You're Fired! The Apprentice

[Trollheart]

FYI, although this originally began as a US show with the now-president and resident Nazi in the White House, I flatly refuse to cover the American version as I can't stand the man's face and I have no intention of ever watching it again, given what's happened. Totally understandable, I would hope.

Instead, I'm going to be concentrating on the UK version, which certainly has run for enough seasons already to keep me going, with a new one starting next week.

In case anyone is unaware of the format, and cares, here it is. Fourteen hopefuls, supposedly the best British business has to offer, come to  be introduced to Sir Alan Sugar, later Lord Sugar, who will, at the end of this process, award one of them with a high-flying, high-paying job with one of his many companies. For fifteen of them, it will be the door out of the Boardroom and the taxi home, for one it will be the beginning of a life and a career that they could only dream about. But the candidates will, initially, have to learn to work together if they want to win each task. Split into two teams, they will compete and vie for the top prize, and each week one person in the losing team will be sent home.

Each team picks a Project Manager (PM) who is responsible for the task, for getting people to work together, and for all decisions taken regarding that task, good or bad. If that team wins, the PM stands to be rewarded and praised, but if it fails, more often than not he or she will be in Sugar's firing line. It doesn't necessarily follow that every time a task is lost the PM will get the bullet, but he or she will have to bring in two of their team whom they feel did not contribute well or even at all to the project, or who perhaps they believe or wish to impress upon Sugar are in fact responsible for the loss. He or she will have to fight their corner though, as nobody is going to go down easily here, and two people brought in together may very well decide to gang up on what they may see as a weak PM, perhaps resulting in his or her being fired.

Shadowing each team every week will be one of Sugar's two closest advisors, and this changes over the seasons, as often previous winners are brought back as advisors, but whoever it is will have the same brief: observe how the teams work, what they do on the task (or don't do) and report back to the boss. Should someone make a claim that is untrue, whoever has been following them  may tell Sugar they are lying, or that it did not quite happen that way, so there is not too much room for flim-flam or bullshit. Before they can be told their first task the teams have a look at where they're going to be staying for thirteen weeks, usually a top mansion laid on by Sir Alan, and are told to choose a name for their team. Iniitally it tends to be boys vs girls (or men vs women if you prefer) but as more and more people leave the process this usually becomes unsustainable, and Sugar has a penchant for mixing the teams up anyway, either to balance out what he sees as strengths and weaknesses, or just to throw them into confusion and perhaps insert a certain bird among the felines.

Season one, episode one:
"Wilting Blooms"

Meet the candidates

Although we'll find out more about each person as the series progresses (other than the first one fired, of course) here's a basic rundown of who arrives in the very first boardroom, dreaming of a new life and looking for the start Sir Alan Sugar can give him or her. I'll list them alphabetically.

• Lindsay Bogaard, Communications Manager
• Tim Campbell, Transport Manager
• Raj Dhonota, Internet entrepreneur
• Rachel Groves, Charity Fundraiser
• Saira Khan, Sales Manager
• Ben Leary, Headhunter
• Adele Lock, Retail Manager
• James Max, Investment Banker
• Adenike Ogundoyin, Restaurant Manager
• Matthew Palmer, Mature Student
• Miranda Rose, Estate Agent
• Sebastian Schrimpff, Financial Analyst
• Miriam Staley, Hotel Manager
• Paul Torrisi, Property Manager

Sir Alan's eyes and ears in the first few seasons are Margaret and Nick, Mountford and Hewer respectively. He also goes to great lengths to point out that he and he alone has the power to decide who will be fired, as if he's laying down a marker, to tell the BBC or whoever makes the programme that they will not tell him who is to be fired, that it might be better for viewing figures if this or that person got the bullet or was kept. It's clear he intends to maintain total and direct control over the show, and he sets his stall out from the very start. He also makes it clear he is not impressed by diplomas, degrees or any other paraphernalia. One of his catchphrases will become "I don't like bullshitters", and he doesn't. If someone is making themselves out to be other than they are, or is exaggerating the truth, he will not stand for it. He's also hates those he considers flying under the radar, or "hiding in the long grass", and there's really no place for those who don't pull their weight, and are seen not to, or accused of not doing so.

Right away he leaves the candidates under no illusions, telling them this is a  "job interview from hell". They should know what to expect, and if they fail to perform he will have no hesitation in kicking them out. He's an East End boy (grew up in the East End of London) and a market trader,and almost insults the candidates, and in later episodes and seasons will. He makes no friends and accepts no attempts at currying favour: the only way to win this boss over is to win the task, and win it big. And keep winning. He will be drilling down into the details of every task with the teams, and there will be no hiding place. Some of the candidates may come to regret ever having signed up for this!

The first thing the candidates have to do, having been split up into the traditional women vs men teams, is pick a name, and though the men come up with theirs - Impact - pretty quickly, the women spend over an hour deliberating until they finally come up with... First Forte? What the fuck does that mean? Something is either your forte or it isn't; you don't have a first or second forte!

As for the task? Well, he decides to take his people back to basics by selling flowers on the streets of London. Furnished with £500 seed (hah) money, they will go out in the morning and whoever sells the most and makes the most money will win. Saira, in charge of the women's team, seems to be locking horns with another member, Miranda, shooting down her suggestions and cutting her off all the time, making it seem like she's not but in fact being quite rude and bossy (though I guess she is the PM and has to take control) while Tim, leading Impact, listens to suggestions including going door to door selling the flowers.

The Task

At Covent Garden flower market both teams have the opportunity to buy the flowers they want, at the best prices they can manage. The boys, on advice from one of the professional sellers here, go for lilies, while the girls seem confused and divided, and are late finishing, with many an argument on the way. As he often will do, Sugar has set up a pitch for each team, this time in Portobello Market, from where they can sell as well as do their other sales door to door or on the street. But when they arrive, all they see is a blank space. There is nothing to sell on, no stall, no tables, no display. The girls, arriving first, have used their charm to get a table from a nearby butcher shop so the boys decide not to compete for now, and go door to door instead. Matthew, who lives nearby, directs them to the places he believes they will be most successful.

As it turns out, whether intentional or not, Sir Alan has chosen for them spots in a fairly ordinary market, and there's little or no footfall. Nobody is interested and so the girls are having a hard time selling. On the other team, Paul turns out to be a selling phenomenon, charming, cajoling or wooing everyone he meets into buying the flowers. Even the traditional English downpour can't dampen his technique, and the girls realise (after two hours) that they're getting nowhere at the market, and move on. They begin to sell on the street, but Miranda makes an executive decision to offload some of her stock on a local shopkeeper at below cost price. That's never going to go down well!

As sales begin to move for the girls Saira seems to be the main seller, and as the day begins to wind down she decides they should head to King's Cross railway station, while the boys go to Baker Street. Probably a bad move, as they both find out to their cost. People on the way to or from trains are not interested in buying flowers. Nevertheless, the girls do manage to sell out before the deadline, as, a short time later, do the boys, but only by slashing prices to the bone, a tactic the girls have not resorted to (other than Miranda's earlier unsanctioned below-cost sale).

And now for a word..

Nick and Margaret frequently give their considered view as the task progresses, so here I'll note whenever they say anything about it that I believe is worth mentioning.

Nick (following First Forte): "They're running out of time. There are some good ideas in there, but they need to start buying or they'll be in trouble."
(He's referring to the scatterbrain approach of the girls, who are trying to decide what they need to buy to "dress up" their bouquets - ribbons, bags etc - while not actually concentrating enough on buying the actual flowers.)

Nick: "I think they've got confused. This is an ordinary street market but there's no traffic here. It's a residential place, local people come here to buy their vegetables. I think they're going to stay here for about twenty  minutes and get disappointed."

Nick (yeah, Margaret is keeping schtumm it would seem!): "The only salesperson there is Saira. It's not pretty to watch, but it's effective. It's almost physical. It's a bit confrontational, but she's shifting the merchandise."

The Boardroom

I should point out that a condition of Sugar's process is that everyone must give up their job to be selected, meaning that whoever is picked eventually is immediately available for work. However this also means that the other thirteen candidates are now out of a job, unless some under-the-counter/gentleman's agreement deal has been worked out, of which we are not advised. To all intents and purposes though, fourteen people leave their jobs to vie for this one, and thirteen are going to find themselves unemployed at the end. It does add a level of seriousness and tension to the show, and is I guess meant to ensure that the candidates work even harder to be the chosen one.


The boys come in with the first win and beat the girls quite comfortably. Sugar is impressed, and says so. Miranda, not surprisingly, is taken to task over her early-doors cut-price strategy; Sugar says that the time to re-evaluate prices is maybe 4 or 5pm, near the end of the task, not 1pm. He says he detects an air of panic and he's not wrong. Also unsurprisingly, when asked who she wants to bring back Saira choose Adeneike, whom she had something of an argument with, and Miranda.

Behind the Boardroom Door

This is a mostly short piece where I let you know what the two advisors have to say to Sugar about the remaining three candidates. Sometimes their opinion can point you in the direction of seeing who is likely to get fired, sometimes not. Sugar listens to them, respects them, but he always has the final say and will often go completely against their advice.

Not quite sure why, but the three of them talk in really low voices so it's hard to make out what they're saying, but I do hear Nick mentioning that Adenike was "a real thorn in Saira's side"...

And then there were three

The second part of "The Boardroom" is when those who have managed, by dint of hard work, alliances or just pure luck to escape for another week are allowed to go back to the house and the PM plus his or her two chosen candidates face Sugar to see who will end up being fired.

Miranda's interrogation continues; Sugar tells her he can only see what she did as panic, no matter how she tries to justify it. Selling at a loss just cuts him up, it goes against everything he believes in. Adenike tries to claim she sold well when Sugar takes her to task but Nick shakes his head and says, as we saw, that Saira was doing most of the sales. She however then puts her foot in it when she blames her two teammates for not following her strategy, and Sugar reminds her that she herself told him a short time ago that she allowed some of her team to operate semi-autonomously, as they had greater experience in sales.

It looks like Miranda is for the chop, but as he will often do, Sugar surprises everyone and goes for Adenike, believing her questioning of the PM's strategy was unforgivable, even though Miranda's losing money for the team sticks in his craw. He tells her in particular she is lucky, and Adenike becomes the first one to be fired, which is just as well, as it's hard to remember the spelling of her name...

After the Firing

Generally, Sugar often does a little post-mortem of a few words, backing up the reason he fired who he did.

"That's the way I saw it folks. I think she was undermining exactly everything that was agreed."

QUOTES

Sugar: "Never ever ever underestimate me, because it will be a mistake. I know everything about my business. I know where every nut, every bolt and every screw is in my company. I don't like liars, I don't like cheats. I don't like bullshitters, I don't like schmoozers, I don't like arselickers."

Saira: "I love being a woman. I would never want to be a man."
(Ah, insert your own comment...)

Adeneike: "I see my position in this team as a leader. I've always been a leader, it's all I know. I'm the first child; I've always led. I don't know how to follow."
(This will be a problem: you can't have a team of eight leaders. No matter how the others may want to lead, or feel they should, they need to learn to follow. It's not just good leaders who make good teams.)

Sugar: "No disrespect, I felt sure the ladies would win. I'm impressed. And not many people impress me."

Sugar: "Anyone can sell at a loss! I can go out on the streets and sell ten pound notes for nine quid all day!"



Thoughts in the cab

Each person fired gets their chance to make some final comments on the ride away the building. Occasionally it's a frank admission that they weren't good enough, sometimes (usually) it's a belief that Sugar was wrong to fire them but it can also be an opportunity for cheap shots at those left in the process, especially if there are any feuds or rivalries to be addressed.
Adenike: "I am obviously quite a strong-headed person. I like to get my opinion across, especially when things don't seem quite right. If you're actually fired for not supporting a losing strategy, that's fine. I'm proud of what I've done, I'm proud of all my suggestions. The bottom line is I have been fired and you just have to accept it and move on."

You're fired!

Here I'll be looking at the candidate who was fired, telling you what I know or can find out about them, and referring to anything they did in the task(s) on which they worked before being shown the door. If I can, I will also research how they've been doing since the show, if they've gone on to be a success or have never been heard from again.

Name: Adenike Ogundoyin
Age: 30
Occupation: Restaurant Manager

I can't tell you all that much about her as she was the first to go, and didn't really distinguish herself other than by her disruption of the team and her questioning of Saira's decisions. It was she who wanted to target hospitals and funeral parlours, leading to Margaret's incredulous comment "You wanted to ring funeral directors in the middle of the night, and get them to step out on the pavement and buy sixty quid's worth of flowers from you? That was your strategy, was it?"

She came across as quite sullen, making you wonder why maybe she didn't put herself forward as leader if she thought she was so great, and was another, like Miranda, who refused to accept that she had made mistakes. She originally came from Nigeria, and very sadly, died in 2011 after collapsing at a meeting. There is no information on how she died.

