Yes he should have. Absolutely. 110%.

They missed the follow up question which was why he dropped out. Was it application to the task or problems with his past education or sheer lack of ability that made him leave? Did he go or was he pushed? Dyslexia is a problem to work around but only if he really has the intellect to do the job anyway. As you say there was no proof that he suffered from it and I never saw any sign of analytical let alone academic ability. The inability to convey ideas in writing or verbally ought to kill his chances anyway unless SAS intends to employ a competent literate teen on job experience to work with him, but fundamentally he just isn't smart enough.

I would have fired him yes, not so much for the lieing but the inability to use a spellchecker on an application form and the fact that he says fwee instead of three.

Lee should have gone instead of Lucinda. Alex too for his backstabbing. He really has turned out to be a nasty piece of work. It should have been a Lucinda vs Claire final, to make it more interesting. I love Lucinda, she's honest but it's clear that in business, you have to be nasty to get by. Lucinda did not need the job, good on her.

Exactly, I suspect she used the programme to raise her profile considering the fact that she's paid more than what the job with SAS offered. Hence, she'll have the last laugh.

No, no, thirty times no (even), Lucinda should have gone, and you can hear why by clicking on this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRmuExP5AFE

Everyone says I'm MAD and yet I have proof that I'm not! Proof!

Ha ha ha....and the others aren't dishonest in other ways?!?!?!?!? Actually, it smacks more of a basic naivety in thinking it wasn't going to get checked, or an insecurity about his education, and the fact that he packed it in. I can't remember exactly how long I worked at various jobs when I was young, and I try to ignore some chunks of my early adulthood and the courses I've attended, so my CV will be inaccuracte too.

Even Lucinda, who I think is pretty honest, has her own agenda to play.

Alex's CV was probably the most straightforward of the lot, and the most boring, from the sound of it, but he's one of the most calculating and sneaky candidates ever. Reminds me of a ghost swirling around like mist, squeezing between floorboards (actually he may be able to do that...) and making everybody else look the worse for it.

If SAS understood what he had said himself earlier about Claire at the start of the series and in earlier programmes about the two Jennys, he ought to have sacked Alex for backstabbing. He can't have it both ways and look credible.

I value most of your comments, but I completely disagree about this. He was wrong on three counts:[LIST][*]It's wrong to lie.[*]It's stupid to lie on a CV for a TV show where the researchers are highly likely to check the details. Remember Tre getting caught out on his proposed team name being linked to his company?[*]He lied again in the interview. This was not some mistake or accident; even at this late stage he was lying. I think if he'd lied on his CV but been honest with the interviewer, he could have got away with it.[/LIST]And it really undermines his credibility. Even though he seemed to be honest for the rest of the show, this incident shows that when the chips are down and it really matters to him, he will lie his way out of trouble. If he gets caught, he'll brazen it out. He only caved when confronted with the letter from the university.


For me, writing "good Jewish boy" when you are only half Jewish is more like the padding that people put into their "hobbies and interests" section. It's only slightly worse than putting "fluent in English". His religion should have nothing to do with the job and probably shouldn't even be asked about.

Lucinda wasn't fired just for being too 'zany'. SAS said shortly before he fired her "Can’t argue with the facts of the past 10 weeks, you weren’t successful when not team leader". He was primarily concerned with the fact that when she wasn't in charge of a team, it all seemed to "fall apart" for her, as he said. This is what he opened by expressing concern about when questioning her in the boardroom and it was the issue on which he was spending most time prior to Alex's interruption.

I assumed he lied about the course because he didn't want to say he gave up after 4 months, rather than anything to do with being insecure about his academic qualifications. If you were going to lie to look more academic, you'd go for something a bit more well known, surely? As someone else said, they should have asked why he dropped out. I would have thought that was the more interesting question.

Frankly I would have fired him for that and the spelling - it's not hard to use a spell check, especially for someone in recruitment with experience of seeing people's CV's. Would you really hire someone lacking such basic common sense?

Lee's answer intrigued me. He lied about how long he was on some catering course, lying to say he did an MBA or something. Why lie about something like that. Sir Alan doesn't really care that you dropped off a catering course, he's not looking for the AMSTRAD Head Chef. Bordan certainly didn't seem to care when Lee said his grades were never good enough for a degree.

Lee should of gone.......the final will not be the same without Lucinda she was ace.

