Tag Archives: Lord Alan Sugar

The Apprentice reveals its winner

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Twelve weeks of tasks, boardroom tantrums and rubbish business talk has led to the final of The Apprentice. The four who made it this far are: Jade, Nick, Tom and Ricky, and all that is between them and becoming Lord Sugar’s business partner is the gruelling interview stage.

Each have their own business plan and they want Lord Sugar to help fund their business venture. This, of course, means it should be an idea that Lord Sugar will actually like.

Nick wants to create some software that allows you to buy all the ingredients for recipes that you find on the internet with one click, Tom has a wine hedge fund plan, Jade wants to create a massive call centre and Ricky has a plan for his own recruitment agency. All a bit underwhelming.

Margaret Mountford returns for the interviews, alongside Claude Littner, Mike Soutar and Matthew Riley. Jade is immediately counted out of winning the competition as she intended to spend the entire £250,000 awarded from Lord Sugar in six months to cover the costs of the business, this didn’t go down well. On top of that her business plan, a giant call centre, is called unethical as nobody likes being disturbed by call centres trying to sell you stuff. There is further embarrassment as she tells Soutar that she has bought all the web addresses for her business. Turns out she hasn’t so Soutar bought one instead. Quite clearly Jade is out of the running.

The interviewing panel do not understand Nick’s idea which would allow people to buy recipe ingredients all at once from your supermarket of choice online. “Why would people buy things off the internet? Who plans their meals for the week?” ask the panel, which I think shows how far from reality business people actually are. So they resort to telling Nick he is odd because he grew up in Switzerland and didn’t watch television until he was 16.

Ricky gets a bit of a bashing in the interviews because in his application for The Apprentice he called Lord Sugar an old dog and said that he would be able to teach him new tricks. In his application he also referred to himself as the Thor of business. Soutar finally asks what everyone else has thought for the past 12 weeks — “Why do you call yourself Ricky Martin?” Turns out it is just to be remembered through association with the singer Ricky Martin. Luckily his business plan is impressive.

Tom’s wine hedge fund business idea is similar to what he already does now, which has made a healthy profit. The problem is the interviews make Tom look as though he is a bit of a daddy’s boy because he is in business with his father, who also wrote him a reference letter for his Apprentice application. Tom is also young, at 23, but Karren and Nick rush to say that shouldn’t count because you too were young businessman once, Lord Sugar.

Eventually the embarrassing interviews are over and Lord Sugar has to make a decision. Jade is out of the running first, Sugar does not want his name associated with a business that calls you up on a Sunday afternoon trying to sell you something. Nick is the next to go because Lord Sugar cannot see how he can make money out of his idea.

This just leaves Tom and Ricky to fight it out. Lord Sugar has to make a decision between the safe choice of Ricky’s business or Tom’s risky plan. And in the end Sugar chooses Ricky, after he promises that he will no longer talk like an idiot.

So that’s it for this year, if you want to relive the series then it is still all on iPlayer. But it is important to add that Lord Sugar isn’t bored or business yet as applications are now open for series nine.

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Who should win The Apprentice?

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As the eighth series of The Apprentice comes to an end, Lord Sugar is now left with only four candidates to choose from to make one his business partner.

On Sunday the remaining contestants will have to pitch their business idea to the board and go through a number of excruciating and embarrassing interviews. So let’s take a look at who is left and has a chance of winning.

Jade Nash

The business development manager likes to get the job done but sometimes doesn’t really think about the best way to get the job done. For example when she had to do the maths for the Groupon task she couldn’t add numbers together unless they ended in a zero.

She was maybe a bit annoying at the beginning because she wouldn’t listen to anyone, but recent successes in the tasks have shown that she might be alright.

Nick Holzherr

The technology entrepreneur has been quiet throughout the series. During the final task Nick spotted when their chocolate company was going off track but didn’t do much anything about it.

However, when he is in charge he is quite calm, collected and knows how to get the best out of his team as he did with the selling tat to the people of Essex task.