[Trollheart]

In this section I'll look at whether the leader of each team did a good job, should have been in charge, or whether they made a mistake in stepping up and in so doing, in the losing team, threw the task.

First Forte: Saira was a good leader, per se, though she seemed to be one of these hands-on people who have to do everything herself, and she certainly didn't entertain any dissension in her ranks. As one of them put it, she was quite dictatorial, but it more or less worked. She's quite arrogant and condescending, as she says herself in her bio, people can see her as a little bossy. Indeed.

Impact: Tim certainly had a clear startegy and knew what he wanted to do. He used his people well, didn't worry about personal sales - Paul was clearly the best salesman by a mile and he let him run with it, resulting in a huge win for his team - and generally nobody seemed to step out of line or disrupt the team really. In other words, there was no Sam.

May the best team win?

Sometimes you can tell who's going to win, sometimes it's up in the air. A simple mistake, a few quid or a bad decision can change what should have been a winning team into the one who returns to the Boardroom to face Sugar. Here I'll pore over whether the team that won should have, in my opinion, if I could have predicted they would win and if they deserved to.


Hard to say really, as this was only the first task and for me it looked like it could have gone either way. But compared to the squabbling, one-upmanship on the girls' team, Impact was an ocean of calm, so it's not too surprising that they won. Mind you, the last pitches were disastrous initially for both teams, but Miranda's "panic selling" earlier probably lost them a lot of their potential profit. Nevertheless, I doubt I could have called this.

Weeding out the weaklings

As the weeks go on, it gets easier to see who is going to thrive and who is likely to fall by the wayside. Sometimes there are clues to this from the start, sometimes people's weaknesses will only become apparent later in the process. Here I'll be singling out the ones I consider weak and seeing how long they last. Admittedly, I've seen the show and know how it ends, but it was years ago and though I remember the overall winner I couldn't tell you how the rest did.

A little early but I saw nothing from Miriam, Raj, Sebastian, Rachel or Linday, and Adele seemed to do nothing but complain.

The Front Runners

Again, too early to say but Tim and Paul seem to be the two standing out. Saira is good but her abrasive and condescending personality may lead her into trouble with her team.

Sight Adjustment?

Although he says he always decides with his head, sometimes Sugar will allow his heart to rule his decisions. If he sees something in the candidate that perhaps nobody else sees, especially if he says he sees something of himself in them, he may allow them a pass. Similarly, if they have done well up to then but just let themselves down this week, he may decide not to fire them. Sometimes I agree with these "stays of execution", sometimes not. Here is where I'll examine whether the candidate who was fired deserved to be, whether Sugar made, in my opinion, the right decision, or whether someone else escaped who should really have been walking out the door.

Personally, I think selling at below cost price (twice) was a miscalculation Miranda should not have been able to come back from. I think she directly contributed to the team's poor performance, I think she made an unilateral decision that should have been cleared with the PM, and when called on it she did not hold up her hands and admit she had been wrong, she still tried to justify the unjustifiable. I suppose Sugar must have seen something in her but I would have fired her. Adenike was culpable too but not in my opinion as much as Miranda.

Adjustment required: 60%

Oops!

Not to harp on about it, but selling so early at so low a price was a serious flaw in Miranda's logic and, had the takings been a little closer and the girls just narrowly beaten I think she would have had to shoulder the responsibility for that.

The one that got away
Even in a winning team there may be those who escaped by the skin of their teeth, the sort of person whom you know, had their team lost, would have been in the hot seat. Of course, there are "the ones that got away" in the losing team also: only three members in total can be called back in, one of which is the PM, so in the ones that remain, is it possible someone has dodged a bullet?

For all the reasons already given, I believe Miranda is lucky still to be in the process.

[Trollheart]

Season one, episode two:
"Child's Play"

Note: there are a few sections I want to add, expand on or change. This doesn't matter of course, as nobody is reading this, but it helps get me through the long winter nights...

In an interestingly tender moment of camaraderie, the boys have brought back a bottle of champagne from their trip to the London Eye, laid on by Sir Alan as reward for winning the first task. However, the very next morning Tim , PM on that task, decides it might be prudent to delay waking the girls until the last minute. He answered the phone, only he and the guys know the cars are on their way, and any advantage they can gain they will take, showing that the time for being a nice guy is, rather abruptly, over before it really ever had a chance to begin. The girls are not impressed; the boys have been expecting an early call, and their preparation, allied to their somewhat, it has to be said, ungentlemanly behaviour, has left them more awake and ready to face the morning than their counterparts, who rise later but still manage to be ready when the cars arrive.

Sir Alan tells the teams when he meets them that he is not just looking for a salesperson. Yes, sales are important but he wants a more rounded individual, someone who can turn his or her hand to any task they may be set. And so today's task is design. They have to design and market a children's toy, and preferably one which will be so popular it will kick off a craze. Of course, the old adage, never work with children or animals, comes to mind, but the teams must take whatever task they're given and complete it to the best of their ability. If there's someone in the team afraid of dogs and they're told to manufacture a new dog food, they had better get over their fear because it will not be accepted as an excuse.

The Briefing
Almost always Sugar will gather his candidates at a specific location, summoning them to hear the details of the task he has for them. Later, these may or may not have links - tenuous or not - to the task, but usually they do serve to highlight British industry and financial might. Here, the first time the candidates are assembled to hear a task outside of the Boardroom, they're called to a luxury car showroom in Berkley Square. Whether or not a nightingale sang there is not recorded.


The Task

The teams are taken to a toy design company, but will have to come up with the idea for their toy on their own. First Forte's new PM is Lindsay, who has been pretty invisible so far, making this her chance to step out of the shadows and be noticed. She has decided to split her team into a "business team", which will go doing research, checking prices, what's hot and so on, and a "creative team", which will design the toy. Therefore only half of First Forte (the first half, I assume! ) arrive at the toy designer's, which might look a little odd. The boys elect Raj - doesn't seem to be any reason, any more than there is for the girls to have chosen Lindsay - and they decide to concentrate exclusively on a toy aimed at boys. Makes sense I guess: what do they know about little girls?

Again, the girls seem to be all over the place, rushing here and there as they try to find toy shops, not seeming to have planned anything beforehand. I know this is in the years before Google Maps and mobile phones with GPS, but still, a little research with even a London A-Z or a few phone calls might have made all this somewhat hapless dashing about unnecessary. They however have decided not to differentiate, and to make their toy appeal to both sexes. There's been some crazy talk about semaphore (!) then something magnetic, modular and collectible. What they end up with is a three-pin plug that has live electricity going through it (you plug it in) and it does various things depending on what you connect to it. Naturally, this is shot down immediately by the designers as being unsafe, even dangerous, so they move on with the idea of battling construction robots. The boys have decided to update the idea of Top Trumps, the card collecting game, making an electronic version. Not sure how copyright will work on that. As one half of the girls' team finds great enthusiasm for their robot idea from their focus group of children, Lindsay does what so many other - often losing - PMs will end up doing: ignores her market research in order to bludgeon her idea through. She thinks semaphore is the way to go (god knows why) and she intends to make sure it's the toy they end up deciding on.

In the end, she asks the designers to take on board both the robot and the stupid semaphore thing, which she christens "Secret Signals", giving them twice as much work and proving that she has not listened to anything her own team has been telling her. A sign of a very bad leader. She calls a meeting that night to try to convince everyone - bully them really - to accept her idea. Meanwhile Raj calls Matthew out over reading a book while they're supposed to be brainstorming names for their toy. Matthew is dismissive and rude, and seems to think himself above all of this.

The next morning Impact are on the road before the girls have even risen from bed. When they get to the designers the boys collect their one electronic toy and are very happy with it, while the girls have two to choose from. Only one can be pitched, so until they know which one that will be they're in the stupid and unenviable position of having to write two pitches. They take the two toys to their focus group and the kids vote for the robot, and even though a vote among her own team, which she instigates, has them as the clear winner she decides upon ... Secret Signals. Did we even expect anything else? She already ignored one set of market research, why not another if it furthers her agenda and gets her her way?

Adele again has a problem with Saira, carrying on her argumentative behaviour and moaning from the first task, and it's clear these two are not going to get on. During the pitch Saira goes on at considerable length, spouting a lot of buzzwords and you can actually see one of the client's eyes begin to glaze over as he slumps back in his seat, totally lost and bored at this point. Saira completely misses this and continues waffling. At one point during another part of the presentation, this time given by Miriam, he stifles and covers a yawn. Again, nobody notes this, though you can be sure Nick and Margaret are taking notes. James leads the pitch for Impact, and seems to be doing okay: at least the clients stay awake!

Before he meets the teams in the Boardroom, Sugar has a talk with the toy designers who seem distinctly unimpressed with the "Secret Signals", surprise surprise! The guy who was falling asleep remarks "Maybe if it was 1960 they could have got away with that!" On the other hand they seem to have been really taken with Impact's toy, but do point out that they don't specialise in that sort of electronic direction. Did they though, they say they would probably have ordered it, it was that good. So on the face of it, this would look like another win for the boys. But as ever, it's Sir Alan who makes the decision, and he may feel differently when he speaks to them.

And now for a word...
Nick: "They had a number of I thought very clever concepts. They came up with perhaps too many - nine I think in all. Some of them I thought were extraordinary. The winner appeared to be a three pin plug, something children are told time and time again to stay away from. And here they are, designing a toy to replicate the look of a three-pin plug. I was staggered!"

Margaret: "It took longer than it should have. They are a bit behind but what they've come up with is a bit of a mixture of what quite a few of them thought of, and that's quite good because it shows they're working in teams. Paul said at one point 'Yeah, that idea is much better than mine', and that's good because he's the sort of person who likes his own ideas. Whether they should have talked to someone at Vivid (the designer) beforehand about generally what was in the market, what you could make for x Pounds etc, I don't know. They didn't do that, they did it the other way round. It may turn out that that was the right strategy. We'll find out."


The Boardroom

Giving both teams the chance to pitch their ideas to him, Sir Alan is singularly unimpressed with "Secret Signals" - "Looks like a bunch of cards to me", is his verdict, and "Sounds a bit boring." But there is a bombshell waiting to be dropped, when after listening to Impact's pitch he then produces a very similar product which is currently on sale in Argos! Oh dear! Could this be a win by default for the ladies, with a terrible but at least original product?

But although there is doubt in Sugar's mind as to whether the boys just copied the idea or if it's just coincidence that something similar already exists, he tells them that he must really go with the opinion of the experts, who loved their toy, and so theirs is the winner. Or, to put it another way, they could probably have designed a box and a stick and it would have beaten Secret fucking Signals! So another win for the men! 2-0! Lindsay's apprentice candidature is now hanging by a thread. Nobody really expects her to survive. The whole idea was conceived, driven, pushed and bulldozed through by her, and there really is nobody else to blame.

Return to the Boardroom

Here is where I make the first major change. The Boardroom is in fact split up into three sections - four, if you include the setting of the task, though often it will not feature in that: there's the return of both teams as their task is assessed and the winner ascertained, after which the winning team leaves, usually to engage in some "treat" Sugar has laid on for them (dinner, carnival, sport, that sort of thing, often with celebrities whose presence he involves) then the second part takes place when Sugar dismisses the losing team, has them wait outside like naughty schoolchildren while he discusses their failure with his advisors (see "Behind the Boardroom Door") and then calls them back in. At this point, the PM is told to choose, as I already mentioned, two of their team to accompany them back for part three, wherein one of the three will be fired. Therefore I will now have "The Boardroom" followed by "Return to the Boardoom" (sounds like a movie about businessmen, doesn't it?) and finish with "And Then There Were Three".


When asked who do they blame for the failure, surprisingly the girls don't all go for Lindsay, but then it's those who were in her camp, those who were on her sub-team, who kind of defend her, particularly Rachel, who says they were all pleased with the toy. That's a blatant lie. At least Adele admits she hated it and even abstained from the presentation, unable to muster the enthusiasm that would have been needed to pitch it. Miriam twists and turns, but does lay blame at Lindsay's feet for leaving it so late to decide which product they were going with. She is one of the two called back in with Lindsay, the other being, no surprise, Adele.

Behind the Boardroom Door

Sir Alan: "As I said, several times, they're being awfully polite. When these three come back in she's going to have to give me a very good reason - and the other one's going to have to give me a good reason too; I'm not too clear about what Miriam's position is. She can talk very well, it's kind of like one of those talks that comes over like a drone: I don't even know what she's saying half the time."

Margaret: "It didn't make sense to say I remained equally committed to both. You have to have one you prefer."

Nick: "You've heard more from Adele now than you have since she came here."

Margaret: "I'm not really clear on what Adele did here."

Sir Alan: "Well, it's more what she didn't do. She abstained, basically."