Had Lee really stayed 2 years, during that time there would be have term time of 16 months? So he inflated the figure of 4 into 16. Michael was also lying -- the time he stayed at Edinburgh Uni he moonlighted in casinos, thieving from his flatmate and selling his body.

Absolutely no-one in this Forum condones Lee's lie, but let the punishment fit the crime. He has been humiliated already in front of 8 million viewers, his credibility blown before he even starts working in Amstrad, if he does. Hopefully this painful lesson will have taught him once and for all, it does not pay to mislead his employer.

Could his lie have hurt his prospective employer?

If SAS was looking for a high-flying engineer and fast learner then yes. Because Lee pretended to be academically smart when plainly he is not. If SAS is only looking for a hardworking streetwise dogsbody then probably not. The mitigating factor is that Lee did not claim to be degree material, he merely claimed to be a 2-year uni dropout instead of a 4-month dropout.

Why did Lee do it?

I believe he was as much reassuring himself as trying to pull a fast one to land a job. A dyslexic person who gave the Atishoo presentation speaking like a dynosaur is likely to have painful personal experiences and hangups about his educational limitations. By contrast someone as smart as Lucinda would simply burst out laughing about her uni dropout if indeed she had done.

I myself would go easy on this one lie, but would discreetly check out for signs of compulsive lying, past and future.

I didn't say he wasn't wrong to lie but I said he didn't claim he was someone he wasn't. He didn't say that he had a degree but he claimed to have stayed longer in the course than he really did.

Did he do it to have an advantage in the competition? I think Lee is cleverer than that. He probably knows that his lie won't give him an advantage. He mainly lied because of his own insecurities. He probably should have realised earlier that his lie isn't worth the risk and should have not lied in the first place. However, and I can only talk about myself, if I lied in my CV, I would probably stick to what I had said. There is no point making a "confession" at the interview.


I disagree. I don't like liars in general but I always look at the reasons behind their actions. As I said Lee lied to improve his educational background without thinking that he would gain any "real" advantage from it. Why did Michael lied in his CV about being "a good Jewish boy"? Because he thought it would give him an advantage with SAS. For me this was much worse than Lee's lie. No one really cares if Lee stayed 2 years rather than 4 months in a course (the course itself is irrelevant to the job) where the end result was in both cases he didn't get the degree and I believe Lee knows that. Does SAS cares if Michael is a good Jewish boy? Certainly Michael thinks so and that is why he wrote it in his CV.

Sir Alan Sugar knew without a shadow of a doubt that Lucinda was going and the other four were staying before anybody even set foot in that building. One of the ohter four would have had to have brutally murdered all of the interviewers and put the bodies in the boot of his Rolls Royce for him to have even considered anyone other than Lucinda leaving at the end of that day and even then he would have had to have thought about it for a while.

No he shouldn't have. Lucinda may be very likeable as a person (I've seen it plenty of times now, viewers tend to support 'victims' or the nicest people, instead of looking for the best worker), but she would never have been the apprentice. She didn't have the work ethic that's required for the position. She's a manager, she's too particular and fussy to be managed. While Lee wrote he was there for 2 years, he may have written it down because that was the duration of the course, even though he dropped out. He said he was insecure about his academic background. I don't think that was reason enough to disqualify him solely on that basis when he's performed really well over the series. Lee has the qualities to be the apprentice.

I think he did it to reduce a disadvantage. He felt he would be less respected by Sir Alan and the others if they knew the truth. He may have felt he was less likely to get on the show in the first place. I agree he was probably wrong about it mattering - indeed, the producers would probably prefer a drop-out for variety. However, he thought it mattered, and that's why he did it; he thought it would make a difference.

(We also don't know what he did in the missing year and eight months. I have to wonder if he lied partly to cover something up. This is the problem. When someone has been caught lying once to cover up embarrassment you wonder what else they've lied about.)


I disagree. Not confessing until he was slapped in the face with the proof, put him in a very awkward position. It made his contriteness very hollow.

Also, by that time we had got to know him and his strengths and weaknesses. His CV was much less important. We had a degree of rapport that didn't exist when his CV was written. That he still clung to his dishonesty at this stage makes him much worse.


Some reason as Lee, then. They both lied to gain an advantage (or erase a disadvantage, which is the same thing). In both cases it probably achieved nothing, but in both cases the candidate thought it would make a difference. Michael's seems lesser to me because it is a smaller stretch of the truth, and because he was quicker to come clean.