Ricky Martin

The recruitment team leader with the most inappropriate name for a business man is in with a good chance. His inspiration is Alan Sugar and throughout the series enjoyed having the chance to show off. He even referred to himself as “the reflection of perfection”.

My Ricky highlight from the series has to be watching him force lumpy, horrific looking tomato sauce into glass bottles so that they didn’t waste any of the mixture in the condiment making task.

Tom Gearing

Tom is the youngest contestant in this year’s final, aged 23, and is the director of a fine wine investment company. He was also the only person brave enough to stand up to Adam when he wanted to make top quality food using the cheapest products available in the street food task.

He has quite an artistic approach to the competition and when he doesn’t like the direction that the task is going pulls a face like he is sucking a lemon.

Head over to our Facebook page and vote for who you think should be the winner.

The winner will be revealed on Sunday when Lord Sugar points his finger and says “You’re gonna be my business partner”, which isn’t as catchy as “You’re hired”.

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The Apprentice finds its final four

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As we gear up to the final of The Apprentice, the candidates’ latest task was a chance to prove to Lord Sugar that they’re worthy of becoming his business partner.

If you just want to know who didn’t make it into the final four, then click here.

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Adam Corbally was fired by Lord Sugar.

Last week The Apprentice had the first double firing of the series. Stephen Brady and Gabrielle Omar left the show after a disappointing result on the task.

This meant that Ricky Martin was all on his own, yet he was hopeful that Lord Sugar would allow him to stay as a one man winning team. That did not happen and Ricky is now working with Tom, leaving Adam, Jade and Nick to make up the other team.

This week’s task is to create an affordable luxury product range. Tom and Ricky both suddenly realise that they like to style their hair so go for male grooming products. Whereas Jade, Adam and Nick opt for chocolate. As research for their chocolate company Adam and Nick go to a chocolate shop, which would be a perfect time to ask business related questions but instead they just eat all the chocolates and sweets offered to them. Adam decides that they should also do jellies as well as chocolates. No one else in the team wants to but somehow they end up being a chocolate and jellies company.

Meanwhile Tom and Ricky are getting along as a team but when an issue comes up that they disagree on they each make a face like they are sucking a whole lemon. As this behaviour continues they both become quite unhappy about their product, but refuse to say anything about it.

To show off their products the teams have an empty room that they need to decorate. As Ricky and Tom go for a bland bluey grey, and Jade, Adam and Nick opt for stands of chocolate as well as a bar, I was reminded of how excellent last year’s final task creation MyPy was.

Back to the current contestants where the teams have to pretend that their idea is a real business for a day. Adam, Jade and Tom seem to impress with nice tasting chocolates, sweets and plenty of alcohol. No one seems to have a bad word to say about them apart from themselves as individually they are all picking faults with the idea. Tom and Ricky’s customers on the other hand behave as though they are walking round a funeral home. One customer decides to have a wet shave, and worryingly Ricky does this.

But acting like a real business for a day isn’t enough for Lord Sugar to see if you have what it takes to be in the final. No, the teams also have to pitch their company idea to a group of industry experts. And if you look carefully you can see Lord Sugar has slipped in as well. Ricky and Tom practice their pitch relentlessly while on the other team Adam writes his notes on his hand and every second word seems to come out as a cough. Once the pitches are over they head to the boardroom.

Turns out there are flaws in both ideas- when will they realise that is what happens when you come up with an idea and make it into a functioning business in a few days? However, Lord Sugar liked the male grooming idea and so Ricky and Tom are through to the final. All this has made Lord Sugar sleepy though. He can’t decide who should leave out of Jade, Adam and Nick and says everyone should come back in the morning.

Once the boardroom has reconvened the contestants start blaming one another. Both Adam and Nick agree that Jade performed best on the task but that she should be fired. They squabble and they back-stab but eventually Lord Sugar stops all this nonsense and fires Adam.

