The Apprentice UK - The Final (17 July 2011)

OPENROAD

Vincent is definitely Mickey Pearce imo :D:D

Lapin

That Selfridges gag went down like a led baloon.

RachaelVO

Dara with hair.... YEUCH!!!!!!

amacachi

Lapin wrote: »

That Selfridges gag went down like a led baloon.

I'm sure it really happened too.

RachaelVO

Oh god, Dara with the gloves...

My sides are sore laughing

efb

Cute guy bringing on the chair!

OPENROAD

Will watch Junior Apprentice later in the year, last years was very good imo

CrashBandicoot Girl

So happy Tom won, lovely guy who's not exactly bad looking either

OPENROAD

Just reading Daras tweets, apparently Tom also gave him a gift but it did not make the edit

http://yfrog.com/ke10xhgj

flutegirl

Lads, wasn't online for the final but well done to Tom!! Lord Sugar, or just Sugar to Jim :eek:, picked the right candidate, and a nice guy as well. Looks as though Susan is in with a chance as well. Bring on the Junior Apprentice, and the US celeb version tomorrow night.

Hal Emmerich

RachaelVO wrote: »

Oh god, Dara with the gloves...

My sides are sore laughing

That was a dig at Edna when she gave the presentation on the apps.

flutegirl wrote: »

Lads, wasn't online for the final but well done to Tom!! Lord Sugar, or just Sugar to Jim :eek:, picked the right candidate, and a nice guy as well. Looks as though Susan is in with a chance as well. Bring on the Junior Apprentice, and the US celeb version tomorrow night.

I wonder will it be American overkill like the non-celeb version.

Poochie05

Susan

Delighted Lord Sugar went with his gut instinct and hired Tom- it will either go brilliantly or fail spectacularly, but I reckon that's what makes an entrepreneur.

Bit of a slap in the face for Helen though as Lord Sugar suggests Helen should get a promotion, but offers Susie a possible future partnership! I think the interviewers got it right though, Helen is someone you'd employ, not go in to business with. Tom could always hire her as his assistant, they made a great team.

And Jim was never in the running, thought Nick's assessment of his business plan being a seduction letter for Lord Sugar hilarious (and spot on)!

KnifeWRENCH

Happy Tom won; he's such a genuine nice guy and he's definitely more suited to the role of business partner than employee (under the old Apprentice format he would have been fired ages ago!) Helen did really well during the 11 tasks but her business plan was fairly rubbish. Susie's business potentially would have worked but would need a lot more than £250k to invest in properly. And the less said about Jim, the better.

Overall though, I don't think it was the best series. Some fairly bland, uninteresting candidates in there and fairly dodgy decisions by Lord Sugar; certain candidates (namely Leon, Melody, Natasha and Jim) got further than they should have, while others (Glenn and Zoe in particular) were let go too soon.

Still, looking forward to next year's already.

Mr_Man!

Enjoyed watching the series but when it ended I sort of felt it was all a bit pointless. It is a 12 week process to try and find the best candidate, which in this series was clearly Helen due to her impressive track record. So Sugar decides to pick Tom instead of Helen which I thought must have been because he saw some hidden gem in his business plan that everyone else didn't see but no we find out on the aftershow that he chooses him because he wants to get in on some previous business Tom had and just forgets about Tom's business plan. I'm just failing to see what the purpose of the final show was.

laugh

Mr_Man! wrote: »

Enjoyed watching the series but when it ended I sort of felt it was all a bit pointless. It is a 12 week process to try and find the best candidate, which in this series was clearly Helen due to her impressive track record. So Sugar decides to pick Tom instead of Helen which I thought must have been because he saw some hidden gem in his business plan that everyone else didn't see but no we find out on the aftershow that he chooses him because he wants to get in on some previous business Tom had and just forgets about Tom's business plan. I'm just failing to see what the purpose of the final show was.

Lord Sugar probably has a dozen Helen's, Tom's are rare, people just do not seem to get this.

Mr_Man!

laugh wrote: »

Lord Sugar probably has a dozen Helen's, Tom's are rare, people just do not seem to get this.

But surely by choosing Tom and also by disregarding his business plan the whole 12 week process is just invalidated?

mikemac

Susan

Win every task but one.
Sell 240k of a product in Paris. Get an order worth 1.6 million at retail price with ASDA

And the guy who wins an embarrassing three task still gets the 250k

The winner of this show was wrapped up long ago. And SAS isn't even interested in the chair, he wants Tom to work on the nail file in Walmart.

Sham of a series, hold the interviews in Week 1 and it'd still be the same result

gbee

Never lose sight of the fact that this was made for TV consumption. We see similar in the Master Chef series, The various talent shows, survival shows and so on and on and on.

There is only a fraction of reality and the rest is dressing and acting for the cameras.

EmatoelDiablo

Paully D wrote: »

None of them were a patch on Stella and Liz from the last series IMO. Paloma and Laura were up there with the best of this series too :cool:

Ah Liz, now there's a woman who can butter yer parsnips

Appleblossom42

Susan

Mr_Man! wrote: »

But surely by choosing Tom and also by disregarding his business plan the whole 12 week process is just invalidated?

Did I miss something? I didn't hear Sugar actually disregard the chair, agree he seems interested in the nail file but surely you have to admit Tom's plan was way more innovative than Helen's. As was said her plan was not unique, yes if he was looking for the usual employee she definitely was the one. If I was Sugar I'd have prefered to invest in Tom, he's a real dark horse and the fact he himself got his product into Walmart speaks for itself. Delighted he won.

Mr_Man!

