The Apprentice: Why women wimp out

The Brazen Careerist AKA Penelope Trunk cliams to explain why women don't compete in and why the don't win The Apprentice. She wrote about the original, US Apprentice but this year's UK gender final went the same way.

However, she states that in the US version, none of the female candidates have children, whereas in the UK series, a semi-finalist (Katie Hopkins) and a finalist (Kristina Grimes) have children. Tellingly the latter's son was off her hands off to uni and as a result she felt it was "her time now" as she had got pregnant when she was 17. She obviously felt only now that he was old enough that she could focus her efforts on her career.

Read in a Supermarket: Satisfactory Sauce

Perused on a ready meal: "Chicken in OK sauce"

The Apprentice: Final

In the final, Alan Sugar didn't ask the finalists to show him the money. That isn't surprising as in last year's final, Ruth Badger made more money but he picked Michelle Dewberry to be his Apprentice, without justifying his decision to ignore the money. He used more subjective than objective criteria.

A strange decision by Alan as he chose Simon Ambrose over Kristina Grimes as she was a lot better whereas he is a cheeky charmer. It parallels his strange decision to move from manufacturing and distributing electronics to managing property.

This demonstrates the continuing decline of British manufacturing and the growth of property development aping the firer of the US Apprentice, Donald Trump.

Perhaps Alan needs a cheeky charmer to break into property to give Amstrad a posh voice that he doesn't have.

Like the first 2 finalists, I don't think Simon will stay more than a year. He'll want to go off and carry on as an entrepreneur by setting another company or Alan will see there's little beneath the cheek charmer.

The Apprentice: Katie caught out

So, the rumours about Katie Hopkins gameplaying by using the show for publicity were true, how she could go away for a 15-week competition without thinking through her childcare requirements if she should win is unbelievable. She clearly had no intention of taking the job.

Being 50% right ain't bad as Kristina Grimes got through but Lohit Kalburgi was too nice.

The Apprentice: Episode 11 Preview

After 10 weeks, the 16 candidates should have been whittled down to 6 but Ifti Chaudri threw in the towel so there are only 5.

I would have expected another challenge to drop the numbers down to 4 after which there would be the interviews but the producers have given that a miss and we are going straight into the interviews. I wonder if they have cut an episode to save time & money.

With the interviews eliminating 3 candidates, they can only be 1 more episode where the 2 finallists face off.

Going on the form of the 2 previous winners, Tim Campbell & Michelle Dewberry, Alan Sugar seems to pick the quieter candidates who don't annoy or argue. They don't get much screen time for those reasons so I assume they are quietly effective in the background. On that basis, Lohit Kalburgi should win and he is The Apprentice for me. More so that the first 2 winners, he has shown he can manage his team and the other candidates have said they like him.

Of the other candidates:

• Simon Ambrose - made too many mistakes in the past and is lucky to have got this far
• Katie Hopkins - very agressive criticism of other candidates behind their back. Rumoured to being using this to launch a media career as she doesn't want to work for Alan.
  
• Tre Azam - honest and outspoken. Rather like Alan himself. However, having annoyed too many candidates, Alan can't afford to have someone like that working for him, especially he is the only one who can be so outspoken in his company.

This leaves Kristina Grimes who is a strong candidate; she has played a very political game during the series, making sure she has criticised her PM, to cover her back should her team lose.

So my prediction is for Lohit & Kristina to be the last ones standing at the end of tomorrow's episode.

Americans don't read

According to Robyn Jackson, 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year. That explains their ignorance of other countries and reliance on TV news for education or should that be edutainment. With the relentless US focus of CNN and the right-wing agenda of Fox News, they end up with a narrow and one-sided view of the world.