This means the final four are Jade, Nick, Tom and Ricky. That’s it for tasks this series, and all that is between them and becoming Lord Sugar’s business partner is the interview stage. It should be good as Margaret Mountford is back to grill the contestants on their business plans.

The final is on Sunday starting at 8.30pm on BBC One, and if you are suddenly nostalgic for the early days of this series then don’t worry it is still all on iPlayer.

Smelling the success on The Apprentice

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The budget was quite clearly blown on The Apprentice this week, as the contestants were given a van and £150 and told to make as much cash from selling cheap tat.

If you just want to know who was fired this week then click below, otherwise we’ll get on to ridiculing the contestants.

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 Azhar Siddique is the latest casualty after getting on the wrong end of Alan Sugar’s finger.

It is a bit of a lazy day in The Apprentice household, as Lord Sugar calls them at 5pm to tell them to get over to wholesale warehouse in Essex. They meet Lord Sugar in a darkened car park, where he explains that each team has £150 to buy products to sell to the people of Essex, whilst keeping tabs on what is selling and when to get more stock.

Lord Sugar plays around with the teams a bit, bringing Stephen to Sterling and Laura over to Phoenix. He also points out that some people still haven’t been project manager, and hints that this might be the week they give it a go.

Jade, from Phoenix, gets the hint and decides to be project manager. However, Ricky Martin over on Sterling sees a chance to be a bit of a suck up and puts himself up to be project manager even though he has no background but it is what Lord Sugar would have done. Ricky seems quite miffed when Nick puts himself forward and the team go with him instead.

Sterling choose the best places in Essex to set up a stall and start browsing the shelves to see what tat they could sell there. They seem keen on beard trimmers, fake tan and nail kits. Meanwhile Phoenix aren’t off to the best start; they are taking a long time to choose a place to set up a market and manage to find vibrating toys in the warehouse. They also find the fake tan, as well as hot water bottles and little plastic insects.

While Sterling seem to have a plan and are thinking about what is best to sell at their different locations, Phoenix have bought a variety of things and don’t really know what to do with them. Azhar starts to mention that they should have a strategy, but gets ignored. He seems a bit miffed.

The next morning, as preparation for dealing with customers in Essex, Stephen and Ricky try out their best TOWIE impersonations.

The teams set up and start to awkwardly interact with the public. Ricky and Stephen create an odd script for their products to bring in the customers and Nick offers free haircuts for life with a hair trimmer. The most popular product for Sterling is the tan, rather surprisingly. Jenna, in an attempt to sell the beard trimmers, ends up talking to a beardless man who seems to think the only person he knows with a beard is himself. Team Phoenix are having problems with selling their odd mixture of items, yet Adam is doing well on the market and shockingly getting people interested in their tat.

Coming up to lunchtime the teams are running out of stock and plan another trip to the warehouse. As Jade and Adam set off to buy more products Azhar calls again wanting to know more about the team’s strategy. Jade gets annoyed and ignores him again.

Once the stock has been replenished, each teams have their own squabbles, they try to make good use of the rest of the day. They attempt to sell as much as possible before the end of the day and do their best to impress Lord Sugar.

And so we come to boardroom time. Nick explains Sterling’s approach to the task with their Essex kit, Lord Sugar looks horrified as to what they think Essex is all about. Overall Nick is seen as a good project manager, although Alan Sugar says it is “shameful” that they had a period with no stock. Over on team Phoenix Jade is immediately criticised for taking a long time to choose where to go, but she loved the effort of her team and has no complaints about them. Azhar says there was a lack of strategy, and somehow this is the first time Jade seems to have heard about this.

Both teams seem to think they have done well, but based on the figures Phoenix assets comes to £838 and Sterling’s assets are worth £955. Nick and the rest of the team get a night of cocktails as a reward, and Phoenix get to visit Bridge Cafe again.

