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.

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.

The Apprentice: JJB - Jadine Johnson Begone

In tonight's The Apprentice, Jadine Johnson was fired for missing her daughter and going AWOL for a couple of hours. I thought that was a harsh decision especially as Simon Ambrose, the PM, gave Lohit Kalburgi a poor list of leads to phone for appointments. Many of the numbers were wrong or were for garden centres. He also chose badly, with the electric shock torture device / air filter being hard to sell.

Jadine joins Ifti Chaudri as the 2nd ethnic minority candidate to go because their missed their children. What does it say about ethnic minorities and their devotion to their kids versus the relentless devotion to business that Alan Sugar is looking for.

She looked a more relaxed & beautiful in "You've been fired" as did Adam Hosker, last week, on BBC2 after the main event. You can see how the fired candidates are exhausted & stressed during the challenges. Perhaps being fired and getting away from the pressure is what they needed & wanted.

On the BBC website, both Katie Hopkins & Kristina Grimes are both described as single mothers. Is this going to be an issue that eliminates them? Interestingly, the men who are left are not listed as single or married fathers.

On "You've been fired", there was speculation that Katie is trying to be The Apprentice but her contreversial remarks to camera are a launchpad for a media career. With her being so quotable, she looks set for comfy sofa chats, glossy magazine interviews and perhaps her own tabloid column or cable TV programme, followed by a 6 figure book deal.

The Apprentice: Adam's 'ad it

Alas, Adam Hosker was fired in The Apprentice tonight. He mis-calculated the penalty on getting the Nigella seeds so it was worth arriving late to get them.

I was shocked & disappointed that Ghazal Asif, being of Indian origin, didn't realise what they were earlier in the day.

Adam made a tactical mistake in letting Katie Hopkins and Kristina Grimes (his 2 sworn enemies) go off together and plot against her. He should have kept one of them, probably Katie, in his car. She wished he would be run over!!

As a character, I liked his straight-talking and exploration of the flaws his PM's plans. I thought he took a lot of flak for his so-called "negativity" but he was right most of the time.

The Apprentice: Paul's Poor Performance

In this week's The Apprentice, Paul Callaghan was justly fired for trying to flog cheap cheese to the French, buying sausages that he couldn't cook and wandering off to sell the raw sausages with his flirt-friend, Katie Hopkins. With those 2 being the only French speakers, he left the rest of his team on their stall without a French speaker. He also didn't give Adam a budget for the sign so it cost 2x as much as he wanted.

The Apprentice: Wood's Woe

In week 5 of The Apprentice, last week's liar, Nathalie Wood, came a cropper and got her just deserts. This week's task was to pick and sell as many photographs from 2 photographers.

Justice was done and she also deserved to be fired for being a weak project manager and a week defender in the boardroom. She chose to keep her new best friend, Katie Hopkins, out of harm's way and was forced instead, to bring in Lohit Kalburgi with the weak excuse that he had produced some labels that their photographer did not like. This is somewhat ironic as she was criticised for her wrong labels last week.

Justice was finally done, albeit a week late.

Also this week, alleged "energy sapper", Adam Hosker, got the most valuable sale and was on the phone to bringing in art fans to the team's private viewing. Although he can be negative in an un-constructive way, i think he is right more often than he is wrong and I feel empathy to his way of thinking.