No he didn't. He didn't defended himself, but he certainly did not engage in anything remotely resembling backstabbing. That was Michael.

yes I am sure. SAS mentioned that there were 4 designers in the boardroom. The four we saw were: Ian Stuart, BHS, 16-32 dresses, and the colourful dresses.


They clearly said that they were given a deal of 800 before. So they spent time looking for a cheap cowhide. They were already late and it was clearly the right decision to take an offer which was 60% cheaper than any other offer they were given.

We also don't actually know if they got a cheaper price or not. The rule in the buying task in previous series was never to accept the first price (I believe one of the teams was fined for accepting the first price given last year). They were not fined so they must have applied the rule (This rule was applied to every item we saw the two teams negotiating). Raef was given a 250 dirhams price and the voice over said clearly they bought it for £15 which is equivalent to around 240 dirhams. So may be they asked for a lower price after all.



Raef was in charge of the subteam. We saw Raef leading all the negotiations and I haven't seen Helene doing anything during this series. So neither the edit nor Helene's previous contributions suggest that I should assume that she did the negotiations. I also don't believe that Alex would have been able to get 900 dirhams more out of it. He started from a 3000 dirhams and ended at 2500. Claire made a mistake by interrupting Alex but I don't think Alex would have been able to get a better price.


I also didn't have a problem with that but Alex and SAS did. His mistake was to use words like prince and pauper which were taken against him. He didn't repeat that again. He continued to use florid language because this is his character. He certainly can't change this in weeks and I don't think he should even it annoys some people.

It was unfortunate that those words were actually taken completely out of the context he meant them by SAS, and, especially, Alex....what he was trying to say was he disagreed with the BS that Nicholas was spewing completely and that he got on with people regardless. Alex conveniently twisted it to use in conjunction with Nicholas's comments to make him look like some sort of victim, when, in fact, the reverse was true.

I thought he completely turned on MIchael and went against everything he said beforehand.

I know they probably do eidt it to make it look a lot more dramatic than it is, but if it didn't happen they wouldn't have anything to edit would they?

Nope, he certainly did not. He defended himself, yes, but it was Michael who suddenly started claiming to have done 'everything good' about the task. Raef had every right to call him on that BS. That was not back stabbing at all.

If you saw Your Fired, you may recall that it was highlighted how Michael had done the backstabbing.

OK I will go through that again. Raef promised them not to lie, cheat, or make false accusations. He didn't say that he won't defend himself. Otherwise what was the point of the boardroom?!!!

In the boardroom, Raef said that he wanted to leave the shots of the box. Michael insisted that they were vulgar and that they should be removed and they later they agreed and took them out. Did Raef tell the truth?

Yes. Michael was the one who took the initiative to ask for the shots of the product to be removed from the ad. We saw Raef initially refusing to take them out then he agreed with Michael and removed them. So Raef didn't cheat, lie or make false accusations. He simply said it like it was.

Michael on the othe hand said that every thing SAS likes, every thing decent (What?!! How did he what SAS liked?) in the ad came from him. The reality is that Michael's suggestion lost them the task. Raef as a PM should not have listened to Michael and that was his main fault. But as a PM you listen to your team and Michael said that he had a production company so he had the experience and Raef took his comments into consideration. Still Raef needed to point out in the boardroom that it was Michael's suggestion in the first place and he was initially against it.

Much as I loathe Michael, even if Raef hadn't agreed with Michael to remove a close up of the tissue box, I very much doubt they would have won the task. Their ad still wouldn't have mentioned tissues, still wouldn't have mentioned anti-bacterial, still would have spent money using a weather girl for no good reason, and still would have had an insipid box and brand name which had nothing to do with tissues. Every decision presided over by Raef was a disaster. The man is a nice, decent, well groomed dimwit who masks his inferiority with flowery language.

Raef made errors on this task but he most certainly is not a dimwit! He is a pretty successful business man in his own right for one thing. Plus he made some excellent contributions throughout the series.

SAS said the main reason they lost the task was because of the lack of product placement in the commercial. Other than that I think their campaign as a whole was better. Also the fact that the other team took the word antibacterial completely out of context should have counted for something.

Why do you think that Raef alone was responsible for not mentioning the word "antibacterial"? They all agreed on the story of the ad together and no point one of them said we should use the fact that they are antibacterial in the ad. Claire who is an expert in marketing was the one who suggested the name "I love my tissues" which has nothing to do with antibacterial.

