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: 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.

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: Ghazal's gone

After being on the losing team in last week's The Apprentice, when Adam Hosker got fired, Ghazal Asif volunteered to be PM and got her wish this week. Alas, she came a cropper when she didn't use her brand & advertising gurus, Katie Hopkins & Naomi Lay, effectively. Her team failed to promote a brand and get over the message that they were selling trainers.

Up till this week, their were 4 ethnic minority candidates out of 8, Ghazal Asif, Tre Azam, Jadine Johnson & Lohit Kalburgi. This 50% contingent is far higher than previous series and is much higher than the proportion in the country. I wonder if the BBC went very-PC & OTT in getting so many on the shortlist, not forgetting Ifti Chaudri, of course.

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.