I am a Michael critic, but go to the BBC site and the Iplayer version of Apprentice programme 8 for the wedding task. Move the cursor to just after 17 minutes in and Michael and Sara give an unequivocal endorsement of the high end dresses to Helene over the phone. There was some suggestion by Margaret that Michael was not forceful in his recommendations and Helene claimed that she never received any strong endorsements from the other team. Utter bollocks. Helene clearly overrode the recommendation by Michael and Sara because she preferred to go with the dresses she had seen.

1) Helene's decision not to have the same people looking at all the dresses was catastrophic
2) Helene completely misrepresented Michael's position on the recommendations he made to her
3) Michael's claim to strongly endorse the high end dresses is utterly validated, and he made some very good points that the brand was well known and would draw customers etc.
4) Margaret may have witnessed some other discussion of Michael's but she in effect misrepresented Michael's attitude in her boardroom intervention in which she said Michael did not give strong endorsement to the high end dresses.
5) Helene clearly was determined to with the products she saw and was not going to consider the products seen by Michael and Sara.

You're right. I detest Michael but on this occasion, it was Helene that was at fault and who lied in the boardroom.

Both Helene and Michael have blatantly lied several times - I dislike them both equally, she is a hard faced harridan who hasn't done anything worthy of note to dateand he is a weasly brown nosing rat thing. They are both without any discernible morals or integrity and I'd be more than happy for Helene to go next and Michael the week after, or vice versa.

Yes I too would agree with the OP. I know what I saw and there's no way the failure was his fault - he did his best under the circumstances.

If you don't like him, fine, but why allow that to cloud any objectivity in terms of assessing what actually occurred on the task?

Certainly, she was foolish to listen to Michael and adopt his idea in this respect.

Helene is a liar full stop. She also said Lucinda never objected to being told to do the computer stuff in the photography task. Horrid woman.

Michael and Sara's sales techniques alone should have got them both fired ... there wasn't a hope in hell of them selling anything to anyone .. they were aggressive, intrusive and downright rude ... if it was just a case of poor product selection then how come Alex managed to shift those extremely tacky dresses without acting like a rotweiller?
I was embarrassed for the pair of them.

1- Alex shifted 3 dresses only and Helene, who said before that she is not good at sales, managed to sell 2.

2- If Alex could have sold the cakes, why didn't he step up to sell them instead of selling only 3 dresses in the space of 9 hours? Claire sold 3 (very expensive) dresses in the last 2 hours.

3- Sara said she was bringing people in and Alex closed the sales and when she found that Michael hasn't sold anything till 4 pm she went to help him.

4- It was a poor product selection, even if Michael managed to shift 3 cakes (same as Alex's rate), they would have lost.

I have to agree with Vivid, even though Michael is a complete plonker I also noticed that Michael was keen on the dresses.

The main problem with the task was that Helene's strategy is to have a failsafe/scapegoat if the team fails and this time she used Michael and Sara's poor sales technique. She did the same with Lucinda in the photography task; unfortunately it's working as she's still there.

However, a good PM would have either:

a) had a word with Sara at the time rather than wait until the BR;

b) moved her "star" salesmen over to the cakes.

Helene KNEW that the cakes wouldn't sell and wasn't going to risk Sara and Michael doing well if they swapped over to dresses.

The first thing Helene does as PM is look for a scapegoat. If we've all noticed it, you can be sure Siralan has noticed it (or had it brought to his attention) too - I'd say he's marked her card.

Here here. Couldnt have said it better myself!

Agreed. It was a bad idea that arguably lost the task. However, at least he had an idea that made some kind of sense, organising geographically to maximise the time they could spend with each vendor. Nobody else had anything at that point.

I dislike Michael and like Sara, but it does seem to me that he contributed more to the task than she did.

1. Helene admitted herself, when faced with the prospect of being fired, that Alex had brought in a large percentage of the income.

2. Because he was selling dresses. The other team (or should I say Raef?) hadn't sold a single dress until Claire stepped in. The last couple of hours are always the easiest to sell in because people have seen just about all there is to see and are ready to make a decision.