Margaret: "I'm not sure about Adele; she clearly was very passionate about the other product. Whether she didn't help beause of that. And I'm not clear about Miriam then Miriam did the presentation but it wasn't that convincing a presentation."

And then there were three

Sir Alan immediately latches onto Lindsay's comment that she is "clutching at straws" bringing two people back with her, and asks her what she means. She confirms that there was very little she saw that any of her team did wrong. Sir Alan asks then if she's "flipping a coin" and she gets flustered. When asked who should be fired she says Adele, but Miriam says something interesting. Described in the PM's own words as "dispensable", she says that she had to convince Saira to go ahead with the presentation, that Saira did not believe in the project and also wanted to absent herself from any connection to it. This is in direct contrast to what Saira herself said to the camera, along the lines of yes, I don't believe in the product but I'm a professional and will give it one hundred percent. Whether or not she says this after Miriam has apparently convinced her to stay on is debatable, but it does make me wonder how committed anyone was to this stupid toy other than Lindsay and, to a smaller degree, Rachel, who tellingly was not called back in.

Miriam reiterates, when asked for clarification from Sir Alan, that Lindsay had them prepare two separate presentations, one for each toy, and that she only made the final decision on which one they were going with twenty minutes beforehand. She says Lindsay should be fired. Adele concurs. Things are not looking good for the PM, though Sir Alan does make it obvious that he does not like the idea of someone abstaining and not giving a hundred percent to the product, whether or not they agree with it. He seems to fnd it hard to see any real professionalism there. But in the end he gives Adele a pass. He's not too covinced by Miriam's half-hearted failure to come down on the side of one or the other of the products, unlike Adele, but in the end there can be no ignoring the massive mistake Lindsay made in her arrogance and blinkered manner, and she pays the ultimate price, being the second girl fired.

[Trollheart]

After the firing

Sir Alan: "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought they were sent out to make a toy, not go and dance at two weddings and make two toys. Make a toy. And she made that decision, and all of the rest of them had to admit that. It was her decision, it was down to her, and I got no problem with her going, I'm afraid."

Thoughts in the cab

Lindsay; "I think I kind of engineered the Boardroom to get Adele sacked, because I felt she was the weakest link. So I put Miriam in, because she's strong, thinking that would then give Sir Alan Sugar no choice but to fire Adele. My values are about making a decision and sticking to it. If it's the wrong call then it's the wrong call, but if you're working for somebody you can't sack them for  making the wrong decision, because you've invested so much money in them you may as well keep them, because they've learned something and they're a better employee after that. So I mean, I don't share Sir Alan Sugar's values, but he's got every right to make his own judgement."

Let's just analyse this. What does it tell us about Lindsay? To me, it tells me first and foremost that she has not accepted that she was to blame for the failure of the task. It also tells me  - well, she tells us - that she was happy to throw someone else under the bus, thought she had orchestrated things so that she would be safe, and seemed to think there was no chance of her being fired. To her, it was a choice between Adele and Miriam, and she didn't figure in the decision at all. Very arrogant, and very blinkered. She also says that if you make a mistake you should be allowed to let that slide, in order to grow from it and improve yourself. Sugar will take this line sometimes, but here the error was just too glaring, and Lindsay stuck too doggedly to her decision and did not accept any responsibility, giving him no choice but to fire her.

Her business ethos is odd: "you can't fire someone for making a mistake"? Surely many many companies do this, and in some cases you're not even given a second chance. I sailed close to the wind on occasion myself and was lucky to still have a job. It depends on many factors, including I suppose how costly your mistake is, how stupid it is, how often you make it or have made it before and whether or not it's survivable. Also whether, indeed, you learn from it, which Lindsay clearly did not: she still didn't think there was anything wrong with her pointless and uninteresting toy. She seems, from this speech, to be someone who makes up her mind and sticks to it come what may, and we've seen in the task this is exactly what she did. Nobody liked her idea, nobody thought it would win, and yet she ignored all advice and ploughed ahead, for no other reason than that it was her idea and she liked it. Arrogant to a fault, and she deserved to be fired.

You're fired!
Name: Lindsay Bogaard
Age: 39
Occupation: Communications Manager

She came across as highly opinionated, refused to listen to anyone else, bulldozed her idea through, and when even one of her members recused herself from the pitches, showing how little she believed in the idea, still went ahead with the stupid toy. She also - first and I think possibly only one to do so in the history of the series so far - chose TWO toys and left it till the eleventh hour to make her decision as to which one they were going with, which not only left them running against the clock to come up with ideas but also led to her choosing the weakest and most pointless toy. Even after being fired she refused to accept she had done a bad job.

After finishing on the series she moved to the Netherlands, where she now runs a successful communications company. Given that she takes and listens to no advice, you'd have to wonder exactly if this is the right arena for her to be exercising her talents in!



First Forte: Already gone into at length above, Lindsay was an awful PM. There are certain qualities you have to have to be  a leader of people, and one of these is to listen to the people below you. While I want to make it quite clear I'm not in any way comparing her to Hitler, the same idea of forging ahead no matter what anyone else says, of ignoring advice and seeing only what you want to see was evident in Lindsay's management style. It was almost literally her way or the highway, and if she went down (and she did) it was going to be on her terms. The problem here that Lindsay did not see is that a team is more than one person, and as PM you have the responsibility for every other team member: you lead them to a win, they're happy, but lead them over the cliff and they all fall with you. A PM also has to be able to change, if necessary, horses mid-stream, to realise an idea is not working, and look for alternatives, or, if that's not possible, to put the best spin they can on it. Lindsay did none of these things, arrogantly believing everyone would love her product, and when they didn't, almost glaring at them for daring to disagree.

As I said, for someone whose forte (pun intended) is communications, she didn't do much of that. She stubbornly ignored the results of the focus group, when her target demographic, her potential customers really, clearly voted for the robot idea, which not only insulted the kids but also her own sub-team who had put in the work, and brought her back news she did not want, news that did not fit with her agenda, and so, news she ignored, She took no ideas other than her own, listened to nobody, failed to get anyone on board with her idea, and not only that, had no clear strategy for the task, rushing here and there looking for toy shops. Considering they knew what the task was, surely the first thing should have been to have identified the location of toy shops, of which there must be hundreds in London? Then she had the silly idea of making a toy supposed to appeal to both boys and girls. Do you know of any toy a little boy would use that a little girl would also be interested in, or vice versa? She even failed to see how designing a toy that used live electricity was a non-starter from the off. I don't think she has or had any children, which might, possibly, explain why she was so clueless about toys, but then, why put herself forward? There's no reason given (whether one was offered or not, it's not shown in the broadcast) but you would think that someone with children would have been better. As I say, I don't know if Lindsay has children but it's certainly not mentioned.

PM Rating:

Impact: Again, there does not seem to be a valid reason why Raj is chosen. His expertise is in, well, the internet, so I don't know, maybe. But I can't see that he has or had any special credentials that would have marked him out as being a good PM. I also heard the word "bankrupt" before entrepreneur, so that might be a red flag? At any rate, the idea seems to be "anyone will do", and so they choose him. I wouldn't have thought that was the greatest strategy, but since they won, I guess it doesn't matter. It's hard to talk about his leadership style, as from what I saw, he really didn't have one. He certainly did not lead the team, who seemed to function quite well on their own, and when he had a chance to demonstrate his interpersonal skills, finding Matthew reading a book as they brainstormed, all he did was lose it, when he could have taken the guy aside and explained how bad what he was doing looked. But instead he called him out angrily in front of everyone, which didn't help anyone.

Although Raj was, in essence, just as bad a PM as Lindsay, I will always allow one extra star to any rating I was awarding, if that team won (whether by default or deservedly), so while they could theoretically should perhaps score the same, and it's no thanks to Raj that they're not, I do have to award a higher rating as they won.

PM Rating:

May the best team win?

Honestly, both the products were shite, and the boys team only won due to Lindsay's stupid "Secret Squirrel sorry Signals" being so much more shite than theirs. Iniitally, their strategy to not tell the girls about the call kind of worked, but really all it did was sow bad feeling between the teams, and I think (though I can't say for sure) that an edict was laid down after this that both teams had to be advised when the call came in. After all, it's very unfair and not at all sporting, and while Sugar would agree all's fair in business, he equally despises those who don't play fair. There really was not much to choose between the teams, or the PMs, and nobody shone so overall you would have to say more that the least bad team won.

Weeding out the weaklings

This week I saw very little from anyone. Two bad PMs, two pretty poor ideas, not much cohesion among the teams, and Impact's sub-team had the crazy and very ill-advised idea to hand sugar sticks around at their focus group. I bet that went down well off-camera! Perhaps the only one to stand out slightly might have been Saira, who dug her heels in and promoted the product even though she hated it and did not believe in it. Perhaps she learned from Adele's mistake last week of abstaining, realising Sugar does not like this, and that he expects everyone to be one hundred percent committed to the task, regardless of their personal feelings. Still, not much to talk about here so far.


Sight adjustment

Although he wavered slightly, and it did look for a moment as if she would escape, Sugar was unable to ignore how poorly Lindsay had led her team, the bad choices she had made and also the way she essentially made it personal, ensuring her toy was chosen to be pitched, and thereby ensuring the failure of the task.

Adjustment required: 0%


QUOTES

Saira (looking at girls' toys in a shop: "Quite girly".
(What the fuck do you expect in the section set out for girls' toys, for god's sake?)

Oops!

Perhaps not quite, but it could have been misinterpreted when Lindsay looks at her watch after the lady in charge of the toy company, who has been asked by them to speak to whether they go with classic toys or design something new, begins talking. She doesn't see it, but had she, she might very well have been offended and as they are to present their toys back here in two days, that could have been a fatal slip.

Another, more damaging slip is of course Lindsay's blind insistence on pushing a toy that nobody except her has shown any interest in, and completely ignoring the focus group's recommendations. Nobody in the team was that enthused about it when she put it forward - most of them didn't seem to even understand it - but that didn't stop her making an unilateral decision that, never mind what the customer wants, this is what I want and this is what they're getting.

Famous last words?

Lindsay: "I think the day is going really well. I'm really pleased, and one of the reasons why I'm really pleased is because I'm finding that a lot of the management styles or leadership styles I'm using are just coming together. I'm seeing my own behaviour in a much better light than I think I've behaved in the past."
(Is this woman on the same planet as the rest of her team? She has totally annoyed and alienated them all, pushing an idea nobody is behind or wants to drive, has given their task a huge millstone as the designers now have to work to produce two toys instead of one, and she has ignored all market research, which is very insulting to the girls who conducted it for her. Her leadership style is to do what she thinks, what she wants, and to hell with anyone else. A case of sticking her fingers in her ears, going la-la-la and screaming very loudly until she gets her own way!)

[Trollheart]

Ruminations...

Just in general, it's always seemed to me to be impossible for the phone to ring and the candidates be told they're getting picked up in 30 minutes. Given that they're all in bed, and assuming the house has at best two bathrooms, and even allowing the bare minimum of 5 minutes for each to get ready, the maths don't work. Especially at the start, you're talking 14 people so 14 x 5 = 70 minutes. That's over twice the amount of time they're given. Not to mention, they have to grab a bite to eat as well, and then there's hair drying and makeup - the women too - so it just seems impossible. Of course it's edited, but I just can't imagine the time frame is sufficient, and so have always imagined they have a lot more time than we're told they do.

It's an old-fashioned attitude, I know, but it annoys me when I see men sitting in the boardroom and allowing women to stand when there aren't enough seats at the table. I know, I know: show no signs of weakness, and some of the ladies would probably take offence if they were offered a seat, but really, is there no room any more in the world of business for chivalry? It especially pisses me off when men walk either in front of women into the boardroom or let the door hit them; can't be too hard to hold the damn thing for them, can it?

[Trollheart]

Season one, episode three:
"Shop Till You Drop"

In what will become a regular thing for him, probably once a series, Sir Alan surprises the candidates by arriving in person at the house to deliver their task for this week. Luckily, unlike those in later seasons will be, they're all up and dressed, although they don't expect the boss to call at the house: they're waiting for the phone to ring. But instead, the doorbell does, and there he is on the doorstep, large as life. He immediately elects team leaders on each team: Matthew for the boys and Adele for the girls. Matthew certainly looks shell-shocked and not at all happy; it's clear that it was not in his plans to be in the firing line so soon. He probably intended to wait until a few of the others had been picked off before stepping forward, but now that decision has been taken out of his hands. Perhaps he feels the icy firing finger beginning to swing towards him already?

But Sir Alan isn't through yet. He now reshuffles the teams, with Saira and Rachel going to Impact and Tim, Sebastian and Ben moving to First Forte. The teams are now balanced out at six members each, and there will have to be shared knowledge and effort between the sexes. Incidentally, I was right about Matthew: he says as much shortly afterwards, that he was avoiding being PM. Well he has no choice now. Saira is happy there's been a reshuffle, as she's been curious to see how the boys approach the tasks, and of course now she's out of that poisonous bickering atmosphere that has already lost them two members, two tasks, and which she was discussing with Adele earlier in the garden. Tim is less happy: after all, he's now been taken from the team with a perfect win ratio and dropped into one that has yet to see a single victory. Talk about a culture shock!