Jade says that everyone did well, and as they lost the task with her as project manager then she should be the one going home. Surprisingly she does not say this in the boardroom. Instead she goes for Azhar and flounders when having to pick someone else to get the wrath of Sugar. In a panic she brings Tom back with her. As he was one of the best on the project this decision annoys Lord Sugar.

On paper it looks certain that Jade is going; she was in charge of losing the task and she panics. However, Azhar keeps mentioning strategy and wasting time so Lord Sugar decides to fire him. Yet again another silly decision made, I think. We are now down to the final nine, and hopefully some of the candidates who should have gone earlier in the series will be given the boot soon.

Next week the candidates will be turning their hand to modern art, which I am guessing will go very well. Before then you can catchup with the rest of the series of The Apprentice so far on iPlayer.

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Last night’s Apprentice was all about rubbish

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This week the teams have to buy items to recycle and be able to sell it on at a profit. Or as Ricky, eloquently, put it “selling crap and turning it into style”.

If you just want to know who left The Apprentice this week, then click below.

Show spoiler »

Everyone’s favourite Catherine Tate impression, Jane McEvoy, was fired.

Lord Sugar likes to keep everyone on their toes and mixes the teams up again, straight after everyone has a good old bitch about everyone else. Now Ricky is part of Sterling and Jade moves to Phoenix.

Duane puts himself forward for team leader of Sterling. He did a good job last week of focusing the girls and it paid off as they won last week’s saucy task. It becomes awkward though as no one else agrees. Instead everyone else agrees that Laura is the best candidate for team leader because she has experience of retail. Whilst Phoenix go with Tom because he is a bit artsy.

The teams take very different approaches early on. Sterling are buying lots of cheap tat to bring back to their creative team to upcycle, whilst Phoenix are being stingy and buy a few select items.

Both Karren and Nick seem critical of their team’s approaches — they are never happy. Nick thinks Phoenix need more stock so that they can actually be able to sell more, and Karren thinks that in the rejuvenating old junk task, Sterling want to do too much.

This week’s episode is full of embarrassing moments. Another belter comes from Phoenix thinking that they have found all the best bits from one guy’s shop, which he had foolishly hidden away in the back and marked up with low prices. However, the guy in charge of the shop, once he was rid of the contestants just laughs, reveals that they missed everything of worth and bought rubbish.

Meanwhile, over on team Sterling they are rummaging through a dead person’s belongings to see if they could sell any of it in their shop. Ricky seems keen to take the curtains and the carpets, while Duane isn’t a fan of anything. He doesn’t grumble too much because they are getting it all for free. As he says: “Don’t look a gift horse in the eye”!

The creative part of team Sterling, headed up by Gabrielle, are upholstering, painting the union jack on most things and attaching table legs to suitcases. The boys in the team look confused by everything they are trying to sell.

Both teams have a shop unit in Brick End which they have dress up and fill with their stock before trying to flog it all tomorrow. It looks like Phoenix has about 50 items, which they are calling a ‘minimalist approach’. Tom is agonising over the arrangement of their few pieces, while Adam is worrying that they don’t have enough items to sell (he has got a right grump on him since no one liked his Marigolds with sponges on, a few episodes back). However, team Sterling create an atmosphere in their shop by covering the floor in leaves and putting the name of their store in sticky tape on the window.

Finally it comes to the part of the task which involves business — they have to sell this rubbish by making people think they need it in their living room.

The teams are all moaning, and it feels like most of Sterling is blaming Jane for why their team isn’t good. It all feels a bit reminiscent of when Phoenix decided Michael was why they failed. So Laura decides to print out some flyers and send Jane off round London with those.

On top of that all the candidates are being a bit pushy in order to get a sale, and it isn’t an approach that’s working. The people browsing their vintage shops don’t really like being forced into buying an old hole punch or being dragged on a tour of their shabby chic items. In fact at the end of the day, when the teams were desperate to empty their shop units, the retro lovers manage to argue that even a £1 was too much for a coffee table and a chair.