3. Sorry but looking at all the footage that is available (screened and "unseen") this is total b*ll*x. Sara went down in my estimation and I was glad that she was fired after she came out with that tripe. Besides, in business, it's the person who closes the sale who gets the commission and "introductory fees" only apply if something comes out of the introduction. If she doesn't know that, there really is very little hope for her. Why did she just leave it at introduction and not complete the sale herself? Simple. She knew herself she wasn't capable of it. She went out to help Michael. Did she help? No, she just compounded the situation. The blind leading the blind.

4. " even if Michael managed to shift 3 cakes (same as Alex's rate) " ................ Even if? The fact is he didn't.

Is that the end of your thinly disguised anti-Alex rant?


Fari enough but why, when it all went wrong, did he then act as if it was nothing to do with him?

1- Alex (with all his charm) sold 3 dresses (20% of Alpha's total) and Helene (with no experience at selling) sold 2 which means that the product was not hard to sell because it was cheap. However, it didn't bring in enough. This means that the task was lost on product selection and not on sales.

2- Get your facts right. Claire was responsible for selling the dresses since the beginning of the day. They sold in the last two hours 3 very expensive dresses. My point is Helene's dresses were cheap and were selling anyway: Why didn't she rearrange her team to focus on selling the most expensive product in order to win the task? She didn't because she knew the cakes were not going to sell and therefore she wanted a scapegoat in case they lost the task.

3- Sorry but this is not business.. this is the apprentice where the whole team should work together to win and survive being in the boardroom. No commission or individual rewards! At least Sara tried to help. What did Helene did as a PM? nothing.

4- "Even if" is needed here to determine who is mainly responsible for losing the task. SAS has used the same reasoning in the Marrakesh boardroom and saved Clare after she interrupted Alex's negotiations. He said that even if Claire didn't interrupt Alex's negotiations they would have lost the task because of the penalties. Using the same reasoning even if Michael was able to sell the cakes at the rate of their best salesman, they would have lost the task.

Conclusion: Helene was mainly responsible for losing the task because of wrong product selection. Michael's and Sara's awful sales techniques had very little to do with losing th task. Sir Alan saw more potential in Helene (and in Michael) than in Sara and that is why he fired Sara.

Helene can't stand Sara and Michael. That's probably why she had the two of them on the practically impossible task of cake selling (which I admit they were cr*p at) and Alex selling dresses. Helene would never have wanted to bring Alex back to the boardroom ahead of either Sara or Michael. She wanted one or other of them out and she got her wish. In fact she ver nearly hit the jackpot with both of them going.

It would have been interesting to see if Alex could have made a better job of cake selling and either Sara or Michael redeemed themselves on dresses but it was never going to happen. I don't think Helene has done anything of real note in any task so far but she is certainly not stupid. I think this has been mentioned before but she is reminding me a little of Michelle Dewberry. Little contribution of note throughout but sneaking under the radar. She's even replicated Michelle's dismal performance as team leader at a similar(ish) stage. However, Michelle seemed a lot more personable and she did manage to pull out the stops when she needed to. It will be interesting to see what happens with Helene but she's really not impressed me so far. I have no idea what Katie Hopkins has seen in her, it makes me wonder if she knows something we don't.

How hard is it to sell wedding dresses at a wedding exhibition?
I thought people come along, see a dress they like, try it on, then tootle round to see what else is on offer, then come back to secure the one they liked.
The dress sells itself, as far as I can see.
It's not like selling fridges to Eskimos, is it?

Why do you think so many weddings are planned so far in advance ... most women will spend months looking for THAT ideal dress, no way will they go out and buy it in a day. They usually go to more than 1 wedding exhibition just to get ideas that is why so many wedding exhibitions have sprang up over the years.

The cakes had no hope really as a lot of families sort that out together and many have someone in the family that loves sake making or decoration

Helene should have been fired for not trying remedial action by swapping them around during the task to try and improve sales.

Which really shows how badly Alex and Helene did. They chose mid-range priced dresses and yet still only managed to sell the same and less* than Claire.

Claire 3 very expensive dresses.
Alex 3 mid-range dresses.
Helene 2 mid-range dresses.

Yet SAS didn't hammer that point to them.

Well with the two selling like double glazing salesman then it would of made no differance.
Helene did not take the risk in going for the expensive dresses but at the end of the day both Henene & Alax sold some dresses while Michael & Sara failed to shift cake.

As for Sara who can talk as she was a trained lawer, could of stayed had she confronted Helene about her fears but nither her or Michael did until the boardroom.