You really are comparing chalk and cheese here.

The so called technology task was specifically designed to be performed by non-technical people and anyone should have been able to do it.

Sales is something (at least cold selling is) that some people just cannot do.

Helene obviously believed what the experts had said that the technical task was trivial and knew from her own experiance that a non seller is a non seller.

Her decision was eminently sensible.


It's only an error if:

a) The equipment was working properly - which it did not seem to be.

or

b) you can have the foresight to realise that someone chosen from several thousand of what are supposedly the brightest minds in the country is completely useless.

A lot of people describe themselves as 'useless with computers' but can easily manage the basics.


That's almost worthy of a tin-foil hat




Statistical variance tells us that you simply cannot take any result derived from such a small sample size to mean anything at all.

Nick Hewer agreed that the expesnisive dresses were wrong.

On another day it might well have gone the other way round.

Sara and Micheal were perceived to have made errors that quite definitely would always have affected the outcome and obviously so (we could all see they were going way over the top).

Helene's 'error' was only an error wit hindsight and as a result of pot luck.


It was a perfectly reasonable idea (one of Michael's few).

The decision was one that had to be based on demographics and potential market.

Had they been choosing between dresses of a similar price/style, then yes, it would have made more sense for one person to see them all.

But that wasn't the decision to be made. The decision to be made was to do with the price, type of dress and available market at the NEC.

If we had enough data to derive a statistically significant result we could say the one of the team leaders had made a mistake on that basis, but we don't.


But Sara and Michael behaved in a way that was definitely wrong and would have been under all circumstances.

Helene's contribution to the failure can only be determined with hindsight and so Sara or Michael should have gone. AS got it right.



Yes, you are confused. (as I was).

Watch the bit around the showing of the advert and you will see that Helene did do that part of the presentation. Claire did another part.

If Claire was responsible for all the teams failures she would have been fired by now. I am comparing between Lee and Claire. Claire has been in the losing times 6 times and lee has been on the winning side 7 times. I want to know if it happened by luck. FYI, I am not a fan of Lee and if you read my posts you will know that. As I said before, Claire has sometimes contributed to the losses of her teams but she was never the main reason of losing a task. I also said that she was fundamental to every win she was involved in. Lee made fewer mistakes than Claire. The reason might simply be that Claire contributed more and therefore made more mistakes. In short: I am having a discussion and I am not trying to blame any one. For me Lee and Claire are the only two who earned their place in the finals.

Kevin didn't say that he is technically useless. As I said before Helene already had many good sales people and her team had one more than the other team. She didn't need to assign the role to Lucinda who said that she was technically useless. She gave sales priority to making the product. A quick assessment reveals that if someone fails to sell she is unlikely to lose the task (as they have the same number of sales people as the other team). However, failure to produce the photos can lose them the task.


Helene didn't learn from the technical session she attended with Lucinda. By her own admission, she said that "her knowledge base is far behind Lucinda". Helene and Raef didn't attend when the technical assistant came back to help.

No one knows if the system was simple or not because Lucinda who is technically useless was the only one who dealt with it the whole day and she said in the boardroom that no one was willing to step up and help her and I think that was mainly Helene's fault.


Lucinda was the only one who attended the training session related to the computer part. Raef attended the part related to printing the mugs, puzzles, etc. I don't know what would Sir Alan's problem be with Helene asking one of her sales team (who was doing nothing at the time) to be with Lucinda when the problem was being solved by the technical assistant?!! This way when it happens again, someone else knows the necessary steps to solve it or at least someone confirms that it was a complicated problem that couldn't be solved. Even Nick thought that Helene was wishy washy at that point.

Helene again failed to adapt when she saw her team failing to shift the cakes.

If the cakes were the right product for the NEC, why didn't she put Alex (or herself) later on the day to sell the cakes (the cakes were more expensive than the dresses). Alternatively, she could have told Michael and Sara to change their selling technique during the task instead of criticising their body language and selling technique after the task!!! If the cakes were the wrong product, why was Sara fired then? She didn't practically lose her team any money.


Can I ask you what was the point of seeing the dresses at all? Helene asked Michael about how Ian's dresses looked. Sara and Michael were shocked when they saw Helene's choice. Doesn't that suggest that one person should have seen all dresses?!! Even Michael recognised that it was the wrong suggestion during the task.

They were given 4 ranges of dresses to choose from. Helene's choice was midrange price but was also for a niche market: not many will go for a coloured short dress for their wedding. She had to sell 5 dresses for each dress the other team sells. Both styles have a very limited market. In this case it is safer to go for the more expesive product.

This was also confirmed by the volume of sales: Helene's team sold 5 dresses while the other team sold 3. If Helene's dresses had a wide market, they would have been able to sell much more.

I don't think I'm comparing chalk and cheese. The fact is that only Lucinda - out of all the team - had made it plain she was useless with computers, and Helene picked her -out of all the team - to perform that key role. If she failed, the team were scuppered. If she'd failed on sales, there were other people working on that, and all that would have happened is that the team would have been carrying a passenger. I'm seriously perplexed at how that can be regarded as sensible.



