The Apprentice: She was robbed

It was a comedy of errors in the final tonight. Claire Young and Lee McQueen chose to associate their aftershave with the dangerous allure of gambling whereas Helene Speight & Alex Wotherspoon had an innovative but ruinously expensive two-stage bottle & constantly bickered.

I couldn't believe Lee won The Apprentice. He lies on his CV but gets caught out last week. He should have been fired immediately. He treated Lucinda Ledgerwood badly the week before and yet he still wins. Claire should have won it. She might have been tough but at least she kept her iron fist in a velvet glove. He is all iron. Yes, he needs rounding off but he is all straight edges and sharp corners. He is going to bruise people in Sugar's empire.

And what is a reverse-pterodactyl anyway?

The Apprentice: Ladies Day

With my job as a financial adviser, I'm out most nights and have to resort to taping "The Apprentice" series 4 for weekend viewing. So, I haven't been able to give you my usual post-screening commentary as I did over the last couple of years.

However, having seen Week 7 dominated by women for both good and bad reasons, I had to comment.

First was the first double firing of this series of the 2 Jenny's: Jenny Celerier - the fungus in the boardroom with her poisonous game-playing, insults and attempted bribery and industrial espionage and Jennifer Maguire, who despite claiming to be the best salesperson in Europe, couldn't plan, was colour blind and couldn't read.

I think Alan Suguar fired JC because Kevin Shaw, last week's losing project manager failed to bring her back into the boardroom after she came up with the idea of sending cards to save the environment and then revealed she was sending fewer cards during a sales pitch. He wanted to fire her then. He admitted as much on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. She didn't help herself this week by trying to sabotage the other team's tennis racket and he felt she lied about her knowledge of kosher but I think she just mis-communicated her basic knowledge. This week he got his chance by choosing the candidates he wanted back in the boardroom. He broke the rules by doing this. He's done a double-sacking before but this new development has set a precedent. It means anyone in a losing team can be fired.

Secondly, on the plus side, Sara Dhada & Lucinda Ledgerwood both did well on the winning team with their planning and preparation and got kudos from Alan Sugar's PR man, Nick Hewer. Alas both have been criticised in the past for not doing enough but Sara won her task in week 3 with the Indian pub food & Lucinda ran a very smooth project in week 5 with the ice cream and was unlucky to lose, despite not having arguments in her team. They showed you didn't need to be aggressive, gossipy and manipulative to win. They showed a kindlier, gentler approach to business and sales. I hope they go far in the series but I fear they will be cut to pieces before the final, for all the past criticism of them, which may have been fair to some extent but was overblown and wasn't the main reason for a team losing a task.

I was shocked by the end of week 6's episode when Lee McQueen, who won this week's task was one of the Chief Inquisitors condemning Sara, for apparently doing too little. The cabal had attacked her in the boardroom and continued back at the house. They had no right to attack her in a group. Raef Bjayou defended her, to his credit and he won a lot of fans for it. At the beginning he seemed an upper class twit to me but he has got on well with those who are neither prince or paupers and isn't condescending, supercilious or patronising at all.

I hope Lee thanked and said sorrt to Sara for helping him win this time and treats her better in future.

For all that, I'd like Raef to win The Apprentice this year, although I can see someone like Claire Young challenging him despite her sniping, interference and lack of support. Alan Sugar seems to be giving her several second chances, including her sabotaging of Alex's rug negotiation.

Tre Azam is writing a blog on the current series and you can find out what happened to him and the rest of the 2007 Apprentice candidates.

The Apprentice: Food, Glorious Food

What is with Alan Sugar? It must be his surname. He seems obsessed by food.

In week 1, he got the candidates to sell fish.
In week 3, he got the candidates to sell pub food.
In week 5, he got the candidates to sell ice-cream.

So, 60% of the tasks so far involve shifting food.

I wonder if going to get his soon to be new Apprentice planning a new style of gastro-pub where you can get fresh fish and home-made ice-cream on the menu.

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: 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.

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.

The Apprentice: Physicist Panned

In week 4 of The Apprentice, Sophie Kain, the physicist was fired. She admitted she wasn't keen on selling sugary sweets for a few pounds when they only cost a few pence to make. Alan Sugar implied that this was par for the course in business. I wonder if he was referring to his products. Yet when Gerald Ratner claimed his company's products were "crap", he lost £500M as well as his job, fortune & company.

I thought her dismissal was an unfair decision as Nathalie Wood had messed up the labels, claiming the sweets were "Organic Orange", when they had a bucketful of E-numbers in them. This blatant mis-representation would have deceived the public and held up the sales of the team.

Then, Nathalie lied about what went on but Alan Sugar smelt her porkie pie in the boardroom. Yet, surprisingly, for screwing up & then lying about it, he didn't immediately dispense with her services. Justice remains to be done.