Sir Alan tells them that the task this week the teams will embark on a "treasure hunt"; they're given a list of items and have to go out and buy them at the best possible price. The new teams consider their options, now that they have new members and possibly a whole new way of doing things. Adele decides everyone needs a specific area of responsibility, which isn't a bad idea, especially when she makes one person responsible for negotiations, the "voice" of the team, but she goes a little far when she asks Miranda to be her PA. Perhaps the power is going to her head? Nobody seems too enthusiastic; Miranda in particular had voiced the hope that Lindsay would come back, so she's not likely to be too impressed with the woman who, as she sees it, took Lindsay's place.

Matthew, on the other hand, has nothing to prove. He didn't want this job anyway, so it's not that surprising to find that he may critcise, sneer and belittle while not in charge, but when he is, (forced into it as he was), then he is a very weak man. What happens then is that the stronger personalities in the team (male and female), pickign up on this, like sharks scenting blood or lions coming across an older specimen, go in for the kill and basically leave him to the side; they run the team and Matthew is nothing more than a figurehead. This is however unlikely to save his neck if they lose.

The Task

There are very specific items they have to get, but I won't go into such things here, just give you an idea. For instance, the champagne has to be Bollinger, a certain year etc. Anyway the items on the list are:

• A diamond
• Champagne
• Jellied eels
• 100 dollars
• A bowler hat
• Freeview box
• Dental check-up (Wait, what?)

After spending the morning prudently ringing around to see where they can get the best deals on the items, both teams leave with £1000 in their pockets. This is all they have to buy the items, which include things like champagne and a diamond. They must of course negotiate the best price and try to come back with at least some of their seed capital to be victorious. As will always be the case, each team divides in two, concentrating on certain items. Impact go to get the champagne but are unable to negotiate a low enough price, and decide to leave it to see if they can do better elsewhere. Quite funny: as they leave the wine merchants there's a traffic warden writing a ticket for them! James asks him not to, and presumably because there are cameras there and he realises he'll be on telly (unless of course it was set up, which I don't know) he agrees not to. Probably the first time someone has talked their way out of a ticket with so little argument; none, in fact.

Saira meanwhile manages to negotiate a few pounds off a mattress: not a lot, but it's better than her teammates are doing on the other sub-team, while Adele's team, with Ben leading the negotiations, get fifteen quid knocked off the diamond. The other half of her team, with her in it, are lost and bickering. Sebastian is not enjoying being the meat in this particular sandwich. As the day wears on the famous London traffic becomes another obstacle to their race against the clock. James goes to a gentlemen's outfitters but discovers they only do second-hand items, and all the items must be new. Adele is treating her sub-team as if she's their mother, and when Miranda gets separated from them she's lucky not to get a spanking from Adele. Now that would bring in the viewers, huh?

Nobody's getting much in the way of discounts really; a few quid here, a few quid there. I haven't seen any great deals, and time is winding on. Adele and Miranda continue to fight, having an argument in public. Adele is a real bitch, acting as if everyone works for her - which technically they do, but only for this one task. It's not like she's paying them or they're her actual employees. But she's very condescending and very rude to her team members. Saira and her sub-team have much better luck. After initially failing to get a "Freeview" set-top satellite box down from £75 they all of a sudden are told they can have it for ... nothing. I don't understand it. The guy jsut made the decision, maybe he realised he was on TV and it would be a good opportunity for him, but for whatever reason, they have it for free, biggest discount of the day.

Now it's a race against time and traffic to get back to the Boardroom, and Sugar will fine them for any items they don't get. They will also have anything they bought disqualified if they don't get back within the time limit. With a few minutes to spare, they all make it.

The Boardroom

So all prices are totalled, fines are issued for the items that are missing, and a final figure for each team is calculated. At the end of the day Impact win : although they failed to get the bowler hat, their free set-top box must have offset that and they emerge as the winners. Adele must now consider where to place the blame as her new, revamped team has experienced its first loss, she now having lost three times in all.

Return to the Boardroom

When Sir Alan hears from Adele that she made Miranda her PA he is surprised, and asks Miranda how she felt about that. She of course says she felt underused: being a buyer in her business she felt she could have been much more effectively exploited and thereby contributed more to the team, but Adele seemed to ignore her skills. All she wanted was a secretary, and she decided Miranda would be that secretary. One by one, when asked, everyone blames Adele for the failure, and Sir Alan ruefully remarks that it reminds him of when he was chairman of Tottenham Hotspur: "Everything that went on on that pitch I got blamed for, and I don't even play!" He's a little annoyed I think by everyone automatically "blaming the boss", but Adele really does have to carry the can here. She gave no clear strategy or instructions to her team, and assigned tasks and responsibilities almost arbitrarily.

Iniitally, when asked, Adele seems to want to choose three people to come back in with her - Tim, Ben and, surprise surprise! Miranda - but settles in the end for the last two. Not before she and Miranda have another argument which tests Sir Alan's patience and he throws them all out.

Behind the Boardroom Door

Sir Alan: "I've got an idea but in my mind, I need to talk to them a bit more. I've got to stop this bickering, because it's nonsense, and try to get some sense out of them."

Nick: "You'll get a disciplined answer from Ben, frankly. With the other two, they're just at each other's throats."

And then there were three

Ben, when asked why he should stay, admits he is confused as to why he is here in the first place, believing he did a good job with the diamond, one of the toughest items on the list to negotiate. Miranda accuses Adele of not having a clear strategy or any structure to the task, but when it comes to time for the decision she does not get an easy ride. Sir Alan tells her that he believes she rebelled; that she did not like the role she was put in and so made it difficult. But he is most upset and disappointed with Adele. He after all chose her as the PM and she let him down, and that is one thing he does not forgive. Nobody makes him look like a fool. Adele is surely on the way out.

But nothing is ever certain or carved in stone with Sir Alan Sugar, and he then turns around and says that disappointed as he is in Adele, he is more disappointed in what he sees as the lack of respect from Miranda towards her PM, and perhaps rather surprisingly, she is the one fired. Adele lives to fight another day.

After the firing

Sir Alan: "I tell you, what saved that Adele this time is that she disagreed with her team leader on the last task, but nevertheless she got stuck in and gpt behind her. What I can't tolerate is somebody in a team who was - I feel was disruptive. And therefore if they're disruptive they're no bloody good, cos I don't think you need saboteurs on the team. You might not agree with what your boss is doing but you gotta get your head down and get on and do it."
(This really surprises me. What a selective memory old Sir Alan has! "Got stuck in last time"? No she bloody didn't! Adele rebelled to the point where she, disagreeing with the choice of toy (as did almost everyone) refused to take part in the presentation, abstaining as she said. How can that be seen as supporting your PM, and isn't that a much worse case of rebelling and being disruptive than what Miranda did?)

[Trollheart]

Thoughts in the cab

Miranda: "My feelings towards Adele right now aren't malice of any sort. I think she's a very confused person, and I think she has quite a lot of insecurities, which manifest themselves in many many different ways. So in some ways it's almost pity – and that might sound quite rich as it's me that's in a taxi on the way home! - but no, I mean I'm completely confident with my position and completely thrilled with the experiences I've had."


Famous last words?

As soon as she gets her team together, Adele is already protecting her arse by telling all her colleagues that, in assigning some of them "senior roles" they are accepting that, should they lose, they are in danger of being brought back in to the Boardroom. Before they've even made a phone call, she's talking about losing. And they do. The prophecy is fulfilled.

You're fired!
Name: Miranda Rose
Age: ?
Occupation:Estate Agent

Miranda was probably very unlucky to have been fired this week. Adele was quite calculatingly clever when she offered her the job of being her PA: she made sure to impress upon her that it was her choice, and in a roundabout way was able to absolve herself of any accusation of forcing the job upon her. It's usually difficult to find out what these people did after the show, but from what I can see, Miranda went into acting, and starred in at least two other films or features, The Hotel and Sizism.


Again, two very ineffectual leaders, if they are so in very different ways.
Impact: Matthew, uncomfortable in the role and somewhat worried now that he may be in the firing line, defers to the stronger personalities on his team and allows them to drive things. Essentially, again, a team succeeds in spite of rather than because of its PM. Still waiting for a born leader to show up.

PM Rating:

First Forte: If there was one thing this task was about for Adele, it was Adele. She was more concerned with maintaining her rather scatty but iron grip over the task by browbeating her team members and treating them like children. She was totally condescending and again people more or less worked around her, as they were not given any clear directions from her as how to proceed. Another terrible team leader and it's amazing she is still here.

PM Rating: (and that's only because 0 stars won't register!)

Weeding out the weaklings

Adele for me is a real case of being on the edge. She was lucky not to fall over the precipice this week, but it surely can't be long. She doesn't get on with anyone, is aloof and haughty and rude, is not a good follower and as we see this week, a pretty woeful leader. Sebastian, though we've seen a little more of him this week, was more or less restricted to rolling his eyes as he became the uncomfortable damping rod between Miranda and Adele. I didn't see him contribute much, though there was the huge drag factor of Adele to take into consideration. Still not impressed with Miriam, Raj, Ben, Matthew (despite his being PM) or Rachel. Time will tell if they have anything to offer.

The Front Runners

Saira upped her game this week, with some very good negotiation and some bare-faced lies ("We're the Asian team!" Yeah, with two white guys...) and Paul continues to shine. James is good but his upper-class act comes across as something that will trip him up when they get down and dirty, like in the markets or maybe running a bus trip or god knows what-all. Tim, having impressed previously, is pretty nondescript and inconspicuous here, though in fairness the teams have just been split up, so everyone is kind of finding their feet again. Still...

Sight Adjustment?

For the first time I believe Sir Alan got it 100 percent wrong. Yes, Miranda was being a bitch of an awkward bitch, but she was talked down to so much by Adele I would not have blamed her. She was not responsible for the loss as she was not really allowed to do anything but take notes, and for him to dismiss her because he thinks she was unsupportive or disruptive is really exercising his veto to the nth degree. Adele should have been fired. Simple as.

Adjustment required: 100%

The one that got away?

Well, who do you think? But apart from Adele somehow cheating death this time, I think that had the boys' team lost Matthew might have had a lot to explain, as he was pretty much useless as a PM, and would likely have been fired.

May the best team win?

I didn't honestly think anyone covered themselves in glory this week. In later seasons I've seen people haggle some serious discounts, but here they got maybe twenty or thirty quid off at best, other than the free box, which was really out of the blue and could not really be attributed to their efforts, as they were as surprised about it as I was. Still don't understand the thinking behind that. But on the basis of how bad Adele's team were led, then yeah, I guess the better (of two quite bad) teams won.

Ruminations...

It's always amused me, this idea of negotiation. Clearly, the whole deal is set up by Sir Alan, and the traders bow to his wishes for the show. But if you or I were to go in to say buy a camera, and said to the shop assistant I don't agree with that price, too high, I only have this much, can we make a deal, we'd be told to go fuck off. Shops, particularly large ones, have no interest in giving single customers discounts; they don't care about our business. Now, if we came in as part of a corporate purchase, sure, we'd get a discount - more you buy, less you pay. But the idea that a bunch of people could simply drive down the price of an item simply by asking, haggling, bargaining? Ludicrous. Maybe at a market, certainly not in for instance a wine merchant.

But that's part, I guess, of willing the old suspension of disbelief, the same idea as I mentioned last time about the incredibly and in fact impossibly short time the teams are given to get ready in the morning. Have to accept some things at face value, and realise that at its heart, The Apprentice isn't really a business reality show, but an form of entertainment. Who really after all wants to see how things work in the actual world of finance, buying and selling, and trading? It would be, I imagine, quite sedate and boring, and would have had this show crashing in the ratings pretty quickly. Like the newspapers, the BBC is all about selling, in its case, ratings. Or, to put another, slightly cruder spin on it, bums on seats with eyes on screens. That's all that matters in the end, and to hell with the reality of life.

[Trollheart]

Season one, episode four:
"The Harrods' Sales"

(Note: due to some unexpected happenings this week, certain sections are not required. You'll see what I mean...)

Like just about everyone, bar Sir Alan, Tim is amazed to see Adele walk back into the house. As far as anyone could see, she was toast, and deserved to be, and in my estimation got away by the skin of her teeth, a bad miscalculation on the part of the mogul. But as will always happen, the knives, out and sharpened while they wait to see who comes back, are quickly sheathed and false smiles pasted on, and congratulations offered when the one expected to have been fired comes back, against all odds. Sincerity is not something that tends to be too prevalent in this show. To be fair though, Tim says to her face that he did not expect to see her coming back (he's the only one who does - Saira cozies up to her and then later on camera says what she really thinks) and that things will have to change.