If you think that Raef has contributed nothing during the series, can you tell me please who did?!!!

so your trying to say raef didnt get stuck in in the laundry task

he did his fair share and if he hadnt done his bit of the work im sure the likes of ian and alex would have grassed over him in the boardroom when sir alan asked

on the contrary the boys were extremeley complimenting on raef's skills as a manager

so id say his attitide was definitely not of 'LET THE OTHERS GRAFT' i dont think the boys could have got all the laundry done without the help of kevin raef and michael atleast simon made us believe this the amount of times he called the others to come and help

Hi Mutts - did you hear Raef being interviewed on R5 the other morning? The inept presenter, Victoria Derbyshire, was trying to make him feel uncomfortable about the prince and pauper remark. Raef just laughed and said that maybe his choice of words had been unfortunate and that he should have said "I get on with chalk and cheese."

Agree totally with your summary of the boardroom situation btw.

OK, thanks. So which dresses do you think Nick had in mind? The fat ones?


I don't think the rule applied this year. It certainly wasn't mentioned in the edit. Instead Sir Alan merely told them, "... you accept the first price they offer you, you've got to be the biggest mug on this planet." I doubt he would have said that if it was still a rule.

I expect the 250 dirhams was rounded to £15. They were just trying to give rough British equivalents.

Even if he did get 10 dirhams knocked off, it didn't involve a lot of bargaining. He was simply offered a better price in the first place, presumably by virtue of being in the tannery, which may or may not have been his idea. (More likely it emerged during Lee's early planning.)


Generally the edit shows people making mistakes, so the fact that Helene has been omitted from the edit suggests she's not made many mistakes. As does the fact that she has never been picked for the boardroom by her team leader. We saw Raef lead the negotiations for the cowhide, and it makes sense for them to take it in turns. Basically, this comes down to prejudice. You want to give Raef credit for all the good things that happened. Where-as Nick, who has actually seen Raef first-hand in action, thinks he's all style no substance.


Agreed. My opinion of Alex is very low. So beating him doesn't win a lot of credit with me.


He didn't use those exact words, but he didn't modify his style at all in the way that, eg, Claire did. I don't see any sign he learned or changed as a result of that incident. (I don't think he needed to change; I just don't see the positive thing you are seeing here.)

It was the whole laundry team that were repeatedly on the phone to the other three literally begging them to come back, not just Simon.
As for Ian and Alex's assessment of Raef, they didn't have the benefit of seeing Raef throughout the day. After talking to them on the phone he dismissed them as "whiners", that showed a complete lack of respect for the hard work they were doing. I'm saying his attitude stunk.

I agree. It was certainly this incident that coloured my view of Raef as being someone of limited substance. My impression was that he was a great front man, but had little in the way of actual "doing stuff" skills.

I think you will find that Sir Allan criticised all the issues I raise, especially the Sian Lloyd use. At the end of the day, Raef was the project manager and therefore responsible for those decisions he endorsed. It would be ludicrous to suggest Claire should have been fired for suggesting the brand name adopted by Raef, when he made no other suggestion, and bearing in mind she and Helene did try to encourage Raef and Michael to increase the product positioning.

I donot say Raef contributed nothing to the series - he plainly contributed excellent entertainment and I think he had superficial leadership abilities. By that I mean he seemed able to motivate people and convince them to work hard (the laundry task). But I saw little evidence that he was a particularly hard grafter himself (also the laundry task, swigging coffee while Simon and Alex sweated it), he never displayed any sales technique (the wedding task for eg), and I felt he lacked any ideas. Above all, I felt he lacked any ability to 'read' situations. This was illustrated in the boardroom this week when he just could not see where Sir Allan was leading until it was too late. Another example was the cowhide negotiations in Morocco. He got an excellent deal, because Lee had insisted they went to the wholesale producers and the guy there simply volunteered a low price which Raef, who couldn't believe his ears and nearly lost it by repeatedly signalling how low it was by questioning the seller if he meant it. A more savvy negotiator would have had him to the cleaners at that point!

Glad I'm not the only one who thought that Alex knew exactly what Raef meant by the "prince or pauper" comment, and that he twisted it to make himself look disadvantaged in the boardroom.

There's even an unseen footage clip on the BBC website where Raef clearly explains what he meant to Alex in the car after they leave the boardroom, but Alex was having none of it, and was still trying to play the victim.

I'm afraid I am unaware of why you think he is a successful business man - I question why he was entering a reality series if this is the case. I agree he was excellent entertainment but I question what business contributions he made and agree with Nick's assessment that he was lucky - certainly in winning the laundry task. That was won due to Simon's hard graft and organisation, supported by Lee and Alex and Jenny's ineptitude in losing the large contract by ludicrous over pricing. Raef, by contrast, did little other than tell the workers he was rushing back while ordering another coffee!

I didn't suggest that Claire should have been fired for the brand name. I said if the expert (Claire in marketing) in your team doesn't recognise the main selling point of the product then I don't think that the PM should be the only one responsible as you suggested. We had Helene in the previous task making mistake after mistake and survived. Don't you think that the performance of Helene as a PM was much worse than Raef's performance?!


