Your logic is extraordinary. You will defend Lucinda's right to be incompetent, stupid, childish and negative and you seem to think other people are obliged to bear this human liability with good grace and work harder to compensate for her presence. Unbelievable.

You don't seem to understand that candidates are supposed to be making a positive contribution to tasks and bringing skills to the team. Your bias to Lucinda is so extreme you seem to think she has some divine right to burden others yet still retain some right to contend for the apprentice job. She is a completely vacuous, incompetent, detached-from-reality, self indulgent air head.

You cite the fact that the two guys didn't sell while she was busy being incompetent and ineffective on her own, what you fail to understand is that Lee didn't know ahead of time that he wouldn't sell anything. For all he knew the time taken to indulge in training Lucinda to be as competent as most people on the street could have been crucial to his success, as it happened the time wouldn't have been crucial but that is irrelevant.

I didn't agree with a lot of Lee's decisions, in particular I think they should have kept the cars together on Paternoster square where the two cars would have made more impact than one. Lee should have realised that Lucinda was so incompetent that sending her and the car away was effectively reducing his two car product line to one, which couldn't be good. Two cars on the square would have been more than twice as visually impressive as one and also any person drawn to the expensive Zonda could have been directed to the Ferrari if they found the Zonda charges too demanding. I also think that Lucinda would have been harmless to have wondering around and the more people wandering around the two cars together even if they are salesmen the better, at least Lucinda can do one thing: she can look like a person and occupy space, just.

Okay, your week in the sin bin hasn't improved your attitude - fair enough. But at least get your facts right.

The teams had to split up - they were not allowed to sell both cars in the same location, and they had to split into a group of two and a single person. That was said during the transmission of the programme.

Whether it was wise to send Lucinda off on her own is debatable - Alex didn't achieve a single sale during the day while he hung around with his Cockney boyfriend, so it would probably have been wiser to send him off on his own with the Aston, he might have at least achieved one sale. Whereas just hanging on to Lee's coat tails and not even attempting to sell any time in the Zonda through the day when, according to him, he is an exceptional salesman seems a little strange.

Also, it was Michael who was selling the Ferrari, Lucinda was given the task of selling the Aston Martin.

Exactly.

The unseen footage is very important.

It shows that

1) Lee had taken steps to educate the seemingly un-educatable Lucinda in the way of super cars.
2) Lucinda was forced to do some research into the cars by Lee, whereas viewers were unsure whether she had simply not bothered, and yet she STILL couldn't get any sort of grip on the information and most stunning of all, she couldn't get the names of the cars right despite being repeatedly corrected.

This woman is less competent at absorbing basic information than a school child. Her performance in that video is stunningly bad on so many levels. How can someone who is so intellectually stunted think that they are suitable for any sort of responsible position in any organisation?

All that, despite the fact that she is a risk manager and also the highest earner of all the five remaining candidates.

Interestingly, she does this not as a person with a position in any organisation. She's an independent contractor which actually makes a lot of sense.

On general note (and not directed to you, vidalia), any chance we could use this thread to talk about the merits or otherwise of Lucinda and not about the merits or otherwise of other posters?

What I can't understand is if Lucinda is a contracted business analyst making what is presumably a very good amount of money each year, why would she want to work for Sir Alan Sugar in Brentwood as his apprentice? She may have media aspirations or just want to try something different perhaps? I'm not sure but she intrigues me.

Ditto. Looking at her range of interests, I'm thinking she might be committed to a career change. It could be that either she's slotted this in for fun and/or is trying her hand at media as one of the alternative career options.

This analysis is naive, shallow and detached from reality and can only have been made by someone unfamiliar with the world of work and what constitutes mature responsible behaviour.

I find it extraordinary that you and others, such as the equally naive RLO , seem to find Lucinda's petty, often destructive, self-indulgent and immature behaviour as somehow preferable to Alex's mature and measured behaviour. You say Alex "doesn't intervene" well he does when he believes the intervention can make a difference or that it is vital to the success of the team. Alex, for instance, didn't vocalise his obvious disagreement with Kevin ( the little Welsh lad) when Kevin was expounding on the merits of the environmental card idea in a taxi. Alex chose the sensible option; say nothing and try and be as positive and constructive as possible given that decisions have been made. When Lucinda said "naughty, naughty" to him, he chose not to make an issue Lucinda's pettiness.

Alex does not fight pointless petty battles, and people unfamiliar with adult behaviour seem to have taken this as him being disingenuous, two-faced and scheming, no, no, no. Lucinda and others are intent on fighting petty ego-asserting, attention-seeking, boardroom-posturing battles while Alex is intent on getting on with the job. This means Alex is not such good telly and may not wear his heart on his sleeve, which won't impress the dim-witted viewer eager for drama and simplistic characters who can be easily understood, but for the adults watching he is clearly behaving like someone who has parted company from his teddy bear some years ago, is task orientated and has a few more layers to him beyond the emotionally-driven and inept Lucindas of this world.