If the equipment wasn't working, that's a different matter, but wouldn't Nick or Margaret (whichever was with the team; can't remember, I'm afraid) have called the technical experts if they'd thought that was the case?

If Helene thought Apprentice contestants are the brightest minds in the country, that would demonstrate such naivety that that alone would earn her a firing!


Well, that's your opinion. I don't see why it's not perfectly possible, and even likely.



Bear in mind that Sara has said that the instances where she was shown selling too pushily were from right at the end of the day when she was beginning to panic at the lack of sales. (Michael had, according to her, been selling that way all day). Of course she would say this, and I'll admit personal bias may be involved in the fact that I'm inclined to believe her. (I also think Michael's selling style was worse from the sample we saw. But Sir Alan's favouritism towards Michael is another subject.)

In Sara's case at least, then, there is good reason to believe that the bad selling technique arose from desperation as a result of being stuck trying to sell something that was never going to sell. And the reason they were stuck with the cake comes back to the fact that the underwear people chose to have their goods sold with the more expensive dresses. It all comes back to Helene's choices.


I don't agree. There was more to the decision than that. Helene never saw the expensive dresses, so she couldn't assess how likely they were to sell. She got a fairly unflattering description from Michael and Sara who weren't that keen on them, but then Michael and Sara hadn't seen the cheaper dresses, and were plainly a bit shocked when they did.

Helene's decision, based on Michael's advice (and he later realised himself in the car that it was a mistake, though typically he made no mention of his own role in it) left the team in a position where the choice of dress was being made with only half the information.




I can't agree. As I've indicated above, even if you take the pushy selling as the more culpable offence, we have evidence that Michael was at least as culpable as Sara and probably more so. Given his poorer record on previous tasks, and especially on the Marrakesh task, he should have been the one to go in that case.

However, I don't think the pushy selling was worse. For the reasons I explained, I think the decision to split the teams was the real killer in this task, and that would put either Helene or Michael in the firing line. For me, Helene as PM was more culpable.

[QUOTE}Yes, you are confused. (as I was).

Watch the bit around the showing of the advert and you will see that Helene did do that part of the presentation. Claire did another part.[/quote]

Is that bit on youtube? I assume it won't be on the bbc iplayer now.

Wrong with hindsight, but we've tried to show it wasn't so implausible at the time. It looked to me as though she had Lucinda down as a whinger and discounted everything she said. That's why she forgot later that Lucinda had made a specific protest about technology. (And I think she did forget, rather than pretended or lied about it.)

I find it hard to believe that Lucinda's job as a risk manager didn't involve computers to a degree, if only email and spreadsheets. Her CV mentions "various roles involving I.T." She may not have known how to use the camera on her phone, but she did have and use a mobile phone. She wasn't allergic to buttons. Putting her in a simple technology role may have been a wrong decision, but it hardly seems so wrong as be deliberate sabotage.


I think Sir Alan disliked Sara from early on. I think he made Ian and her project leaders because he felt those were the two weakest in round 3 (and I think he did the same with Raef and Alex in round 9). He kept Helene for the same reason he kept Michael so long: they made mistakes, but they had a spark of promise. Where-as Sara was no loss. On that task she seemed to do nothing.


Claire did the first part, then Helene did the second. It is Helene who does the lead-in to screening the advert itself.

Actually Michael recommended the high-end dresses unambiguously. Despite Margaret's quotation. In the phone conversation we see, where the decision seems to be made, he makes a lot of arguments in favour of them. I think Helene would have made the same choice even if one person had seen them all.

Michael suggested the team split on the first day, and he recommended the high-end dresses, so he comes across as an active member of the team even if he didn't always find the best answer. Where-as from what we saw, Sara might as well have not been there.

I believe Sara was active as well but her opinions were neglected by others. There is no task where you can say that Sara was invisible. She is more sensible than Michael although they are the same age. She is more active than Helene. Sara was fired in that task because Sir Alan was irritated by her for some reason.

The same applies to Raef. I believe Raef performed much better than Michael, Helene, and Lucinda. For some reason Sir Alan didn't like Raef. I don't think that his decision was based on performance during the tasks which is fine. After all this is his job and we can't expect him to employ people he doesn't like.

So what did Sara do on the wedding task?

Helene is active; Helene sold two dresses in addition to managing the task. Even super-salesman Alex only sold one more than Helene. Those sales might have been enough to save Helene in addition to her other virtues.

I agree that Sir Alan did not rate Sara or Raef even before the tasks in which they were fired. That's more or less what I said in #56. He made them project leader to put them in the firing line. However, both also gave ample reason to be fired. Raef made basic mistakes about the advert, and Sara did nothing to save herself that we saw.

I thought she put up a pretty good fight to stay in the show in the BR. Thought that is what the BR was for. She didnt lie or use her puppy dogged eys to stay in but told it how it was. Fair dues to her. I still can't make her out tho and not sure what she does well as yet but I bet she is good in the interview show

I thought Sara worked as hard as Michael to sell those cakes. As for Raef, he made a basic mistake about the ad but again Michael was involved. If Michael was the PM, the ad would not have been different.

