That answer is meaningless to me. For me, it is a real issue that for all those who criticize Helene for her initial assignment of tasks, they are unable to come up with a pragmatic alternative. What are you saying Helene should have actually done? She has Jennifer M, Kevin, Lee doing sales. She has Raef handling all the transfers. She is overseeing the back room and still has responsibility for what's going on in front. Who, specifically would you have pulled off their job to do Lucinda's?

And how did Helene destroy her team?

Pricing involves costing!!

Helene wa responsible for the branding and she didn't do it. Alex did every thing for her except for the smell. I think she should have listened to Alex when he was trying to explain the concept of the bottle to her but she dismissed him saying that the most important think is the brand. She didn't came up with the brand and the theme which were brilliant and they lost on the bottle!!

I think she shuld have put a 3rd perdon in the backroom like Simon did. Simon understood that the production of the photos is as important as sales. He sent 3 people to do the training despite being one member down. Helene didn't.

As I said before Helene had one more member and she didn't utilise this. If she wasn't going to pay attention in the training, why did she go in the first place sending Kevin, Lee, Lindi, and Jennifer to audition the look alikes!!! She should have sent one of the sales team with the production team to balance the two subteams. Alternatively, she could have paid more attention during the training.

Hence it being a bone of contention. I am looking for reasons as to why Helene's statement that she didn't take the training should be dismissed and Lucinda's statement that Helene did take the training should be embraced.


I'll hang on until I've got that transcribed and posted here before commenting.


What we saw was that she was in the same room but far from just thinking about other things, she was doing other things. Where does your assumption about what you think she did or didn't do come from?

Lindi! I knew I'd forgotten someone.

Helene's strategy, to have her sales people in front selling, was a successful one. They won the task. She could have certainly taken one of her sales people off that and put them in the back room and maybe still won, or maybe not. Had they not won, I imagine that she would have come in for a great deal of criticism for having put an experienced sales person in the back room.

There's no real right or wrong answer to this. I'm trying to see it through Helene's eyes as the task progressed and I certainly can understand her strategy as being a sound one, particularly if she had no reason to anticipate that people getting training to do specific jobs would not absorb that training.

I didn't assume that she was doing nothing. I think she could have utilised her team better. If she wasn't going to attend the training why did she go with them in the first place. This is my point. Lucinda thinks that Helene attended the training not. She voiced this opinion during her argument with Helene. Helene didn't reply saying that she was busy doing this and that, she replied saying that the task was assigned to Lucinda and she should work on it like Helene did in the pub task.

Even when the technical person came, Helene didn't pay much attention to what he did. I think she should have shuffled the team or asked someone from the sales team to join Lucinda as they were doing nothing at the time! Lucinda had already demonstrated during the morning that she is technically useless.

Some might argue that we don't know the nature of the technical problem. However, we know that the problem was easy to solve because of the technician's assessment. We also know that Lucinda was able to burn a cd in the morning by accident but she wasn't able to do it again. I think Lucinda's inability to grasp the technical details easily was because of her awareness that she is "technically useless". Another team member like Kevin or Jennifer M would have been helpful in the second time.

You said: "I think Helene did attend the training but perhaps she didn't pay much attention because she was busy thinking about other things in the task like pricing ect. She thought that since other member of her team is paying attention and is responsible for it, then she didn't need to worry.

We saw her in the same room doing other things while Rafe and Lucinda were getting trained. The other things she was doing was going through the product range. So your assumptions were that she did attend the training, that she didn't pay attention, that she was busy thinking about other things, that she thought that the others were so she didn't need to worry about it. It's those assumptions I'm asking the basis of as it's not there in what we see.


That was where the product range was. That was where the decision was to be made about what they were going to sell. Mugs? Jigsaw puzzles? Mouse mats? Place mats? Etc, etc. A fairly vital task decision which fell to her to make.

I'm withholding comment on stuff that relates to later in the programme than I've already posted until the transcript catches up. This is because I find it easier to do so after refreshing myself of the facts of what we actually saw.

Or that she believed that Raef would back her up regardless of what actually happened.

Or, much more likely, that she misremembered the detail of what happened.

Of course, it's also possible that Helene misremembered but it's much less likely that the recipient (or non recipient) of training would forget.

I suspect that Helene was present for part of the training but Lucinda thought she actually received more than she did.


That doesn't really mean anything. She might have thought that was obvious to Lucinda.


I agree that is more likely.

I have a fundamental dislike of assuming people are lying (particularly as they must have it in the back of their minds that they were on camera and are very likely to be found out) when differing viewpoints of slightly faulty memory are far more likely explanations.



With hindsight that seems a reasonable suggestion.

If she was told the equipment was extremely simple to operate she probably didn't even give thought to the possibility that someone could not operate it.

I'm still of the mind that there was some intermittent fault with the equipment as from personal experience Windows can be very inconsistent handling hot attachments.

Irrespective of the perceived "truth" of the events - remember, there is a six month gap between the filming and the Your Fired recording.

I answered far more than just half a sentence.


I stated a simple fact that of the people I know, the more experienced in life and people skills tend to be vastly less judgemental than those who lack those skills (which obviously includes children).

This is not in any way just related to Helene.

These people are far more capable of pinpointing a person's actual faults and putting them in perspective whilst still liking other aspects of their persona than those (often children and those with little experience of working in high pressure environments and having to very rapidly adjust to dealing with an array of complex personalities also working in a high pressure environment) who will take a rapid and deep seated dislike to someone and not allow anything to change their mind.



Helene (along with the rest of the candidates) was by no means perfect. She just seems to suffer disproportionate opprobrium from a lot of people with very little justification.

That simply does not fit with the way they split the tasks up.