Alex has never tried to sabotage a PM or his team, the only non-constructive thing he has done was to show reluctance to be deputy team leader on one occasion, Lucinda is prepared to engage in all manner of destructive, immature and self-indulgent behaviour at the expense of her team.

Some people seem to accept that Lucinda is appalling under pressure yet still offer her as competent apprentice material, as though behaviour under pressure is unimportant. It is about the most important talent one can have; to be competent and measured at all times. And when one manages others this skill is even more crucial.

Anyone who thinks Lucinda is remotely competent in a responsible role cannot have any understanding of work or what qualifies someone as competent and perhaps think that the Apprentice is some sort of care in the community programme in which some disadvantaged or incompetent souls are helped into management roles in Amstrad.

LOL thanks

What are you suggesting about Lucinda here?

How does someone, with according to you, so few skills end up with £100k a year?

She must be 'remotely competent' to achieve that.

Her field of work means if she was incompetent she'd have no work. Clearly the real world of work (and not the apprentice) disagrees with your 'analysis' of Lucinda. I'd take that above anything else.


Like your posts then.

---

I'd like to say, Lucinda came across very well in the You're Fired programme. Self critical when needed, but also constructive with how she perceived events.

Apparently we have an answer. She is reported to have said on TV this morning that she wants to be a TV presenter.

Nick called her shrewd. Nick was right.

Oh Gawd!

She was appalling in the YF programme, she never answered a question directly, instead she wandered off into some detached fairy world of self-indulgence and often Adrian Chiles had to move on because she was incapable of carrying a conversation. It was a wonderful demonstration of ineptness that reflected her performance in the tasks.

Yet you fail to do exactly that when quoting my post.

I was rushed.

I was suggesting some people seem to think the nicest or funniest or most entertaining apprentice should win, and seem to think the programme is some sort of care in the community programme for funny people who want to get into business.

I don't know enough about Lucinda's personal circumstances to judge her business activities, and I don't know enough about business analysts to judge how competent she has to be. I do know that some people are vastly overpaid and she is clearly one of them.

ALL of the evidence demonstrated on the apprentice has demonstrated her stupidity, her ignorance, her inflexibility, her childishness, her self-absorption, her lack of social skills, her lack of focus, her lack of prioritising, her lack of IT skills, her lack of managerial skills, her lack of drive, her lack of taking responsibility.......... it goes on and on.

Vivid - you seem to have a particularly hatred of Lucinda. Fair enough you may not like her as a person (from what you've seen), you may think she was not right to be the Apprentice (from what you've seen), etc etc, but I'm struggling to understand what she has done to you to cause you to throw so many names at her (such as "childish"...) repeatedly.

For someone you seem to dislike, distrust, and want to get out of your (viewing) life so much, you do bang on about her an awful lot.

As I said above, she isn't a nasty person, she is quite nice as a humane being, if utterly deluded and an immature, petty-minded, self-obsessed child with no discernible talent for anything, she is intellectually, practically, technologically and socially inept in the extreme. I suppose she can articulate to some degree, much better than Chavvy Claire for instance, but the self-indulgent drivel that pours out is just horrendous.

Now people are entitled to be this way and I am not offended by them, but she seems to think she is bright capable and entitled to sabotage the efforts of others and that is not acceptable. Also there seem to be a number of people who are mesmerised by her hat and stockings and seem to have completely mistaken what the apprentice is about, it is not some care in the community programme to reward the zany, the nice, the child-like, the best dressed, the most entertaining, the best haircut or the best smelling candidate, but to reward the most competent, and Lucinda was the least competent and yet she has some very confused and supporters who don't seem able to analyse her in any sort of objective manner.

...and she knocked you back when you tried to pull her in a bar once.

Go on. You can tell us. We'll be nice.

And yet the majority of people disagree with your view and really like her.

I suppose that must be the hardest thing for you to take.

I dare say you believe that you are one of the few who can see clearly and that everyone else is wrong.

Never mind.

But you are going to have to work out what you are going to do with your spare time now that she's gone.

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if that was the reason.

It would explain a great deal.

He's probably sitting alone feeling slighted, dejected and worthless and find lashing out the best way to handle these feelings.

It may be why he identifies with a sad loser like Alex.

Don't worry, Vivid, you'll get over her, It just takes time.

Typical mindless gibberish of the Lucinda obsessives, and like her, detached from reality and utterly inconsequential.

There's still Chavy Claire tho! (his words not mine).

Agree 100%.

I was going to post quite a lot but your posts have said pretty much all I want to say. Thanks


The majority of people? You know everyone, do you?

No one I know who watches the show thought she was anything other than a deluded, borderline disturbed, waste of space.

I like Lucinda, but I do think she was wrong for SAS. She's unmouldable, eccentric and wants to play fair. That doesn't make her less intelligent, but she is better working for herself so she can pick and choose how she works.

Because the opinions of you and your few friends matter....

I'm not a huge fan of Lucinda, but I thought she made an excellent project manager.