Anyway, we agree that SAS didn't like Sara or Raef and I think no matter how hard they worked in previous tasks, SAS was going to fire them on the first opportunity.

I'm sure the anti Helene brigade will find some way of spinning or dismissing this but I think it's interesting:

From an article in the Sunday Mirror:

Sir Alan's Verdict: "Helene has been level-headed and sensible and that's what
you need in business. She's tough, down-to-earth - a ballsy Northerner who's really good in this process."

Margaret's Verdict: "She's trustworthy, honest, ethical and she hasn't
been afraid to get her hands dirty. She's got stamina and isn't a whinger or a moaner."

The last line from Margaret's quote is interesting........

Same article in the telegraph so must be some truth in it

From she says, she only got involved in that late in the day. In any case, she didn't actually sell any. Michael may not have sold cakes either but he did other stuff (as I've mentioned earlier).

Sara said that she helped Alex during the day and the she went to help Michael. She also said that she wanted to be PM but Helene insisted on being the PM saying that she had the experience (she should have been the PM because she was PM in task 3). Sara's contributions over the series were much better than Michael's given that they are the same age.

I'm not 'anti-Helenne' but I do struggle to reconcile the comments made with the edit I've been shown.

If I were shown the comments and asked who they applied to I wouldn't automatically leap to the conclusion it was her.

(Edit - OK, so with 3 remaining females, I may do, but I take it you guys see my point! )

Well, I'm no more privy to the workings of Helene's mind than you are; we're both making educated guesses based on her actions and our interpretations are equally valid. But Lucinda's protest about her technical incompetence was made very emphatically, and I really find it pretty hard to believe she forgot it.

I don't know what Lucinda's experience has been with computers, but given how crucial the role was to the task, and given how emphatic Lucinda was that she couldn't fulfil that role, I think it was an absurd risk to take, and almost inexplicable except as an attempt to put Lucinda in the firing line. But we're never going to agree on that.


That may well have been his rationale. I certainly never saw any promise in Michael or Helene, whereas I did in Sara. I think even Sir Alan admitted in the end that Michael should really have gone sooner. Perhaps he thought he was seeing something in Michael that wasn't really there?

Sara did play something of a secondary role in the selection of the items to sell, but she did add her views. Maybe not so vocally as Michael, but she voiced them. As she wasn't PM, that was pretty much the only role she could play at that stage. When it came to the selling, she was certainly trying; too hard, at the end. But she was on a loser with the cake, and Michael did no better.

He recommended them, but his and Sara's description of them was still not very flattering. We'll never know what choice Helene would have made if one person had seen them all, but I still agree with Sir Alan that it was a mistake for the reasons I've given.

Sara did voice opinions; I heard her. Margaret also said she, as well as Michael, was in favour of selling the cake. A poor choice, as events proved, but that too proved that she was voicing opinions. She wasn't PM; what more did Michael or Alex do really?

The fact that Helene sold isn't that meaningful. Sara and Michael were selling the cake; neither made any sales. Alex and Helene were selling dresses; they made sales. It seems likely that the dresses were simply more saleable.

When was Sara allowed to save herself? When she tried to put her case in the boardroom she was virtually told to shut up.

It's alwats a shame when promising candidates get removed early on.

I think Sara got a reasonably fair crack of the whip even if she went a little too soon.

Shazia, on the other hand, who seemed to me to be one of the very strongest candidates was dumped way before her time.

She may well not have turned out to be winner material but she certainly deserved a much better chance to prove herself than she actually got.

I certainly agree about Shazia. There was no way she should have gone on that task, and how much better would the series have been if we'd got rid of Jenny C straight off? She wasn't even entertaining; just incompetent and nasty.

We never really found out how good Shazia was. She might have proved weak in the end, but no-one ever got to find out.

I respect SAS and Margaret. But, the edit of Helene lying about Lucinda didn't seem very "honest or ethical" at all! Mind you I only got my degree from Bristol, so maybe "it's not what it used" to be either!

I'm generally very slow to accuse TV people of lying. As I recall, Helene assigned roles on the first day, the photography was done on the second day, and the boardroom was done the third day. Although we only see clips, a lot more would have been done and said through-out the days. So I think it would be possible for her to forget exactly what was said 2 days earlier, especially if she dismissed all input from Lucinda as whinging.

(Not that it was right to dismiss Lucinda, but there's a difference between mistakes and dishonesty.)


I can see it too, if I squint a bit. An example was his decision to switch the date of Singles Day, in the face of opposition from people like Raef; a high risk decision which basically won that task. Another example I just posted to another thread was writing the name of his car on his hand, so he wouldn't forget it like Lucinda did.

But these flashes were overwhelmed by the mistakes. This actually reminded me of series 1 where Sir Alan took a similar liking to Paul. I was worried history would repeat itself: Sir Alan famously fired Miriam and kept Paul and then almost immediately regretted it. Thankfully, this time he made the right choice and fired his darling. (I'm not claiming Helene is as strong as Miriam, by the way.)

If Sara hadn't been present on the Wedding task, I think nothing would have happened differently.

margaret was quoted from the final five show tonight-
in which she and nickpraised everyone so i wouldnt look too much into that