The Apprentice series 7 starts tonight

[New Carpet?]

Glad Tom won. Really disliked Helen there, her whole other second business plan at the 11th hour was pathetic. Just saying what Karren had said to her earlier in the meeting. Desperation. Jim's plan was terrible, as was Helen's first one and Susan's. Tom's wasn't great either to be fair but he appealed to Sugar's product related background and the Walmart thing just dragged him over the line.

This.

Great way to end the series - Claude was on good form again last night, though was surprised he didn't rip Jim to shreds much more.

I thought Helen was going to win from pretty early on in the series, and as Karren Brady kind of pointed out, if Lord Sugar was just looking for an apprentice, she'd have triumphed easily.

However, this new format which in a way merges Dragons Den with The Apprentice completely changed the game.

I was pleased Michael Sheen won though, he thoroughly deserved it, especially when he explained all about his parcel for Walmart. Helen was so desperate at the death with her alternative business plan, though to be fair Tom did well to bite his tongue and not offer up any one of his 21 other business plan ideas in retaliation.

I really liked this new format and am pleased they're going with it again for the next series, though it did leave me thinking was that one of the earlier firings could have wiped the floor with the final four with a half-decent business plan. None of them were really that good at the end.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

I suspect that the CVs had been viewed much earlier than the interview stage, so Sugar knew about the Walmart deal long before. That's probably why Tom was let off in previous boardroom meetings. Lord Sugar was full of admiration for getting an invention sold by Walmart, which is no mean feat.

 

[8ace]

When we got those expensive herman miller chairs where I used to work they had someone come in to show us how to work them.
Tom's idea is not at all original.

 

[Titanic]

When we got those expensive herman miller chairs where I used to work they had someone come in to show us how to work them.
Tom's idea is not at all original.

Indeed, my previous employer was paying someone to do this in 1986 - when we moved into a new IT facility. And my present employer does an annual review to ensure that chairs/monitors etc are suitable and that I don't have any issues.

It was not explained clearly enough to know if there was a USP to Tom's business.

Frankly, I thought the quality of all four 'ideas' was seriously disappointing.

 

[Simster]

As we all seem to be agreed, all four ideas were absolute gash, and the quality of candidates this series was really not much better.

They need to modify the way they do this. I think they need to present their business plan documents when applying for the show, and only select 16 candidates from those who have presented plans that look interesting. It is a ridiculous state of affairs that you end up with muppets like Susan presenting a first year profit of £1m and a string of convoluted, bland, seen-it-all-before bollocks making up the rest. It think it really ruined the integrity of the show, far more than one or two questionable decisions by Sugar in booting out candidates along the way.

 

[Pavilionaire]

Glad Tom won. Really disliked Helen there, her whole other second business plan at the 11th hour was pathetic. Just saying what Karren had said to her earlier in the meeting. Desperation.

I loved that moment, it was Pure Partridge. "Hod on Sir Alan, I've got loads more ideas. A chain of bakeries, Knowing You Knowing M.E...Monkey Tennis?"

I enjoyed the series and I enjoyed last night but as a TV concept they have to rethink it, because:

1. It's no longer "The Apprentice", it's "The Business Partner".
2. Tom's task record was 3-8.
3. The advisors were lukewarm to Tom's idea which Sugar rejected anyway.
4. Sugar recognised that Tom's US nailfile business alone would make this a risk-free investment.

Sadly, I think the show has run its course. The best person didn't win and the winning business plan was rejected. Sugar's pisstaking even reached new heights when he mooted there might be a deal between Tom's nailfile and Susie's cosmetics business. I'm sure that made Helen feel really good - well worth taking 12 weeks off work for.

 

[Billy the Fish]

A Partridge in a pear tree?

 

[mcshane in the 79th]

I loved that moment, it was Pure Partridge. "Hod on Sir Alan, I've got loads more ideas. A chain of bakeries, Knowing You Knowing M.E...Monkey Tennis?"

Spot on

 

[Pavilionaire]

I was literally waiting for Lord Sugar to smell Helen's cheese...

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

Tom's task record was 3-8.

I personally don't think that matters in the slightest.

Tom shone in the tasks as the only one often talking sense and the main purpose of winning the task is to avoid being fired that week.

 

[Pavilionaire]

I personally don't think that matters in the slightest.

Tom shone in the tasks as the only one often talking sense and the main purpose of winning the task is to avoid being fired that week.

Sugar routinely called Tim The Hindsight Man. Sugar repeatedly said he was getting sick of the sight of him in the boardroom and frequently questioned his ability to put his views forward and be heard. Tom also never won a task without Helen being in his team. She had 7 (count 'em) more wins, 7 fewer defeats.