Sir Alan meets the teams at a mini-market (on the day they assumed was their day off - soon disabused of that notion!) and tells them that he has secured selling spaces for them in London's poshest store, Harrods, where they will choose items to sell and then, with the help of some of the store's staff, sell them to the public. As usual, whoever makes the most money wins. It's somewhat interesting that he makes the point that the teams are to respect the Harrods staff: they are helping the candidates, he says, and he won't stand for any talking down to them. Perhaps this is linked to Adele's authoritarian management style last week, perhaps not, but he goes to great pains to tell them to check their egos at the door. They're nobody special, not any better than the staff at Harrods - maybe not even as good - and they had better behave.

The Task:

Project Managers are chosen, and for the first time both are male. Tim leads First Forte for the, um, first time, though this is the second time he's project managed a team,  while James - having initially tried to almost deflect the job onto Rachel - accepts the role at Impact. Surprisingly, perhaps, before they choose PMs neither team asks if anyone has experience in selling in this sort of environment - department store experience. They just ask if anyone wants the job. For once the teams have a chance to brainstorm before the day of the task; that evening they work out what they want to do. The task will run over two days this time, and day one involves heading to Harrods and choosing the items they're going to sell. It also, however, features a rather childish attempt by one team to get the selling area they want by trying to have the other team buy it from them, handing over some of the £600 seed capital they've been given. It's nonsense, and Impact don't go for it, and in the end it's essentially a pissing contest between the two PMs, which to me seems pointless, but eventually they're both settled in and ready to look at products.

Impact are off the blocks faster, going around the store - it's a million square feet, would you believe? - while First Forte are still deliberating over lists, with the result that Tim's team are well behind and rushing to get their products selected before the deadline expires. Even so, possibly because James's team are mired in calculations, First Forte are, literally, first to the office and so have the advantage, getting the pick of what they want. Impact arrive with a single minute to spare: not a good start! Their tardiness also means they miss out on one item they wanted, because First Forte have already chosen it, and in this game it's first come first served. In order to attract customers and footfall, both teams are also allowed to engage services from Harrods. James goes for a children's face painter, while Tim plumps for a pianist. Given that one of their high-value items in a piano costing ten big ones, that's probably a smart choice. Nothing like being able to see the product in action, and I'm assuming none of them play the piano. Plus, a piano being played is bound to attract interest and attention.

James finds, to his chagrin, that the numbers still don't add up. Each team is told they must choose less than forty percent of their items that are Harrods own brand, and his is currently in the region of seventy-five percent, which forces some awkward decisions on him, as he tries to work out what items he can drop. Back at the house, there's a human side of Adele peeping out from behind the hard-nosed business mask, as we hear her grandmother has been taken into hospital, and she's worried about her. Paul is not impressed: he's of the Monty Burns school of thought: "Family, friends, religion: these are the three dragons you must slay if you are to succeed in business." No wonder he's a landlord!

Day two dawns and it's time to sell, sell, sell and perhaps sell a little more. Might be a bit of selling too, and possibly some selling. You get the idea. Despite Sir Alan's warnings though, Adele is snappy and rude to the Harrods floor manager, basically trying to browbeat him when he won't tell her what's wrong with her display - they've been told to help, but not do the thing for the candidates, so they'll just have to take the advice and work with it, but Adele's attitude could come back to haunt her in the Boardroom, especially if her team loses. Saira is similarly unimpressed: I suppose it's hard to hear you've done it wrong, but not how you've done it wrong, but that's the brief the Harrods people have been given, and the teams will just have to live with it. Having managed to get the giant teddy bear (which Impact wanted too, but were second to the post and lost out on) as well as the piano, First Forte are selling well, while James' team are, well, not. So they go looking for advice from the manager of the toy department (seems a bit cap in hand to me, but needs must I guess) and are told they need to make special offers, and have to communicate and advertise these by word of mouth in the shop. Not entirely sure how that's going to work: this isn't Fishgate Market after all, it's Harrods. Can't stand on a box and say "Now then ladies an gennlemen! Who wants a lovely teddy bear for their nipper eh?"

They end up putting Paul into a teddy bear costume, and they're told a half hour is all that anyone can stand in there, as it's really hot with the head on, but it seems to at least be a hit with the children. Well, it would be, wouldn't it? Who doesn't want to see a real live teddy bear walking around? Bears begin to sell, but the face painter has been neglected, left to work for five hours straight, and she's off for a wee. Adele, bull in a toy shop, loudly complains when she can't find her, not realising (or, probably, caring) that the girl hasn't had a break for more than half the day, and gets short shrift from the floor manager, who points out that it's not his responsibility. Which it is not.

As the end of the day nears, in a tactic which will surface again and again in these tasks, panic selling ensues as both teams try to make one last dash for the finish line, offering Harrods gift vouchers with sales, some of which are offered at ridiculous terms, see "Quotes" below.



And now for a word...

Nick (about First Forte): "Is it down to location, Is it down to salesmanship, is it down to product? I don't know. But at the moment they're outselling Impact, heavily."


The Boardroom

It's close but in the Boardroom the figures are read out and it's Impact who are the winners, if only by £100. Makes no real difference really, £1 or  £1000, it's still a loss for First Forte, though Tim generously congratulates Impact and then also professes his pride in his own team. Proud of them he may have been, but he has led his team to his, if not their, first loss, and that may very well go against him, especially as this is the second time he's managed a team. It is, conversely, the first time James has been PM, and his first victory. This also means Adele is potentially in trouble; Tim saw how upset she was, and whether or not he saw how she treated the Harrods floor manager, I imagine it was reported back to Sir Alan. Her only hope of avoiding being fired this time would likely rest in Tim's decision not to bring her in as one of the last three, but I think it's clear he will have to. Personally, I think Ben should be there alongside her.

Return to the Boardroom

Playing the part of a proper Project Manager, Tim resists the chance to blame any of his team mates, maintaining that everyone did a good job. When Sir Alan asks him who was the worst salesperson, he dodges the question, unwilling to single anyone out, and when Sir Alan asks why they lost, he says it was down to luck, that Saira sold a bag right at the death, and that put Impact over the top. Sugar doesn't seem too impressed with his evasion, as he sees it, of the question and perhaps avoidance of the responsibility for the loss of the task. He reminds Tim that as losing PM he is in the firing line, a fact of which I'm sure the guy is well aware. He really doesn't do himself any favours though; when Sir Alan goes after Sebastian for essentially doing nothing, Tim protects him! Sugar warns him not to dig a hole for himself.

There's nothing he can do though when Sir Alan tackles Adele, as we knew he would, about her rude attitude towards the Harrods manager. When she sticks to her guns and even accuses the man of having been rude, Nick shoots her down, saying he saw nothing but professionalism from the man. Not looking good for Adele, who just will not shut up and realise she's backed herself into a corner. Sugar goes for her, reminding her of the specific instruction he gave the teams before the task, to treat the Harrods staff with respect, something she did not do, and is still defending. Considering she was lucky to escape last week, and considering how much Sir Alan hates those who a) don't listen to or directly disobey him and b) are rude to his partners, she's walking a very very thin line here. In the end, she jumps before she is pushed, and decides she's going to be the first (but not only) one in the history of the show to voluntarily leave. I think her decision both takes Sir Alan (and her team) by surprise, and also robs him of the pleasure of firing her, which surely was going to happen, But she's put the gun to her own head and pulled the trigger, and there's nothing can be done.

In the end, he makes a sort of half-hearted effort to fire her - sort of a reverse of "You can't fire me, I quit!" When he tries to say "You can't quit, you're fired!" He does tell her that without her little outburst just now, she was for the chop anyway, and he makes it clear he does not approve of her decision. He also has a go at her about her arrogant and rude attitude towards people, but she's basically already walking out the door in her mind, and when she does physically walk out, there's a smirk on her face that says "I got there first." With her withdrawal, there is no firing, no need to bring two other people back, and the Boardroom ends. I suppose you'd have to give Adele grudging admiration: she controlled her own exit, and decided she had had enough of the process, and in some ways almost left Sir Alan looking both speechless and powerless, neither of which he is used to.

After the firing

Sir Alan: "If anything, one would say, it's cowardice."

Nick: "She's been on the losing side every time."

Sir Alan: "I'm disappointed, because she's bright, she's dead bright. This time, too bright for her own good."

[Trollheart]

QUOTES

Matthew (about Adele): "She knows she's made enemies and she knows they don't want her, and it doesn't make for good team dynamics for the next round. She may knuckle down; she may forget about it, We'll say the slate is clean, that's how it happens, the rules of the game, but I wonder whether or not that's true?"

Ben: "My game plan is to cover my back as much as I possibly can. It's about me doing my job first, and then the team second."
(Spoken like a true candidate!)

James: "It's a bit harsh, I think, to blame Paul. But I will."

Saira: "As long as we get more money into the till, I don't care what we do!"
(Spoken like a true... well, you know)

Matthew: "It got to ridiculous levels like, I think it was, buy twenty quid's worth of stuff and you get ten pounds worth of vouchers. Gordon Bennet! That was the deal of the day at Harrods!"


Thoughts in the cab

Adele: "They probably didn't know that I was going to be quite as spontaneous as I was, and given the circumstances I would have been a target, that's been evident from the beginning: people have wanted to knock me out quite early on in the game. And a lot of people in the house have said I am a lot of competition to them because I've got a very entrepreneurial background, and I think that that was a threat. As the tasks progressed I probably would have become stronger in myself; I do believe I had a good chance of succeeding and winning the competition."

Another case of someone living in their own world, seeing only what they want to see. There was no talk (at least, on screen) about Adele being a threat to others, apart from her bossy and arrogant nature threatening to derail the task. She had a target on her back all right, but it was Sir Alan taking aim at it. As for having "an entrepreneurial background", don't they all have that? Arrogant and blind to the last, it would seem. Considering she was gone this week, regardless of what she did or said, her contention that she believed she could win the competition rings very hollow.


You're fired!
Name: Adele Lock
Age: 32
Occupation: Retail Manager

It's hard to be sympathetic with Adele; she got up everyone's nose. The week before she was fired/walked, she made enemies of everyone on her team due to her dictatorial style of management when she was PM, and this week she was rude and all but abusive to the Harrods staff, and in the end decided to fall on her own sword and leave the process. It did emerge later that she had had two deaths in the family while in the show, so you can definitely see why she was so emotional, and I suppose in the end, life-changing job waiting at the end or not, your family are still more important than anything, or should be. Adele was the first of a very small handful of candidates to take the power out of Sir Alan's hands and exit the process themselves, and perhaps for that we should congratulate her. Adele now runs a male grooming service, Gentry Grooming.



First Forte: Tim was an effective leader, again, though this time he was in charge of both sexes, and might have found it harder than when he had just to deal with men. However he seems to have done very well; his team were first past the post to get the pick of the products, yet they were the ones to lose, possibly due to the smarter marketing techniques employed by their rivals (that bear suit!) and he did also have Adele to deal with, a loose cannon in any environment. To his credit, after playing silly buggers in week two by not telling the girls about the phone call, he has settled down now and was even able to offer Adele some time to try to calm her down during the task. Having lost the task, he refused to throw anyone under the bus, a choice mercifully taken out of his hands by Adele, who had been slated for firing anyway. On the face of it, you'd have to say one of the best PMs so far, even if he didn't win.

PM Rating: (can't award full five-star rating as he lost)

Impact: James is an odd one. He sort of did, and didn't want to be PM, suggesting Rachel could do it, then quickly backtracking when he saw she was not interested. He dithered over figures with Paul, which left their team late to the office and meant they could not choose the products they really wanted. Look, James is a banker. I said banker! Why couldn't he do the fucking figures, instead of leaving them to a landlord? Sure, Paul would need to know how to calculate interest and such, as he said, but James would have been far better qualified to be working out percentages, yet he left it all up to Paul, and then proceeded to blame him when he got it wrong. Nevertheless, he never really gave up when First Forte seemed to be far busier, and he was not too proud to ask for advice from Harrods, advice which in the end contributed to really drumming up business and must have been instrumental in winning Impact the task. As far as leadership goes though, I couldn't see it, and it looks to me like Impact won more because Paul was prepared to sacrifice his dignity and his health in putting on the bear suit.

PM rating:

May the best team win?

Hard to say. Both teams, to be fair, performed well this week, and there were flaws with both. Tim did well to keep things on an even keel considering Adele's meltdown, but James only won through having to go asking for advice, so had he not done so, is it possible the other team would have won? Also, with such a narrow margin in it, was he lucky to win? Overall, I'd have to say this was a case where either team could have taken it, both were guilty of errors and both had good ideas, and really neither were better, or worse, than the other.