I disagree. I think he provided more than just intertainment and "superficial leadership skills". I have said this many times but I don't mind repeating myself: in the laundry task:

1- Raef allocated roles correctly giving Simon logistics, Kevin (as a banker) face to face negotiations and Michael (a telesales manager) was given pricing by making enquiries over the phone. The rest of the team were involved in sales and the laundry.

2- He used the rift in the team to his advantage and split the team accordingly. Raef, Michael and Kevin were in a team, Alex, Lee, Ian, and Simon on the other team.

3- Determined prices correctly by making Michael enquire about prices over the phone.

4- When kevin agreed to the price and they saw the amount of the laundry Raef didn't waste time playing the blame game. He sent the other team around 6 pm to the laundry to start working on it.

5- Realising that Kevin is not that good at negotiations, Raef took the lead in the second negotiations and refused to pay a lower price than the girls for the amount of laundry.

6- He didn't stop looking for business after securing the 200 deal. He looked for more deals until 9 o'clock. If the girls were not fined he would have lost the task if he hadn't had more deals. So there was no way he could go back to work on the laundry immediately.

7- People keep coming back to the coffee they had. Raef didn't stop for the coffee. He made a laundry deal with a shop. They bought coffee from the shop while they were talking to the other subteam on the phone. He then had his coffee on his way back to the laundry. So no time was wasted there.

8- He went back to the laundry at 9 to 10 o'clock. and worked with his team till 2 pm. The edit makes you think that he worked only for 1 or two hours in the laundry but if you listen to the voice over you will clearlt recognise that he worked continuously on the laundry task for 4 to 5 hours (3 hours less than the rest of his team and during that time he was not drinking coffee, he was making deals).

9- They were all well led by him given that in the previous task he had problems with a few of them. He has this natural ability to gather people around him and as you say make things for him.

You can watch this episode again if you want to make sure of the points I made. Raef simply won this task because he did every thing right. Every one involved in the task said that they enjoyed working under his leadership.

As for being a grafter:

1- In the laundry task: He worked for 3-4 hours making deals and then 4-5 continuous hours.

2- In the Photo task: Helene her self said that Raef has been working very hard making mugs and puzzles.

3- In the Greeting card we see him working for long hours during the night on his pitch.

4- In all other tasks I haven't seen him work less than other team members.


He didn't get an excellent deal because Lee insisted that they go to the whole sellers!!! Raef was the one who has been to Marrakesh before and not Lee. Raef and helene were responsible for locating and negotiating four products. So Lee didn't do the reasearch for the products Raef and Helene bought. The other team also went to the same tannery but they didn't get the same deal!! Raef basically searched for the cowhide and was given prices around 800 dirhams and you can see him saying "The other man gave us 800 dirhams but we want around 600 dirhams". The man then said 250 dirhams!! If I had been in his place, I would have been surprised. Raef wanted to make sure that the man means 250 dirhams since mis-communication can easily happen. He showed him the price on the calculator to make sure that it was indeed 250!! They were already 3 hours late searching for one product and they had 9 more products to go. Do you think it was safe to take the low price or waste more time negotiating?!!


I think he had good ideas:

1- He was the one who came up with the idea of the Singles day. You can argue that it was a bad idea but it was the best that came from the two teams.

2- He was also the one who made the Ian Suart choice which won them the wedding task.

3- In an unseen footage, he did question Jenny M after she made the ice cream deal with the chain of cinemas saying: "Do you think they would have bought if you didn't offer them exclusivity?!" It was late but it shows that he was aware that exclusivity offer was probably unnecessary.

I can understand that SAS didn't see Raef as his apprentice. But saying that he didn't do that much is hugely unfair. It just shows that people are in denial that SAS has made a misjudgement by describing Raef as "a lot of hot air". SAS is human and has his preconceptions and as I far as I am concerned he failed to see beyond the cover in Raef's case. He has made errors in the past and he made an error in Raef's case. I don't think this error affects the final result as Raef was never going to be employed by SAS. They are different.


For those who are not convinced that Raef has done that much during the series, I really would like to know: What do you really think of the contributions of Michael, Helene, Alex, Lucinda, Lee, and Claire? Do you really think that Raef was worse than all of them? It is a competition after all and the contributions of each candidate can not be evaluated fairly unless you compare them with those of the remaining candidates.

Bloody Hell...

I think he thought that the ones Helene selected were the right choice because they started shifting them earlier in the day and they were mid-range price.


Lee insisted that his team members locate the items. The items were divided between the two subteams and each subteam was responsible for locating and negotiating their items. We can't neglect the fact the Raef has been to Marrakesh before and that he understands Arabic. He must have been effective in the task.