Anytime the chair was mentioned in the follow up show Sugar laughed it off giving the impression that it was a stupid idea he even went as far to say that he preferred Tom's idea of 'emergency biscuits" to the chair. I'm not trying to say Tom isn't worthy of winning, its just the process was a farce. Nothing about the show made sense really. Tom was the loser (in regards track record) of the final four and Sugar picked him as a winner for reasons not really relating to the show i.e. winning tasks and the final business plan they had to present.
The 11 tasks were just pointless, they should have reformed the show entirely and made it somewhat more similar to a Dragon's Den format where the business plan of each contestant was paramount from the beginning of the show.

I feel like I'm repeating myself now so I'll stop haha

Appleblossom42

Susan

Mr_Man! wrote: »

Anytime the chair was mentioned in the follow up show Sugar laughed it off giving the impression that it was a stupid idea he even went as far to say that he preferred Tom's idea of 'emergency biscuits" to the chair.

Mmm, yes I do remember that but he may have been joking, who knows we may hear in the future that it's being developed. He disagreed with going for testing people that's for sure but the chair idea is not bad.

The 11 tasks were just pointless, they should have reformed the show entirely and made it somewhat more similar to a Dragon's Den format where the business plan of each contestant was paramount from the beginning of the show.

I agree, don't exactly get this either.

padraig_f

Mr_Man! wrote: »

Enjoyed watching the series but when it ended I sort of felt it was all a bit pointless.

Agree, very disappointing ending. Tom failed continually on the tasks, came up with a terrible business plan (niche market, people with back pain, low profit margin, Sugar himself said he wouldn't be interested), and yet won the series. If you're making a TV programme about hiring someone, the main deciding factor should be what happens in the process. Otherwise, why were we watching for the last 12 weeks? Good luck to Tom, seems like a nice guy, but from a television point of view, it made for a very unsatisfactory ending.

positron

Delighted to see Tom win the business investment. People like him usually gets overlooked or pushed aside out there, and I am truly happy to see him winning the competition, even if it's not a real competition.

The disappointment on Lord Sugar's face on hearing Helen's business plan was something else. If she had proposed selling snake oil on the markets like Susan does, she would have gotten the job. He was searching high and low to find a reason to take Helen in, but not a chance - she had all her energy and focus already spent or fully set aside for her main role, she probably didn't have much time or resources for coming up with own workable business plan. Such a shame..!

padraig_f

Appleblossom42 wrote: »

Mmm, yes I do remember that but he may have been joking, who knows we may hear in the future that it's being developed. He disagreed with going for testing people that for sure but the chair idea is not bad.

I got the impression he didn't like it at all but was making out they might pursue it for the sake of the tv programme. He made comments like "it will need A LOT of tweaking", and people started laughing, as if to say it was a complete non-runner. In the 'You're Hired' programme, it seemed pretty clear they'd be shelving it in favour of the nail-file product.

Yahew

Susan

positron wrote: »

Delighted to see Tom win the business investment. People like him usually gets overlooked or pushed aside out there, and I am truly happy to see him winning the competition, even if it's not a real competition.

The disappointment on Lord Sugar's face on hearing Helen's business plan was something else. If she had proposed selling snake oil on the markets like Susan does, she would have gotten the job. He was searching high and low to find a reason to take Helen in, but not a chance - she had all her energy and focus already spent or fully set aside for her main role, she probably didn't have much time or resources for coming up with own workable business plan. Such a shame..!

yeah. I dont subscribe, therefore, to the conspiracy theory that Tom survived because they knew their business plan all along. If *so* why did any of these guys - particularly Helen - get to the final.

positron

Yahew wrote: »

yeah. I dont subscribe, therefore, to the conspiracy theory that Tom survived because they knew their business plan all along. If *so* why did any of these guys - particularly Helen - get to the final.

I suppose 'theorists' might say that she never lost any rounds (bar one perhaps), so they never had a chance to fire her? While I think the show is well edited to justify how they want it go, and it's clearly coordinated to keep it interesting, I do think the editing and guiding ends at that - If they were to totally manipulate the show from the word go, public would be clued in sooner or later and they would alienate a lot of viewers (and I assume shows like this only attract certain type of viewers, more critical ones perhaps, unlike your typical X Factor audience).

blogga

What people don't seem to get is that this series was looking for a different skill set. If he wanted the usual brassy sales person / project manager Helen is ideal. He wanted someone who could create a product; Helen can sell and organize but she can't create. This series was more like an extended dragons den. Sugar is after a product that will make money for him. If the chair wont fly ( ) Tom will have another idea. Helen? Well, there's always cuisine de fr....oh wait, that's been done.

blogga

"If you're making a TV programme about hiring someone, the main deciding factor should be what happens in the process. Otherwise, why were we watching for the last 12 weeks? "

You were watching to make money for the tv production company and Sugar. You've been played.

padraig_f

blogga wrote: »

"If you're making a TV programme about hiring someone, the main deciding factor should be what happens in the process. Otherwise, why were we watching for the last 12 weeks? "

You were watching to make money for the tv production company and Sugar. You've been played.

I don't think so. I enjoyed the series, it's well made, nicely shot, dramatic, funny. So I don't regret watching it, but I think the last episode undermined its supposed main purpose, to find the best candidate. And yeah I know it's a a TV programme, there are much more efficient ways to find a business partner. But the final failed as a TV programme, because the winner didn't reflect what we saw in the selection process. Even if it is a bit of smoke-and-mirrors, it should be consistent with itself.

To people saying Tom deserved to win. What was his finest moment in the series? I'm struggling to think of any.