Weeding out the weaklings
Adele is not suited to the shop floor environment. Not entirely what she's suited to, but she certainly is bitchy and complaining, and seems to think the world owes her a living. Ben has never sold in a shop before and is pretty much useless; despite the Harrods manager's advice that they need to smile to sell, he's more grimacing, obviously wishing the end of the task as soon as possible. Adele proved how unsuited she is to the whole process when she decided to jack it all in, to Sir Alan's disgust.


The front runners

Paul shone on this task, taking on the onerous wearing of the teddy bear suit (a suit, in fact, designed for a small woman, so it must have been very tight on him) and it was due to his efforts that Impact managed to outsell First Forte. He never once complained, except in a joking way, about the suit, though he must have been suffocating inside it.

The one that got away

I feel it might be Matthew this week. He seemed to do very little, had no input, nobody on the team seems to get on with him and I really can't see him lasting much longer. His tenure as PM was shockingly bad, even though his team won more or less despite him.

[Trollheart]

The Trollheart Apprentice Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence

Only one candidate can win this each week, and it's not necessary that they be on the winning team, though sometimes they will. It's awarded by me to the candidate I believe made the biggest and best contribution to their team's effort, a candidate without whom, if they won,they would not have won, and if they lost, could have ensured the win had other factors not prevented it.

My pick for this week, you'll not be surprised at all to learn, is PAUL. For his total dedication to the team in wearing that bear suit all day almost, and ensuring that his team came in with the win. Sure, there was only a hundred quid in it, but the appearance of "Susie Bear" kicked off a buying spree in a team that was otherwise experiencing sales lethargy. It was the catalyst for interest, entertainment and, ultimately, sales, that Impact were able to build on, and so I see it as a crucial factor in their narrow win. I'm not sure anyone else would have had the guts to wear that suit, so fair play to you Paul: you may be, and probably are, a shit landlord who squeezes couples for every penny, but you were the star of your team this week.

Candidates' Progress

With now four weeks gone, a third almost of the way in, I think we can begin to critically appraise the candidates and see how they are doing. The more stars they have (five being the highest) the better they are in terms of visibility, though this may not necessarily reflect their expertise: a candidate can be everywhere doing everything but making a mess of it, so I'll do two lists, the first for visibility, the second for actual effect. Remember, a high rating for Visibility may only mean you're constantly hearing that person's name (which could be a good or bad thing; think Adele for instance) whereas a high rating for Effectiveness means they're doing a good job, task in, task out. These ratings will change from task to task.

Visibility

• Tim

• Raj

• Rachel

• Saira

• Ben

• James

• Matthew

• Sebastian

• Miriam

• Paul

[/list]

Effectiveness

• Tim

• Raj

• Rachel

• Saira

• Ben

• James

• Matthew

• Sebastian

• Miriam

• Paul

[/list]

[Trollheart]

Season one, episode five:
"Art with a Capital F"

After Adele's shock self-departure last week, it's left to the remaining members of First Forte to break the news to the other team as they arrive back at the house. There's not much sympathy for her - especially from Paul - and it seems not too much shock either. Perhaps they had expected it. At any rate, it's done now and it's probably fair to say that nobody will miss her, in fact, with some confidence I can say that her team is far more likely to succeed or at least gell better without her. She was a disruptive influence, and while alliances are often, almost always built in the house, nobody could say they were on her side. However this does leave the teams unbalanced: of ten players left, First Forte now have four and Impact have six. You would expect Sir Alan to shuffle them again, but it seems he won't do that, as he's instructed them to each choose their Project Managers. Unless he's going to ask who the PM is and then switch out anyone but them. Suppose it could happen. It certainly seems an unfair advantage, to have two extra players, but then, maybe he wants to see what First Forte are made of. As for who will be PM, with no idea yet as to what the task will be, Impact argue the toss while First Forte literally draw straws. Sebastian draws the short straw, while back at Impact Rachel takes on the job.

Sir Alan meets them the next morning in Hoxton, which is apparently the centre of the London art scene, and reveals that their task will be to choose a young and rising artist, one out of seven, whose work they will then present and try to sell in a London gallery. He gives Sebastian, as PM of First Forte, the choice of who to pick from Impact in order to level up the teams. Sebastian chooses James.

The Task:

Impact PM: Rachel
First Forte PM: Sebastian

The teams have to choose from the seven artists Sir Alan has set up interviews with; there are only seven, so if both want the same artist that's going to be a problem. There's a lot of sneering and disdain already, as both Matthew and Paul make it clear they don't rate modern art, and are sort of rude about the art of the first artist they visit. They should bear in mind that, should they end up deciding he's the one they want, and the other team also want him, how they treat the artist is going to factor into his decision as to who he goes with. Rachel does her best to ingratiate herself with the next artist but Paul is very dismissive and crude as to what he thinks of it, which I'm sure she as PM has noted. On First Forte, James and Miriam are much more supportive and understanding, and this seems to go down well with the artists, in this case a couple, Rob abd Nicki. Both James and Miriam have taken on board the possibility that both teams may end up bidding for the same artist, and realise that the nicer they are to theirs, the more chance they will go with them and not the other team. This is a lesson that seems to have passed Impact by, and could come back to hurt them, as Paul continues to frown in disapproval at the "naked lady" art of the artist they're visiting, and Matthew gives a knowing look of condescension to the camera. Rachel must feel frustrated, and as if she visited the artist on her own.

Saira and Raj do in fairness let their artist know that they are not experts, and that they will need her to guide them. Unfortunately Saira seems less interested in the works than in how much they can flog them for, and this looks to have pissed the artist off. She was making a big speech about what her work is and what it means to her, what it represents, and Saira just starts talking numbers. Although of course artists want to make money, it's often more important that thier art is appreciated and understood; it could be said that many care little about how much their work sells for: this is why you hear the phrase "starving artist" so much - of course if they can sell their art they will, but many will create it just for the sheer pleasure, or to make a point or present a way of looking at things. This seems to be what the lady was trying to do, and Saira just basically ignored all that and bulldozed over her. She also called the works "paintings", which really seemed to irk the artist, but I don't think Saira took any notice or even realised she had insulted her. Raj may not as well have been there for all the input he made. In contrast, James and Miriam are spending time with the couple, asking them questions about how they would prefer to have their work displayed, and showing a genuine interest in their art, which seems to have gone down well with the artists.

Saira and Raj are therefore surprised to find the First Forte team still with the artistic couple, and once again launch into how much they can charge, how much they have previously sold, and figures, figures, figures. They don't ask any questions about the works themselves - how they're created, what they're meant to represent, what they mean to them etc - that haven't a commercial aspect behind them, Nicki in particular looks angry and offended. That might be because the team are talking almost exclusively to her husband (very rude) or it might be because these people are reducing her works to pounds, shillings and pence, as we used to say; breaking them down for their monetary, and not their aesthetic value. She does not look impressed, and surely wishes these two money-grabbing philistines would leave as soon as possible. In fact, she pointedly walks away. Not good.

Inevitably, both teams want Rob and Nicki,  and equally inevitably, the two have been far more impressed by the attitude and interest shown by James and Miriam, and so it's First Forte they decide to go with. That was never in doubt really. Saira actually says she felt intimidated by them (in the car, not to their faces of course) when I'm sure the couple felt that way about the two of them, battering them with questions and demanding prices. She's very bitter about losing, again blaming the couple, when it's clear to anyone that the reason they lost was their mercenary attitude and their lack of interest in the actual art. All she and Raj saw was piles of notes, and Rob and Nicki saw right through them. So Impact are left to go with Lucy, the lady artist they didn't quite get on with either, but she agrees and the two teams start arranging the display of the art of both artists. Matthew suggests he go to local art galleries to get tips, when surely the first and most important one is, know something about art if you're going to sell it. If you don't know anything about it, find someone who does. It doesn't seem to me that they've done this with their artist. Art buyers are notorious, from what I've seen anyway, for walking around a piece for ages, asking questions or waiting for someone to talk to them about the art. They don't usually just buy it because it looks nice. Sometimes they do, of course, but they seem to enjoy conversing with other art lovers, and if you're selling the art and know nothing about it, that is very definitely going to factor into their decision whether or not to buy it.

Matthew continues to be a snarky prick, getting loud and boorish when there's some sort of mixup with the other team about invitations to the art galleries, so much so that Tim has to tell him to lower his voice and cool it. The other half of the teams go to drum up business on the street and with local art dealers. It's all a bit messed really; Paul is standing on street corners asking people if they want an invite to an "evening of champagne and canapes", with most people telling him politely where he can stick his champagne, and if there's any room left, why then he can stick his canapes in the same place. James's sub-team seem to be very lucky to run into Suggs from Madness at a radio station, and the singer agrees to attend, which will surely pull in the punters. Especially if he promises not to sing. Raj and Matthew literally go on a foxhunt, pursuing Pop Idol judge Neil Fox down the street till he agrees to turn up for their gallery. Probably more afraid of these two lunatics chasing him than anything else! Impact even in desperation approach a guy selling The Big Issue, who gratefully accepts the invitation, though I doubt the gallery is going to be too pleased to see him stroll into their little soiree!

Since nobody bothered to ask her, Lucy now thinks it might be a good idea if the people selling her art knew a little about it, but nobody except Rachel seems interested. Saira looks at her and you can just see that she's seeing a cartoon stack of pound notes, Paul is rolling his eyes at the nudity, Raj looks like he wonders why he's even there. Nobody even asks a question, and Lucy folds her arms in the well-recognised gesture of defiance, almost daring them to show they have a clue what she's talking about. They don't take the dare. She does not look impressed. Just totally hilarious when Saira, mistaking the Big Issue guy for a rich art lover, starts schmoozing him and introduces the artist to him. I mean for fuck's sake, the guy even has the bag of magazines still slung over his shoulder! Is she that thick, or does she somehow think he's some sort of eccentric millionaire? As if he hadn't annoyed enough people already today, Matthew steals visitors from another art gallery, putting the owner's nose well out of joint. The guy has a talent for getting under people's skin, it seems, but he refuses to see it himself. He has also failed to see that he has now made the artist he's trying to promote (Lucy) an enemy for life. Artists do not forgive and they do not forget, and this man seems to be something of a big wheel in the art world, so Matthew may in fact have scuppered her career bigtime. There are some things you just do not do, some lines you don't cross, and I'm sure the art world has its own code, which he has surely broken on her behalf, and without her approval, or even knowledge.

Unfortunately for First Forte, the high price point of Rob and Nicki's art is proving hard to prise open the wallets, and they haven't sold anything, while Impact are selling well with their lower-priced works. Paul seems to think talking about old cars is a good strategy for selling art. Maybe, if you're talking to some rich old geezer who likes his Rolls and his Bentley, but he's talking to a woman who's sixty if she's a day! What's the point here? He makes some clumsy effort to relate the art to motors, but it's clearly not working. Slowly though, the sales begin to come in for First Forte (perhaps all the champers has something to do with it!) while Saira does her best to further alienate Lucy, first by asking her to drop her price on a painting, and second, and more heinous surely, suggesting there might be a flaw on one of them. She hasn't a clue of course, but now she suddenly sees herself as an art critic. Lucy looks really insulted and angry.

[Trollheart]

The Boardroom

Now it's time to find out whether First Forte's charm offensive, which wooed Rob and Nicki to their side, selling the higher-priced paintings has been a winning strategy, or whether, in relative terms, cheap'n'cheerful was the way to go. In the end, it probably won't matter now how the artists felt about the team selling their art: as always, it comes down to the numbers, cold hard cash, sales. Who has made the most profit? For First Forte, the sale of one or two items should put them well ahead, but if Impact sold a lot of reasonably-priced items, they might very well take it. Nick and Margaret have the all-important sales figures, but first Sir Alan wants to dig into why Rob and Nicki chose to go with First Forte and not Impact, but this is mostly brushed aside as the figures are read out. It's an absolute landslide for First Forte, who take 19,000 compared to Impact's piddling 6,000. Over three times as much, which proves that the big ticket items were the route to success, and Sebastian has his first victory in his first stint as PM.

Return to the Boardroom
Rachel stands by her team's performance, doesn't seem to think it was a critical error not to have got Rob and Nicki's work, which easily won the day for First Forte. She also has something of a sly dig at the two boys' prudish behaviour about the other artist, whose work was quite explicit and about which Paul and Matthew were so dismissive, virtually calling it porn, even though both had confessed earlier that they know sod-all about art. Saira and Paul clash over his perceived having a hand in every sale, though he only closed one, and Sir Alan believes - correctly - that he was out of his comfort zone and unable to adapt. Given a chance to defend Paul - which he knows she will not - Saira instead savages him, making him something of a laughing stock. Rachel backs Saira up, making Paul look not only more foolish, but a man who is trying to claim credit for the sales of others. Sir Alan don't like that, no he do not.


And then there were three...