By 6pm the contestants have to shut up shop and tally up their profit. Phoenix and Sterling both seem proud of their day’s work, so it is left to Lord Sugar to reveal the truth in the boardroom. Phoenix made a profit of £1,063.40, but Sterling spent lots on materials for upcycling, denting their profit to just £783.94.

As a reward Phoenix get to go dancing, and seeing as there are only two girls on that team it must have been awkward.

For their failure Sterling get to mull on why they lost. Laura decides that Gabrielle was at fault for her expensive creativity. And with the revelation that Jane only managed to sell £10 worth of junk she also gets to face the music with Lord Sugar.

Gabrielle fights her corner, which Lord Sugar likes and has decided that the others were picking on her — she’s safe. Laura looks a bit flustered and keeps launching into meaningless business talk. Yet throughout all of this Jane just looks a bit sulky. Lord Sugar is disappointed with Jane, saying that on paper she is a good businesswoman but hasn’t shown that on the programme. And only managing to sell £10 worth of stock hasn’t done her any favours. Jane is out. Surprisingly she is quite upset about this as she has a little cry in the taxi, but wants it be known that Lord Sugar will realise it was a mistake firing her.

Next week, they have to make their own fitness videos as the teams don short shorts and make up rubbish exercise moves. So tune into that next Wednesday at 9pm on BBC One, or catchup on iPlayer.

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The Apprentice gets saucy

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Just want to know who got fired? Click here to find out.

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Michael Copp was fired

Who do you think would make the perfect condiment? I hope you are thinking of a contestant from The Apprentice, otherwise questions will need to be raised about the validity of the whole show.

So far the boys have won all the tasks, so Lord Sugar mixed the teams up a bit. Duane and Nick were sent to Sterling and Katie moved to Phoenix, which means we now have to remember their rubbish team names. Duane puts himself forward to be project manager to help turn Sterling’s fortunes around. Meanwhile over on team Phoenix Katie says she wants to be in charge, with the boys warning her that it will be a difficult job. How caring of them, and definitely not patronising. She ends up being team leader anyway.

Despite not really knowing much about food both teams enthusiastically come up with sauces. Phoenix decides on a tomato sauce, a classier version of ketchup, and Sterling go for a pineapple and chili chutney.

In the world of pleasing Alan Sugar half of each team make a sample of the sauce, while the other half create the packaging for the non-existent product.

The ketchup group want to play up the fact that the sauce is Italian, because it has tomatoes in it, so come up with the name Belissimo. They don’t know what it means, but seem pretty certain it doesn’t mean crap, nor do they know how to spell it (they are missing an l). Creating their sauce sample doesn’t seem to be difficult though.

However, the chutney seems to look more like a weapon as Nick Hewer is seen taking a whiff and instantly hides. Duane, bravely, takes a spoonful and pretends that it is fine before becoming a coughing, spluttering heap in the corner. This setback means that at their pitch, Sterling have to describe what their chutney should taste like. It doesn’t go well.

But to sell the sauce at a profit they need more than one bottle. Once Sterling fine tune the recipe for their chutney they have no real problems filling hundreds and hundreds of jars. Except Jane, Catharine Tate lookalike, is being a bit sulky because no one is really listening to her.

Whereas Phoenix manage to make a pouring sauce that doesn’t want to pour. Huge vats of thick, brown tomato sauce are cast asunder and they only make 300 hundred jars.

When it comes to selling they are just trying to get anyone to buy it. Customers in supermarkets, people behind deli counters and, eventually, corner shops. This is where we finally learn about Michael Copp – so far he has been a quiet candidate and he has problems selling the sauce. You can see the team passing the blame onto him.

After a day of selling, we end up back in the boardroom and Lord Sugar reveals that the girls (with Duane and Nick) have won their first task. They sold 607 jars, compared to Phoenix’s 305, making Sterling a profit of £1028.