Helene could not come up with a name, but she did make a vital change from spelling it 'Duel' implying conflict to 'Dual' implying a dichotomy which was fundamental to where the branding went next.


ROFLMAO.

They are launching a new fragrence and Helene 'only' came up with the smell!


She came up with the theme by making a vital change to the brand name.

She came up with the scent which was admired by someone AS greatly respected. (Sounded yuk to me ).

She didn't come up with the bottle and that was where they lost.

I do agree, though, that her performance in the early part of the task was not good. She seemed to be suffering from a bad case of nerves. I actually thought she might have been feeling seriously unwell.

The scent was a virtual irrelevance. Producing a new scent is a long, professional process. The whole task was ALL about the commercial and business element. i.e Production and marketing.

They way they aplit up the task was as follows:

Helene: Branding and smell.
Alex: The bottle and the ad.

Helene didn't fulfil her task in branding. Alex helped her a lot and they came up with the name. He consulted with her regarding the bottle and she refused to comment dismissing the bottle design as an important task. Like Alex, she didn't even emphasise the point of the cost.

I think the bottle design should have been agreed upon as they did with the name. Helene was asking Alex about names and she should have contributed to this part of the task especially that Alex consulted with her. Saying that the task fails on Alex's part and she is blameless is completely unfair!!!

Rubbish.

If that had been what AS wanted he would have given them the fragrence and told them to go from there.

The fact that they were expected to actually come up with it shows that it was an integral part of the task.

It was the part Helene undertook and it was praised by one of the top people in the industry.

I appreciate that it's a very inconvenient fact when you want to pretend that Helene didn't do anything but please, can we actually remain in the realms of reality?

You are TOTALLY misreading the challenge (lol). The choice of scent was a complete red herring.

I think it's fairer to say that the choice of scent didn't ultimately seem to factor into Sir Alan's decision. If one of the teams had come up with 'essence of pigsty' by accident or through poor judgement then it might have been a different story.

You can say that as many times as you like. It will never make it true.

If the smell was irrelevant they would simply have been provided with it rather than have facilities laid on and production crews at the perfume house and they would not have had people checking the scent and commenting on it - including AS himself in the BR.

But Alex, Jenny C, and Claire all did the training and they also selected the product range etc. I think she could have paid attention during the training session and then think about the product range!!! This way she could estimate the time needed to create each product, the costs envolved, etc.

In addition, Helene was told by Lucinda that she is not technical. Helene should have made sure that Lucinda did understand the job and helped her to grasp it. This is the minimum support required from the PM especially that she was the one who delegated the roles.

Helene did the same thing in the wedding task. During the task, she said that Sara's body language was awful. Why didn't she have a word with her during the task?. Alternatively, she could have stepped up to help them sell or to show them how to sell. She could have also switched Alex to the cakes (Like lucinda did when the wedding dresses didn't sell) if she thought that the cakes can be sold. It was clear that Helene was happy to let Sara take the blame for not selling the cake because she suspected that the cakes wouldn't sell anyway. Again she saw her team fail and did nothing.

I don't think she intends to make her teams fail. However, she doesn't seem to be able to recover from failure and she doesn't have the ability to change things around her. If team members aren't capable enough to do the task, she will let them fail because she knows she isn't the one to blame.

That's true.

They failed comprehensively because, as a business, their product was a non starter because of the cost.

I think we just have to disagree on this one: I'll stay on the side of the rational and analytical, and leave the realms of fantasy to your good self (lol)

Don't take it seriously.

I suppose it could be deemed unfair but only if you work on the premis that Alex had no common sense.

Helene treated him as if he had at least an iota of business sense and simply assumed that it would be obvious to even a complete moron that if you are set a price point you need to keep careful tabs on your production costs.

In fact, assuming too high a level of competance from her co workers seems to have been her main downfall all along:

She assumed that even someone who is non-technical could master the photo system that was designed for non technical people.

She assumed that anyone aspiring to a position such as AS's apprentice would understand simple the costs/selling price relationship.

Indeed, it was assuming too great a level of competance for others that did for poor Shazia.

So you believe that simply saying something based on your opinion and with no logical backup: "The scent is irrelevant in a 'Create a new scent and market it' task". is rational and analytical.

whereas making a logical argument that if it were irrelevant

1) It would have been dished out as a starting point
2) They would not have laid on access to a perfume house
3) They would not have had a production crew following the genesis of the scent.


I think where we will have to agree to disagree is what constitutes rationality and analysis and what fantasy.

Without referring specifically to Helene, I was disappointed at the level of proper team leadership throughout the programme. Of course, they all want to be Captain, but a ship can only have ONE captain, and if it isnt you - you have to realise this and play your part accordingly.

The best team leaders were, for me, Lee and Lucinda. Of course its immpossible to say how some of the others would have done as team leaders for some of the later tasks.

Perhaps you're right. However, she also fails to rectify the situation even when she knows the level of incompetence.
The thing is she expected Alex to help with the branding, why didn't she listen when he was trying to decsribe the design of the bottle. She was given the chance to comment. Even after she saw the bottle, we didn't see her worry comment on the cost. I think it is fair to say that this point was overlooked by both Helene and Alex and she should not have blamed him for the failure of the task.

I suppose so.

One can only say in mitigation that the exit interview was probably filmed within a couple of hours of them being told they'd lost the task and it's only natural for emotions to be running high*.

At least, after mature reflection, she did not carry that accusation through to the YF programme.


* This is one of the reasons I think children and young people tend to be very hard on the contestants. They simply cannot relate the stress and emotions involved to their own lives - even if they have suffered similar levels of stress and emotions themselves. It's a facility that comes with time, and even then you have to work at it.

I think Sir Alan had chosen his winning team before they even did the task. He could have moved the goalposts in many different directions to justify why he chose the winning team but I think he was always going to choose between Lee and Claire.