his idea. Helene may not have thought it possible to visit all dresses places in one day, so Michaels idea was chosen. Just because she's the project manager doesn't mean she has to come up with ALL the plans.

Helene chose the mid-priced dresses after NOT being sold on the high-priced ones. Its all well and good Michael saying afterwards it could be a bad choice, probably just to cover himself come boardroom time to say he didn't agree. Fact is they went to see the high-priced ones and if Sara or Michael had thought them the most suitable then they should have pushed for it. They shouldn't have slagged them off at first, and then turned round and say "Actually no, lets go for the dresses we called hideous"

Michael and Sara wanted the cakes, therefore it was right they should sell them. Alex and Helene had been to visit the dress people, Sara and Michael had visited the cake people, plus Sara had "been on a cake course" so putting Alex on to cakes when he knew nothing about them would have been bad decision making from the PM no?

SAS even said afterwards that she was playing victim, she made a mess in the task, she's not been very good throughout, making her week as PM seem like a fluke, she had no conviction, no drive and just seemed like a total weak link in every task every week.

Just because the boards favourite was fired, doesn't mean SAS has lost his touch. Moreso, as with BB and IACGMOOH and other reality shows, the boards have lost their touch.

Since when was Sir Alan's word gospel? And since when did Sir Alan see more of what went on behind the scenes than we did? Furthermore, having watched the shows back, Sir Alan stated quite clearly during his interview with Jonathan Ross that he felt Sara had been ganged up on. And finally, it is not only the DS forum that felt Sara had been bullied, this opinion was echoed on the spin off show You're Fired and has been evident on other forums too.

And I think you'll find Sara performed quite well on previous tasks. Nick was singing her praises her following the Marrakesh task, for instance.

Er, that's hardly an objective argument on your part if he's explaining/justifying why he's just sacked someone...

so true.

Like others I don't agree with your post. I was amazed that Helene was not fired after her poor performance as a PM .. the worst since Ian in week 3. She made many mistakes:

1- Michael was not simply "allowed to dictate" on splitting the teams!! She actively adopted his suggestion implying it was sensible by saying "Definitely, I agree can we split the teams then" or something along this line.

2- Helene didn't see the dresses but her deciding factor was not the style but the price. Michael mentioned all the relevant points. He said the dresses were expensive and therefore would bring them higher profit. He told her that the dresses were not traditional and that they were unique. More importantly, he told her that Ian stuart is a famous designer and brides to be would be specifically asking for his dresses. She had all the relevant facts to decide and she went for the mid-range dresses based on price and price only. Helene should have realised that the task is for one day only and they have to sell 6 to 7 dresses for every dress the other team sells.

3- Helene knew that the cakes were hard to sell. She said it herself before selecting the products. Again she put Michael and Sara who are weaker than Alex in charge of selling cakes. The same happened in the photography task. She either has a real problem delegating correctly or she was intentionally playing games to blame her team members. To be honest I don't think that Alex would have been able to sell cakes either.

4- Alex was not an expert on wedding dresses either. So putting Sara on cakes because she "had a baking course" is not good enough as a reason.

The fact that SAS didn't fire her (He didn't even give her a hard time in the boardroom) after such a performance, makes me certain that she is going to make it to the interview stage.

Excellent post

SAS is so inconsistant in his reasons for firing people. I was just looking at the candidate profiles on the BBC website. I saw that both Sara and Michael are 25. Sir Alan used Michael's age as an excuse to keep him in the week before, saying that he was just a "young man" and that he could understand why he would be "enthusiastic" to cheat in the task just to win.

Sara, who is the same age, is not at all excused for her aggressive selling. SAS seemed to have forgotten that she is just as young as Michael is, he didn't seem to understand that she too might have been "enthusiastic" about getting a sale - but at least she didn't cheat or anything like Michael did. And she only started selling aggressively towards the end of the day, when she confessed that she was desperate, unlike Michael, who sold agressively for the whole day.

Also, SAS accused Sara of playing the victim. So I wonder why Michael didn't get fired for his puppy dog eyes and his self-pitying moaning. It's even more ridiculous because Sara was not really playing the victim. Yes, she was a bit desperate in the boardroom to save herself, but I fail to see how she was playing the victim. She didn't even play the victim when she was ganged up on a couple of weeks before, she was taken back by the scape-goating but unlike Michael would have done, she didn't complain and moan about it.

How could Sara or Michael tell if the high-priced dresses were the most suitable or not when they hadn't seen the others, any more than Helene herself could? Helene's decision to split the team had put the team in a position where no-one was able to make a truly informed choice.

Sir Alan may have said she was playing victim, but that doesn't make it true. She certainly complained in her pieces to camera that the others were not listening to her ideas, and then acted as if she'd never put them, but we saw for ourselves that this was exactly what was happening, so it was hardly playing victim.

I'd accept that her victory as PM was partly luck due to the dire performance of the men under Ian's abysmal leadership. However, this was true to a far greater extent with Helene, whose leadership on the photography task was jaw-droppingly awful. She was very, very lucky that the other team managed (and it was quite some feat) to do worse.

To say Sara has been weak throughout is, I think, not necessarily borne out by the evidence. The truth is that, in a lot of the early weeks, we just didn't see much of her. That could mean she's contributing very little, or could mean that she's quietly getting on with the work. Lacking evidence, you can pick your explanation according to your personal bias. There's fairly good evidence that she performed very strongly in Marrakesh (perhaps significantly, this was a task where she was away from the more malign characters among the contestants; perhaps, if she was underperforming, it was because others were demoralising her), so it's untrue to say she was the weak link in every task.

The same issue, of not being much shown in the early weeks, affects Helene too, and without evidence of how she was performing we will probably all use our own biased judgement on how she was performing. What is certainly true is that she has twice now been a dreadful PM.

I wouldn't be willing to judge her selling skills based on her failure to sell the cake. If they'd got the underwear, I think she might have sold that very successfully. But we'll never know.

If I were Sir Alan, I would be dreading which one of these (apparently intelligent individuals) he has to take on. Who is the best of a bad bunch? Though highly entertaining TV lol