While Sterling gets to relish in their triumph, team leader Katie choses Ricky and Michael to be shouted at by Lord Sugar alongside her. In short Ricky gets huffy, Katie keeps dobbing others in and Michael is quiet. Lord Sugar sees Michael as a bit weak and not up to the competition so he is fired.

Next week the candidates have to sell glammed up tat to strangers, so make sure to tune into BBC One at 9pm or catchup with the series so far on iPlayer.

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Girls fail to make a splash with Lord Sugar

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We had power naps, household gadgets and a thoroughly unimpressed Alan Sugar — it can only be episode two of The Apprentice.

This week the budding business men and women’s task was to make a household gadget and based on the lack of ideas they had, not many more gadgets need to be invented. The boys were divided between a composting bin and magic washing up gloves, whilst the girls couldn’t decide between a baby bath splash and a tap cosy.

To make matters worse when they spoke to focus groups they also weren’t really keen on the ideas and both groups overcame this embarrassing detail by ignoring their market research. It also led to divisions in the groups as they were split over which product they should make, and awkward arguments.

Deciding on what household gadget to go for became so tedious that even one of the contestants, Maria O’Connor, fell asleep. Eventually the boys decide to stick with the composting bin, which impresses contestant Ricky Martin who says “We’ve invented the bin”. At the same time Jane McEvoy, who reminds me of Catherine Tate, decided to go with the splash guard.

Even when the products arrived the contestants didn’t realise what odd gadgets they had made. The boys were impressed with their bin, which looked more like a cafetiere for rubbish, and the girls happily declared that with their Splish Splash guard “There’s no way we’re not going to win”.

To find out if their gadgets were as good as they thought they had to pitch to online retailer Amazon and specialist shop Lakeland. The girls rambled their way through their presentation to Amazon and ended up telling them to order one million units of the splash guard. The boys didn’t do much better as the inventor of the composting bin, Duane Bryan, was not allowed to talk throughout the pitch.

Although both products were a bit rubbish and all the pitches made Nick and Karen squirm in their seats there still needs to be a winner. This week the best of the worst fell to the boys again who won an exclusive meal at The Ivy, whilst the girls earned an ear bashing from Lord Sugar.

It would be an understatement to say that Lord Sugar was unimpressed saying the splash guard was a toy not a gadget and he had a good giggle at them trying to sell one million of the bath guard in one afternoon. And an angry Lord Sugar likes to toy with the audience as he threatened to fire not one but two of the candidates. Sleepy Maria was given the shove for not being focused enough and he was tempted to get rid of Catherine Tate lookalike Jane as well but managed to talk her way out of being fired just about.

Next week the teams are making condiments, which looks like it could go horribly wrong so worth a watch. To catch up with the series so far head over to BBC iPlayer.

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The Apprentice is back

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By now you would have thought that Lord Sugar would have found his perfect business partner, yet every year he gets the BBC to commission another series of The Apprentice. And every year he seems to find 16 businessmen and women who are as useless as the previous lot. Nevertheless we are stuck with them now, so we should make the best of it.

As it is only week one all the contestants are eager to point out why they are brilliant, and rather than just saying why they come up with pointless phrases. Last night’s example of this was one contestant, called Ricky Martin, declared that he is “the reflection of perfection”. That’s nice dear.

Their first task was to create their own printed goods, so they had to come up with a design and print it onto some blank products. As it is early days in the show they split of into a group of boys and a group of girls and come up with their names. The boys went for Phoenix, so if they went wrong and put it right they could rise from the ashes and the girls went for Sterling, because one of them had a dream about it.

Early on it seemed that the girls had the advantage as one of the contestants, Gabrielle Omar, has started her own print company. So whilst the boys came up with awe inspiring products like a teddy bear with a union flag t shirt on and a tote bag with “This is a” written on it with a picture of a bus to complete the sentence and in the process of managed to colour almost all the bag with the dye, apart from where the design was supposed to be. But the girls knew what they were doing as far as making their baby themed products which had a picture of a rough sketch of some zoo animals.