Rachel chooses to return with Paul and Matthew. No real surprise there, but really it could have been any of them. While they wait to be called back in, Paul has a real meltdown as he basically accuses Saira of throwing him under the bus, saying she could have said she didn't know where her sales came from, they could have come from Paul. She doesn't accept that, and in front of Sir Alan's receptionist (you know that's going to find its way back to him) they have what amounts to a blazing row. Very unprofessional. It looks like he and Matthew are about to gang up on Rachel. She'd better be ready for them. Clowns. They should both be fired.

Rachel goes for Matthew right away, which again is no real surprise; she's already noted how hard he is to work with, then Nick brings up the row Matthew had with Tim, about the invitations, and Matthew kind of hangs himself. Asked about why she has brought Paul in, Rachel notes his attitude towards the artists (both were reprehensible and ignorant, but I guess she thinks she's done enough to sink Matthew by now, with his own help too, and concentrates on the other threat to her remaining) and Paul also does himself no favours when, asked by Sir Alan who should be fired, he refuses to give an answer. That could be seen as loyalty (unlikely) or insubordination. It all depends on how Sir Alan views that response really. In the end, perhaps because he sees Paul as more of a salesman, perhaps due to his contribution to the previous task, or perhaps because he foresees further problems with his team mate, Sir Alan fires Matthew, and good riddance to the big lump.

After the firing

Sir Alan: "Not that difficult for me, really. I mean, the guy can't help himself. He cannot help himself. If people can't work with people, look, I made the point about being a bit selfish, but there is an element of  needing to be a team player also."

QUOTES

Rachel: "Matthew is very hard to manage. He also needs to verbalise his mental processes, which can be exhausting for those around him, because rather than going away quietly to think somewhere and coming to a good conclusion, he uses those around him  as a sounding board."

Miriam: "Really, I don't think we have any weak links, and I think the other team does have weak links."
(Recipe for a winning strategy, if true)

Tim (about Matthew): "He was so adamant that there was this massive conspiracy theory going on that he was bordering on being aggressive."

Sir Alan: "Maybe you'd have been better off sitting on a bomb site (?), with a couple of old second hand cars or something like that, might be a bit more comfortable."
Paul: "I resent that. I can sell anything."
Sir Alan: "But you didn't. You sold one thing. 140 quid."

Sir Alan, responding to Matthew's excuse that he is too tall to hear people below him (!): "I got to tell you son, that ranks high, that does, on the list of excuses. You're doing some of my football managers out of the best excuses I ever heard in my life."

Paul (petulantly, and beyond her hearing): "First time we have a girl as a project leader, and the first time we lose." Is this guy six years old or what?



Thoughts in the cab

Matthew: "I knew it was going to happen. It was inevitable at one time or another. When, I just didn't know. Little sad it was this one; could have gone a little longer, but I didn't think I was going to be one of the front runners, and that's the way it goes: he had to go with what he thought and it's his decision, it's who he's looking to employ. If he doesn't want an original thinker in his company, that's his problem."
(There speaks a man whose heart was never in this competition: basically he's saying I never expected to win. And he did not.)


You're fired!
Name: Matthew Palmer
Age:
Occupation: Mature Student (yeah)

To me, "mature student" just means someone who doesn't want to work. I mean, what age was he? And what gave him the idea that he would be able to run a company for Sir Alan Sugar? He certainly set about rubbing people up the wrong way from the start, almost in a more laid back, even bored way compared to Adele's sharp arrogance, but similar in nature. Nobody had anything good to say about him, I couldn't imagine anyone considered him their friend, and he contributed nothing to any task, including the one in which he was PM in name only, leaving others to make the decisions. Seems he went into politics, and was a Conservative councillor for Kensington and Chelsea in David Cameron's government, so around 2009.



First Forte: Sebastian led the team but again, what did he do? What decisions did he make? To be honest, the only time I really saw him during the task was that altercation he and Tim had with Matthew, and even then I thought he was a lorry driver or something! I didn't see him participate in any of the artist visits (though he may have done, but I don't think so); I think I saw him attempt some sales at the gallery, but overall he did not impress me as being a man who led his team to victory, and I think that hinged with James' coup of getting the couple both teams wanted.

PM Rating:

Impact: Rachel didn't seem much of a leader either, though in fairness she did have a lot of time spent trying to keep Matthew under control. She also was the only one of her sub-team who actually tried to be interested in the art, but with the two men tittering and tutting away either side of her, she was on a hiding to nothing. When it came time to defend herself, however, she had no Tim-like loyalty to her team members, and fought to keep her place. But could someone else have run the team? Maybe. Also, why did she not bring Saira or Raj into the Boardroom? It was their lack of interest which lost them Rob and Nicki, whose sales won the other team the task.

PM rating:

May the best team win?

In the end, yes I think so. James was so much more invested (no pun intended) in the art that Rob and Nicki gravitated to him, saw in him a kindred spirit who wasn't just interested in money (even though of course this was all he was interested in, for his team) and their decision to go with the higher-priced items helped them win the task. Impact resorted to cheap tricks, trying to steal visitors to another art gallery, and doggedly refused to listen when Lucy was trying in vain to explain her vision, with the result that they knew bog-all about the art they were selling, which may have impacted (pun intended this time) on their sales.

Oops!

As Matthew drones on at Rachel about how they're going to sell the art, two people carrying in a painting have to almost ask them to move. You can just see it in their eyes: "Fucking college types, standing around jabbering - we got work to do here, sunshine! Real work, which you probably never did in your life!" (Got to move those microwaves ovens, custom kitchen deliveries...)

Paul hands an invite to the gallery to someone selling the Big Issue. Oh yeah: mention free champagne and you'll have him and all his mates down, though I doubt the gallery will be too pleased! Ever hear of a select audience, Paul?

While making his excuse about being too tall, it may have escaped Matthew's notice but he basically called Sir Alan a little runt.

The one that got away

For me, this has to be Saira. As mentioned above, she was too focused on how much she could sell the art for and did not listen to any of the artists, particularly and crucially Rob and Nicki, which in turn cost her team the task. She had some crazy idea that she had become an art expert overnight, when the truth was she knew absolutely nothing about it, and even when she realised she was schmoozing a Big Issue seller, she didn't seem to see her error and kept talking to him. She was very lucky to survive, and her spat with Paul in the lobby (though initiated by him) was in no way professional and quite a disgrace. She should have just walked away, but kept arguing with him when there was no need, especially had he been fired.

[Trollheart]

Season one, episode six:
"Advertising Executives"

Let's be honest here: nobody is sorry to see the back of Matthew. As I said in the last post, he was not liked, was very abrasive and condescending, and he won't be missed. See Paul's epitaph to him in the quotes section. In what will become something of a recurring event, Sir Alan does not meet the teams, though he has the call put through to them to meet him, and the candidates find themselves picked up by an old red London bus. Does this mean that they're going to be running their own bus service, or cleaning buses, or planning routes? Well, no: quite often the location has the most tenuous of links to the task, if any at all, and this is no exception. This week's task is all about advertising (so why he needed the bus is beyond me; could have just had them meet under some big billboard, but Sir Alan is nothing if not a showman) - they will each be given one of Sir Alan's products and will have to come up with a full advertising campaign for it.

The Task:

Impact PM: Paul
First Forte PM: Miriam

Both teams now have to come up with a TV ad and a press ad, and head to an advertising agency to find out how. Miriam steps up for First Forte, though there seems to be no reason behind this, while Paul, having narrowly escaped firing in the Boardroom, wants to lead Impact. I must say, I foresee problems: Paul is a landlord, with surely little if any experience of advertising, while Miriam's expertise lies in hotel management. Hmm. The product in question is a ten-CD changer (ah, how times have changed!) which only shows, by its frankly shoddy and cheap design, how Amstrad - which, if it exists any more, is certainly one of the smaller market followers, never was a leader - has always been identified with, to be fair, tat. Anyone going out to buy a good stereo or computer or whatever would not have Amstrad in the forefront of their mind. Think Bush, Walmart or whatever your own equivalent is for a cheap, features-lacking, planned obsolescence model. Basically, if you couldn't afford the better stuff, Amstrad was what you might be forced to go for. That's Alan Sugar's empire for you in a nutshell.

Anyway this is the monstrosity the teams have to convince people to buy, through their television commercial and their full-page press ad. Not going to be easy: compact does not seem to be a word Amstrad understand, and it looks, and most likely is, cheap and nasty. But you work with what you're given, and they set to their task.  To be fair to him, the creative director of the ad agency is not impressed with the CD changer, saying that it looks tacky, looks cheap and questions the need for it, but tells the teams these are the questions they need to answer, in order to come up with a proper advertising strategy that will answer them, presumably in the affirmative.

Paul from the start turns out to be another little dictator, not listening to anyone, especially Saira, with whom he's supposed to be brainstorming ideas for the video, but this is a storm of one person only, just the one brain allowed to take part. Miriam, on the other hand, has quickly come to a collaborative decision with her team, and they have a strapline ready ("The jukebox is back" - oh dear, but at least it's something) First Forte are ahead. You'd have to wonder why Paul chose to "brainstorm" with Saira, considering they had all but come to blows last week after the Boardroom, but he seems to think a) she was wrong b) she realised she was wrong and c) she has put it all behind her. He's going to find out that, in all three of those, he is in grievous error. For some reason, when First Forte interview the potential actors for their video, two of them sing the strapline, despite not being asked to do that.

Miriam is told that the area in which they are expected to film their video is, and I quote, "fucking small", which could lead to problems with scenes, lighting, sound - just about everything. Perhaps strangely, she has not checked it out personally, or sent one of her team members to do so, before sending the film crew there, and they are not impressed. Not only that, there is a fucking huge bulky jukebox to be brought in. It sounds like it's going, to coin a phrase, a bit Pete Tong already. The team's attempts to get the bloody thing up the stairs reminds me of those old PG Tips ads, or any video you've ever seen where someone tries to get a large bulky item such as a piano or sofa or mattress up a staircase. It's painful to watch. Paul's video, meanwhile, has me baffled: a mother listening to the Amstrad monstrosity in the kitchen? Claiming it as hers? Why would any middle-aged woman want such a thing in her kitchen? It looks ugly, it takes up space and sockets, and it's likely to get spattered with grease where it is. Pointless. Oh, and Paul's team don't have a slogan yet, despite actually being in the process of filming their ad.

I don't quite get the idea, again, this time though it's why Paul wants his model to laugh as he's listening to the Amstrad thing. Then he cracks a joke which is told entirely wrong. Why does he need a laugh? At least First Forte have been able to adapt their story; as the jukebox is not going upstairs, they use it downstairs instead. It's a bit of creative thinking, and it comes together well with their strapline, whereas Impact's? Well, as Homer once said about a Gary Larsen calendar, I don't get it. The look on the face of Paul's model says "Who the fuck are these amateurs? What have I got myself into with these clowns?" and also possibly "No fee is worth this!" The contrast between the two teams is startling: Miriam is editing the press ad but is in constant contact with the rest of her team as they work on the video, while Paul is editing his video (I'm certain he thinks of it as his, not the team's) and is leaving Rachel and Saira to come up with the press ad, and the two girls are not getting on well. Stand by for fireworks!

In the end, the two of them split up, unable to agree, and work on different concepts. Yeah, that'll work! Even when the graphics artist suggests to Saira that she might want to check with the rest of the team before selecting a shot for the ad, she says no, let's go ahead, obviously believing her decision is the best and she doesn't need to check with anyone, least of all Paul. It will be interesting to see how that goes down. He's still rushing to get their press ad done - with Saira - Rachel has by now thrown her hands up and stepped back and left them to it - and it looks, well, not to be too unkind, in fairness, it looks shit. The colours are weak, the picture looks just weird, the strapline does not seem to tie in with their video and says nothing really about the machine. If it was me, I'd be choosing First Forte's all day long.

Things are not good in the Impact camp as Paul berates his team for looking downhearted (well, wouldn't you, if after 48 hours you'd come up with this pile of fetid dingo's kidneys?) while Rachel has more or less dissociated herself from the project, and Raj? Honestly, unless he brought in sandwiches or something I don't see evidence of anything Raj did. Paul, to be fair, took complete control over the video, for better or for worse (most likely the latter), Saira and Rachel both worked, in their own very different ways, on the press ad and pitch. Raj doesn't seem to have done a thing. He might as well not be there.

Pitch Perfect?

Time to pitch the product, which is usually where the task can be won or lost. Make your point, do a good job, represent the product well, interest the audience and you're halfway there. Lose interest, confuse them, fail to get your point across and you could be looking at a return trip to the Boardroom.

Impact: Um, "Get Your Own"?