Raef and Helene have been looking for the cowhide for around 3 hours. The other team has been to the tannery by the way and they didn't get the same price. The lowest price they were given was 800 dirhams. Don't you think they should have taken the 250 dirhams?!! I think they have worked very hard to get that price.

Is it pure luck that two of the four items Raef and Helene bought were the best deals of the day?!!! We already know that two of the items Lee, Sara, and Lucinda were more expensive than the other team. (The clock and the juicer). If there was no penalties, their team would have won because of the items Raef and Helene bought. This is a fact that we can't ignore.


At least we agree on something. However, we can't keep saying whenever Raef gets something right that the others just got it wrong. The reality is that the deals Raef and Helene made would have won them the task even if the other team was not penalised.


He didn't use any other words that can be taken against him in the same way. That is what I meant. He got on very well with his team after initially having problems with some of them. Claire didn't change the way she talk and the vocabulary she uses. She learnt to be less aggressive which is difficult but achievable.

As I said I don't think that Raef should have been the winner (I will have this argument for Claire if she doesn't win!!!) but the way he was fired was just annoying. I have seen candidates who were useless and were given a much better exit. Raef has many business skills and I think it is only fair to mention them and give credit for his contributions rather than saying that he was lucky especially that his results were clear but in many cases the work he put behind them was not clear in the edit.

Because he has a successful business, as well as a very nifty property portfolio. He has said that the fact that he wanted to work with SAS was his reason for applying for the show, and the fact he wanted a challenge.

I so agree with you here, it's amazing the ideas a minority of people have about it, someone was saying the other day they were 'sitting around sipping lattes' which is a load of BS. Furthermore, those that had started off working at the laundry earlier were clearly shown to be taking breaks themselves. Now I have no problem with that, but if they are taking five minutes breaks, surely there is nothing wrong with Raef's team picking up a coffee while in a shop that sells them? After all, they too had been working hard, albeit in a different setting.

It's almost as some people disregard the need for anyone to be out making sales, when, had the girls not lost some of the laundry it would have cost them the task had Raef's team not secured those other deals!

Also, for all the concern coming from the laundry team prior to the second teams arrival, they finished all the work in decent time and actually left the laundry slightly early, so it's fair to say there was an element of panicking going on from the laundry team earlier in the evening that was unnecessary.

I think I'd be inclined to say the team working in the laundry lost perspective that the task would only be won by the team with the most orders, and they just wanted to get it over with, which is kind of understandable, if the wrong attitude to have.

This is yet another example of using 20-20 hindsight to attribute 'mistakes' to one person/team.

There are two sorts of mistakes you can make with things like product selection and pricing:

1) Mistakes for which there is no excuse, such as charging a £5 (or, indeed, any other price) per item flat fee for laundry or choosing pork scratchings as the principle snack to offer people on a Bar Mitzvar catering service.

2) Mistakes which can only be seen in hindsight.

The teams did not have time to do detailed research as to the likely market at the NEC so it was more or less down to the luck of the draw who would make the money from the dresses. It was a hugh gamble picking the expensive dresses. The gamble paid off but that does not show poor skill from the opposing team.

Had the gamble not paid off we would have seen Sugar smugly ridiculing Raef for selecting expensive designer dresses to take to Birmingham. Count on it!


Yes, Helene picked the wrong type of dress as it turned out, and because of that selection did not get the other product range she wanted (and she had no way of knowing that that would happen). This does not in any way indicate poor leadership skills.

Again it's a matter of editing, isn't it?

The programme editors deliberately juxtaposed shots of the guys in the laundry sweating it out with those of the other three immaculately suited and drinking coffee in the taxi.

Applying a little intellignece it should be obvious that getting refreshment to consume during what would otherwise have been dead time rather than getting back to the laundry and then wasing time drinking was actually a smart move.

But so many people take the superficial view and allow themselves to be manipulated by the programme's producers.

The dresses were coloured and they were for a niche market. Even Helene had an objection to the colours which was overcome with the price. This was evident in their sales since they sold only 5 dresses. The probability that a person in the NEC was looking for a red/blue wedding dress is quite similar to the probability that one person wanted an Ian stuart dress. Simple math reveals that her team needed to sell 5 dresses for every Ian stuart dress.

She did not only chode wrong dresses, she also made a mistake doing her basic job as a PM: delegation. She (like Raef) listened to Michael and split the teams geographically. This was such a bad move. She made exactly the same mistake when she was PM for the photography task. when she made Lucinda responsible for technical side of things. Lucinda clearly declared at the beginning of the task that she is "technically useless".

From the beginning of the series and till now, I haven't seen Helene doing anything except criticising other people.