Although this is where any advantages the girls team had quickly disappeared. For some reason the women started bickering and pointing fingers at who wasn’t doing their work rather than doing their work. Meanwhile the boys were knowingly selling crap products to people for a ridiculously high price. Although they did get picked up on this as someone who had bought ten of their bags for stock in their shop pointed out the imperfections, so the boys sheepishly gave them a refund.

However, the girls who for some reason spent time at the zoo in attempt to sell to anyone then started walking the long back streets of London led by Bilyana Apostolova who insisted she knew where she was going. Eventually they arrived at some shops where the staff weren’t really interested in their products, and ended up getting the hard sell from the entire group leading to them being told off. Honestly if these are the best entrepreneurs we’ve got then we should stop trying to make Britain a place to do business.

After their long, hard day of selling they all met up in the boardroom to be given a dressing down by Lord Sugar. And this is what really annoys me about the show, the boys who didn’t know what they were doing but could sell a broken vacuum cleaner as if it was brand new and just off the shelf won this week’s task, whilst the girls who made a better product lost.

So the boys went off for celebratory cocktails and the girls argued about who should go. Now to be honest I skipped most of this to get a bowl of ice cream. But from what I can tell Bilyana, who walked them round London for no reason, talked herself into a bit of a hole and was the first of the series to be pointed at by Sugar and told that she’s fired.

The whittling down of contestants continues next week on BBC1 at 9pm where they will be making a new household gadget. In the meantime you can catch up with this episode on iPlayer.

Triumphant Tom is the new Apprentice

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It’s been a while since Sunday’s Apprentice Final on BBC1 — we’ve been a bit distracted by the unravelling hacking saga — but we can’t let this excellent series finish without offering our expert opinion!

Following Tom and Helen’s success with MyPy (despite the ‘Columbus is 100% British’ blunder) and Helen’s record of 10 tasks won out of 11, most people thought she was a dead-cert to become Lord Alan Sugar’s business partner.

The contestant who won the nation’s hearts, however, was Tom Pellereau. Perhaps the nicest Apprentice hopeful ever to grace our screens, Tom appeared wearing a rather glorious hairnet during the fast-food challenge (which really should have won him bonus points), suggested the tasty name ‘Popsquits’ for his team’s biscuit product and gamely sold nodding dogs by the dozen for the reinvestment task.

The Apprentice

So when Helen Milligan (30), Jim Eastwood (32), Susan Ma (21) and Tom (31) arrived for their final test, presenting their individual business plans to a number of experts including the legendary Margaret Mountford, we were, against the odds, rooting for Tom.

As it turned out the last task was pretty pointless, as they all ballsed it up. True to form Susan was wildly over-ambitious with her figures and received short shrift from Lord Sugar.

Jim’s declaration when asked to describe himself without using clichés that he was ‘what it says on the tin,’ got one of Margaret’s trademark incredulous looks only matched later by Lord Sugar’s expression when Jim uttered the words ‘non-profit’.

Even golden-girl Helen’s proposal of a concierge service was heavily criticised, so much so that she reverted last-minute to her second choice business plan. But it was too late.

In the end, surprisingly, it was Tom, armed with plans of his latest invention and sets of incorrect figures who clinched the deal to be Lord Sugar’s business partner and get a £250,000 investment.

Whilst Lord Sugar himself claimed that if the competition been for a job as in previous series, Helen would have won it hands down, ironically it was Tom’s talent for invention combined with his lack of business skills that appealed to Lord Sugar. It was also pointed out it would be Tom who would most benefit from Lord Al’s involvement.

Ultimately though it was the mention of Tom’s improvements to his curved razor sitting at home waiting to be put on the market that seemed to get the pound signs flashing in Lord Sugar’s eyes. Evidently he thought Tom’s brilliant inventions combined with his own business expertise would be a winning combination.

Perhaps the fact that the challenges set this series ended up having relatively little bearing on the outcome of the competition could be seen as unfair. But since Tom won… who cares?!!