First to go are Impact, and Rachel leads the pitch. For reasons known only to her, she decides it would be a good idea to dance to the music in the video. I mean, she's not old but she's not a teenager, and it just looks cringeworthy. The audience look really embarrassed for her, especially as she throws off her shoes (hope she washed her feet) which only adds to the cringe factor, but also contains the potential for injury, if one of them had hit someone. Neither do, but it's a totally unnecessary gesture, and you can see it in the faces of her audience, who really don't know where to look. Her childish collage is next, as she tries to "explain" how music makes different people feel. This definitely comes across as condescending and patronising: everyone knows how music - certain music - makes them feel: they don't need a bloody pastiche of images to show them.

Paul is not impressed, sitting there stony-faced while Rachel digs her team deeper and deeper in. Even the sarcastic comment received from the creative director when asked how the music makes him feel, that it feels like he's in a seventies sitcom, doesn't sound any warning bells. She actually agrees with him, as if this is a good thing. I think we can take it as read that Amstrad are trying to appeal to the younger market, and do not want their product to be associated with the 1970s, when the only way to play music was on vinyl and portable music was still over a decade away!

Mercifully, she hands over to Saira, who has to talk about their cobbled-together press ad, but they're polar opposites. If Rachel was, to use the word generously, fun, Saira is strictly business, even enunciating words with the deliberation of a school teacher, quite stern, almost aggressive in her way. Paul thinks the only good thing about the pitch is his video, but then, that's Paul, and he can't see how rubbish his effort is, no better than the tripe the girls have come up with.

First Forte: "The Jukebox is Back!"

It's a more sedate and settled pitch from the other team. No dancing, no collages, no shoes flying off feet. James explains the whole idea behind the concept, and how the video and the press ad tie in together. Right away, as the video runs, two of the execs, including the creative director, both of whom had been slumped bored in their seats, no doubt expecting another hodge-podge of poorly-executed and disconnected ideas, sit up with interest. Mister creative director laughs out loud with joy at the opening shot of the actor coming home to find his beloved jukebox (the one that was too big to go up the stairs) dumped outside his door. Despite the fact that the ad seems to have gone down well, James is moaning and does not seem happy with the pitch. Not entirely sure why.

Sir Alan then takes calls from the advertising executives, who give him their feedback on both teams. Usually, when this happens (and it does happen frequently though not always), you only see general comments, as the producers obviously don't want to give away the winner, and in any case, as he says himself, Sir Alan is the final arbiter. He will take input, comments, even advice, but in the end he will make the decision. In this case, however, we don't hear any of the conversations he has. And so, to the Boardroom.

[Trollheart]

The Boardroom

Before he goes through their efforts, Sir Alan warns the teams that he's not interested in "all that demographic bollocks", as he so succinctly puts it. As Frasier's father says, he's an regular Joe and he likes his joe regular. He's already said a few times he hates bullshit, so these ads are going to have to stand on their own merits. Impact are first to be examined, then First Forte. Sir Alan tends not to give much away, but he certainly does not look impressed with either campaign. Interestingly, he asks Raj who he thinks won, which I think is a pretty direct way of saying there is a clear winner, that it's not close, but Raj, having done pretty much fuck-all in the task, again avoids any work and swerves the question, until pushed, and then he says he believes the other team won. "Spot on," says Sir Alan, and it's a victory for First Forte. Never really in doubt. Interestingly again, no treat this time for the winning team, or none he announced anyway. Okay there is: they're sent to a gents outfitters and boutique to be kitted out in flash gear.



Behind the Boardroom Door

Sir Alan: "Well, it's a no-brainer really. You don't have to be an advertising executive to work that one out. My god!"

Nick: "It's that evident."

Sir Alan: "It's that clear. You know, there was no contest here. We'll just have to find out what went wrong with this lot again."

Return to the Boardroom

Rather ridiculously, Paul asks Sir Alan why he chose the other team? The look of derision he gets from the boss should tell him "You must be fucking joking, mate!" But he doesn't seem to see it, somehow adamant in his belief that his video - never mind the press ad, that was terrible, but surely his all-conquering vision with the video - should easily have won, and he doesn't understand. Sir Alan lays it on the line to him, telling him that he didn't see the product, it wasn't talked about and that he "didn't know what the bloody hell the ad was about." He tells Paul he's too close to his idea, his baby, and just can't see it: he needs to look at it with the eyes of a consumer, but again Paul looks like a goldfish that has just been asked to calculate Pi. Giving him at least some sense of relief, surely, Sir Alan admits that, bad as the video was, he hates the press ad so much more, calling it "a load of old rubbish". Which it is. A kid of nine or ten could have done so much better. It's beyond useless.

Asking who's responsible, to be fair Paul tries to take all the blame on his shoulders as PM, but Sir Alan ain't having that, and Saira has to defend her work, which she can't. She fudges the issue as to whether she left the graphic artist to get on with it - well, let's be honest: she lies through her teeth. This is exactly what she did, and now she tries to backtrack and put the best spin on it that she can, but she's dealing with an old hand and Sir Alan sees right through her posturing. He knows what happened. But she's her usual combative, aggressive self and avoids his questions until he has to almost drag them out of her. Paul obviously brings the two women back in with him. There was really no other choice he could make.

Behind the Boardroom Door II

Nick: "Paul became so engrossed in his video that he wasn't even in contact with these two at all! He was not running a team."

Sir Alan: "Getting back to the original CV, one of the claims to fame out of this three, Rachel, is that she's been in advertising, done some advertising and all that stuff. And what she was doing poncing about downstairs making storyboard presentations for the advertising agency, I just don't know."

And then there were three...

Paul fights for his place, doing all he can to implicate the two women. To be fair, though there's blame enough to go around, there's little defence they can plead. Nobody has mentioned the spat they had, which forced each to withdraw and concentrate on a separate idea, neither of which were linked to what we will kindly and generously call the main theme, leading to so much wasted time and bad time management. Again Saira lies; when Paul says they shook hands after the altercation last week, which Sir Alan brings up, she says they never did. But it's shown in the "previously on" segment here, and they did: he shook hands with her and Rachel shook hands with Matthew I think it was. Someone else anyway. But it did happen, and now she's rewriting history to pretend it didn't happen.

Rachel then makes what could be seen as a fatal error by volunteering the information about the row she and Saira had, which up to then it seems Sir Alan did not know about, as it took place when neither of them were being observed. I'm not sure what she hoped to achieve, but it looks to me like she just opened herself, and perhaps Saira too, up to further criticism, and accusations of both being unable to put aside differences and work together, another thing Sir Alan hates. As both women dig themselves further in, Paul wisely sits silent, happy to let them put themselves, literally, in the firing line. He offers no comment, as if to say, nothing to do with me. Sir Alan isn't going to let him off the hook that easy though, and asks why he wasn't checking in on his sub-team, as Miriam had been on hers. Both the women, unsurprisingly, hit back when Sir Alan asks if Paul was a good team leader, and receiving a negative answer from both, asks who should be fired, and both choose Paul. Now the spotlight is back on him; can he dance away from the machine-gun one more time, or is his metaphorical blood going to be on the Boardroom carpet?

Rather surprisingly, given his arrogance, Paul agrees that he was not a good PM, surely a very very risky admission when you're in the last three? He also point-blank refuses to choose someone to be fired, leaving it up to Sir Alan. As I said before, this can often be seen by the boss as insubordination, even defiance, and can lead him to decide that anyone who is either that arrogant or can't make a simple decision when asked needs to leave the process. But he's lucky this time: Sir Alan's barely restrained fury at Rachel claiming she has advertising expertise and then producing something a third grade school kid would laugh at ends up with her being the one that's fired. Saira for some reason breaks down in tears as they walk out of the Boardroom. She'd want to toughen up: it only gets more brutal from here on in.

QUOTES

Paul (about Matthew): "He should have gone on day one. Or never have showed up, really."

Sir Alan: "It will be interesting to see whether these two teams go down some sort of arty-farty style, cos if they do they will get a kick in the arse from me, that's for sure!"

Saira: "I think most people talk a lot, but most people talk bollocks. At least I talk sense."
(That, my dear, is very much a matter of opinion!)

Ad girl: "Do you not want to check with the rest of the team first?"
Saira: "Ah, I haven't got time. The rest of the team aren't here."
(Yeah, Saira, that's what fucking mobile phones are for!)

Paul: "Saira is difficult to manage definitely (where have we heard that before? - TH) I actually said to her a couple of days ago that I didn't think she was a team player - she's a person who wants to do her own thing, and to shine herself and to point the finger of blame elsewhere, but not to take any sort of flak herself."
(Jesus Christ! Do these people even hear themselves? Sound like anyone you know, Paul?)

Ad exec: "There's an old cliche in the advertising world - if you throw three balls at someone they're likely to drop them all. If you throw one they might catch it. I think  you've thrown too many balls."

Sir Alan: "I've written books on advertising. Cheque books."

Sir Alan: "You should have stuck to that guy like shit to a blanket."

Paul: "I'm a Roman Catholic, and as God is my witness, I shook her hand."
Sir Alan: "Well I'm Jewish and I couldn't care less!"



Thoughts in the cab

Rachel: "Fundamentally, Paul's lack of management did cause a tremendous problem. My feeling is that I haven't been fired for my performance on this task, but because Sir Alan likes Paul's pugnaciousness, and he likes Saira's pugnaciousness. Perhaps I just didn't stand up for myself loudly enough."

There's an element of truth to this, but the real reason she was fired wasn't because Sir Alan gave both the others a second chance over her; he saw something in the two of them that he did not see in Rachel. She produced a pile of shit and that's why she was fired.


You're fired!
Name: Rachel Groves
Age: ?
Occupation: Charity fundraiser

While Saira is notoriously hard to work with, I think it was a mistake for Rachel to have gone and done her own thing. Not only was that own thing sneered at by Sir Alan, but had she remained with Saira she would surely have been with her when they were with the "Mac man", as they all referred to the graphic artist at the advertising agency (presumably he was using a Mac computer, not being chased around by four sprites - oh no, that's Pacman innit?) and one of them would have stayed with him to ensure they got the design they wanted. Assuming they had a clue what they wanted in the first place. At any rate, two strong female personalities often spark off against each other, and this is what happened, leaving both first fighting each other in the Boardroom and then in desperation bonding as sisters (too late) to gang up on Paul. Her decision to do the stupid dance probably sealed the fate of the pitch before it had even begun, though to be fair, nothing about that campaign was going to impress.

After being fired, Rachel continued in the charity world, becoming head of fundraising for the Citizens Advice Bureau, and also turned her hand to novel writing.



First Forte: Probably the second best team leader so far, Miriam knew exactly what she wanted to do, had her vision, listened to her team members. She delegated but did not desert, keeping in contact with the sub-team at all times, and she had no conflict within her team. The unwieldy jukebox aside, they had no real problems and they came up with a clever strapline from the off. Even though James for some reason disagreed with the pitch and how it had gone, he did not make his feelings known publicly and supported the team. They all worked together on the same cohesive idea, and that's why they won. Also, that the other team was shit.

PM Rating:

Impact: In direct contrast to First Forte, Impact had no idea what they were doing. Paul, as PM, did his own thing, listened to nobody and then left his sub-team to their own devices, blaming them for not checking in with him, when that's his responsibility as PM. To his credit, he admitted he was not a good PM, perhaps the only candidate who will ever do so, as it's tantamount to presenting your belly to Sir Alan and handing him the sword, but it seemed to work for him. Nevertheless, he allowed friction and bad blood to poison his team, but seemed unaware of, or uncaring about it, as long as he got his precious video done. He was unable to see how poor that video was, defended it to the death, but was quite willing to throw his sub-team under the wheels of the approaching bus with the advert for "You're Fired!" plastered on it. A very poor PM indeed.

PM rating: (It would have been 0.5 but I'm giving him credit for the admission)

May the best team win?

Definitely. As described above, First Forte had their game plan in place from the off. There were a few setbacks but they tackled them professionally and turned disadvantage into advantage. Their entire task, from brainstorming to creation to pitch, was streets ahead of Impact's. Even Sir Alan said it wasn't close, a no-brainer. And so it was.

The front runners

Miriam, through her management style has shown herself to be a cut above the rest, so right now we have her and Tim, James and possibly, if she can get her shit together, Saira. Paul can't last much longer; after my praising him last task he nosedived this week and was lucky not to be shown the door.


The one that got away

Have to go for Raj here. What the hell did he do? I think he sat with Paul while he Spielberged his way through the video, but I don't remember him even talking. Had Paul decided to bring him into the Boardroom I think he would have been hard-pressed to defend his participation in the task, and might very well have been heading home. A lucky man.[/i][/i]

[Trollheart]

Candidates' Progress

Visibility

• Tim

• Raj

• Rachel

• Saira

• Ben

• James

• Sebastian

• Miriam

• Paul

[/list]

Effectiveness

• Tim

• Raj

• Rachel

• Saira

• Ben

• James

• Sebastian

• Miriam

• Paul

[/list]

In addition, here are some pie charts showing who did the most actual work in the task:

First Forte


Impact