(Also it was less stupid. The show's fact-checkers did not, in fact, pull down Michael's trousers to check before letting him on camera. He was unlucky that a task had a Jew-specific element that caught him out. Where-as Lee, quite predicatably, got caught before filming even started.)

Lee lost control of the situation. If he were as smart and quick as Lucinda he would have guessed the game was up and he had been rumbled when the interviewer first drew attention to "2 years" giving a chance to confess. Lucinda would have tumbled from the tone of voice, the gleam in the questioner's eye. Pterodactyl fell right into it, he thought he was in for a penny in for a pound, too late to limit damage. Lucinda would have weighed up the pros and cons within half a second and confessed with profuse apology, saying it was a typo possibly. Her openness would have enabled the interviewer to be lenient and forgiving. That's why Lucinda is on £100K.

That he stayed 2 years instead of 4 months was partially untrue, perhaps wishful thinking. It is said that every man when asked for his height will round UPWARD to the nearest inch, never downwards.

"I am a good Jewish boy" was blatantly and totally untrue and designed with intent to deceive. SAS badly miscalculated, allowing sentimentality to muffle his danger signals, permitting a devious, conspiratorial, desperate schemer to overstay so very long. Now the viper in the grass has reared its head and pounced for money, and cheap scandal has tarnished The Apprentice and SAS himself.

The claim of "Two years at uni" has hurt nobody except Lee.

Yes he did it to reduce a disadvantage but I don't think he really believes that it mattered in the context of the competition. He didn't actually lie about his qualifications. Probably he did nothing useful in these two years and really wish that hestayed in college.


To be honest, I wouldn't have guessed that they would check whether he stayed at the course for 2 years or not!! If he claimed that he has a qualification from the university, I would have probably checked. But he said he dropped after two years. The course itself doesn't give him any advantage in the job with SAS.

If you mean that he should have confessed before the interviewer bring it up then I disagree. If you mean that he should have confessed earlier than he did then we agree. He probably thought the interviewer was just asking him about what he wrote in his CV i.e. he didn't read the situation right.


Let me put it this way: Lee lied about his academic achievements:

a- Lee thinks that academic achievements matter in business.
b- Lee knows that most of candidates have either similar or better qualifications.

Michael wrote in his CV that he is a good Jewish boy which means:

a- Michael thinks that being Jewish is important to SAS and he is willing to get an advantage based on it rather on his achievements. In other words, Michael thinks it is OK to use this logic in business.
b- Michael knows that most of candidates are probably not Jewish.

This is why I think Michael's lie was far worse than Lee's.

Michael intentionally, perhaps instinctively, tried to manipulate SAS. He evidently succeeded, overstaying for all of 5 weeks.

If Lee had tried to manipulate his prospective employer, he would have hired someone to write his CV for him. Instead Lee's CV was fully of his own dyslexic misspellings.

Because Michael never reached the interview stage, we shall never know how many more lies he told on his CV -- enough lies to make Lee look like a pious christian.

Love your way with words

and to answer the OP .... NO Lee is right for the final, Lucinda was the right firing

Embellishing your CV (e.g. I did a task which my boss actually did but you can claim you did with some confidence) is one thing - lying about two years of your life and claiming you were at university is very different. For a start its the first thing any decent employer will check - your academic record and copies of certificates etc.

While realising that trying to second guess Siralan is a pointless exercise, I'm not sure what options he had by this point. In a normal interview situation I think Lee would have gone, but as we've seen in the past Siralan's decisions tend to be based on his own instinctive responses. I suspect he was able to overlook the rights and wrongs of Lee's position for the same reason that he kept giving Michael second chances that weren't afforded to other candidates - he saw something there that he responded to personally, rather than objectively.

I have the nagging feeling that we have four candidates in the final because Siralan couldn't pin down two who were outstanding. Faced with five candidates comprising four adequate but not stunning performers and one loose cannon, he had two practical choices and he went for the cautious option: fire Lucinda and then see which of the other four could establish an edge in competition. I feel the only plausible alternative would have been Lucinda vs. one other candidate in a baptism-of-fire final, and I don't think he was prepared to risk that.

I didn't like the way they dismissed Lee lying on his CV and justified it by saying 'everyone has done it'. I certainly haven't lied on my CV. And the spelling errors seemed mind boggling, in this day and age of spell checks.

They then dismiss Lucinda, despite being an excellent manager, because she would 'probably drive sir alan crazy'. They'd never say that about a male candidate. I think there were previous agendas going on really.