For the integrity of the show it SHOULD matter that you can win the big prize despite losing 8 out of 11 times and having your business plan rejected.

 

[Tooting Gull]

I think you could have picked any of last year's 'best five' (Stella, Chris, Joanna, Baggs and Liz) and all were miles better than Tom this year. I know the concept was slightly different, but that wasn't reflected in the tasks, they were essentially the same tests. The difference was the business plan - which was summarily binned anyway.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

Sugar routinely called Tim The Hindsight Man. Sugar repeatedly said he was getting sick of the sight of him in the boardroom and frequently questioned his ability to put his views forward and be heard. Tom also never won a task without Helen being in his team. She had 7 (count 'em) more wins, 7 fewer defeats.

For the integrity of the show it SHOULD matter that you can win the big prize despite losing 8 out of 11 times and having your business plan rejected.

I get what you're saying completely.

However, I can completely see why he went for him over helen.

She would be FANTASTIC if you just gave her a task or job to do and let her get on with it.

In this case though Lord S wants someone who is going to make the correct decisions independently and produce ideas.

Tom has that in bundles. He will shout 30 things at Lord S. 29 will be dire. 1 will be excellent.

Helen however needs to be told what to do. She would do it BETTER than Tom for certain, but thats not what he was looking for this year.

Throughout the series when she has had a pitch or a meeting to go to she has been brilliant. This is because of her pre-prep and organisation skills.

When she has had to think on the spot it has not been great. I'm thinking in the boardroom (changing her plan) or deciding to attempt beat the wholesalers in the sales task.

She will no doubt be a fantastic employee for someone and I wouldn't be surprised if Lord S comes calling at some point.

 

[Cadiz Seagull]

I would have taken them both on. Tom's ideas with Helen's drive would be a winning partnership. AMS could just wind them up and let them go.

But either on their own? Not a chance

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I think you could have picked any of last year's 'best five' (Stella, Chris, Joanna, Baggs and Liz) and all were miles better than Tom this year. I know the concept was slightly different, but that wasn't reflected in the tasks, they were essentially the same tests. The difference was the business plan - which was summarily binned anyway.

... and Stella has quit the job anyway.

Apprentice winner Stella English on why she quit her £100k job with Lord Sugar | Mail Online

I won The Apprentice but Lord Sugar didn't want to know. I feel angry and used: Stella English reveals why she quit her £100,000 job after just nine months

By Jo Macfarlane

Last updated at 12:54 PM on 9th October 2011

As the winner of BBC’s The Apprentice, Stella English had become accustomed to boardroom showdowns with Lord Alan Sugar.

Blonde Stella, 32, gained the respect of the former Amstrad boss after maintaining a calm and measured approach to their weekly confrontations. It was a tactic which, so Stella thought, had earned her an exciting executive role working with and learning from the tycoon.

But there was one more showdown to come and this one resulted in Stella quitting her £100,000-a-year job with, she claims, Lord Sugar telling her: ‘I don’t give a s**t.'

Stella, who became known on the 2010 series as an ‘ice maiden’, has now lifted the lid on the reality of winning the coveted title, saying she has been left frustrated and humiliated.

Contrary to claims that winners secure a job working directly for Lord Sugar, ambitious Stella found herself shunted into a company where she claims she had no clearly defined role and little contact with the man who just nine months earlier had told her: ‘You’re hired!’

She gave up a prominent role at a City bank to take part in the show but was told after winning the TV series that, actually, there was no real job – with real duties, responsibilities and targets – for her to do.
Furious Stella tried to quit once before and was talked into taking on a different role. But, she says, Lord Sugar later admitted this was little more than an attempt to ‘preserve the integrity of the BBC, the show and me’.

Stella finally resigned last week and has now decided to speak out about how she feels ‘used’ by Lord Sugar.

‘It’s just been an appalling experience,’ she said. ‘I’ve wasted two years of my life when I could have been doing something better.

‘I’ve been working for years and I’ve never seen anything like it in business. The minute Lord Sugar put me in a company he didn’t run there were no prospects for my career.

‘In no way was I his “Apprentice” and there were times when he really just didn’t want to know. At the end, I realised he absolutely didn’t have my interests at heart. He gave me hope and I’ve worked hard, and for what? I had the p**s taken out of me.’

Stella is warmer and gentler in person than her reputation on the show suggests, but her steely ambition is never far from the surface.

She said: ‘Lord Sugar has forgotten one of the first rules in business – never underestimate someone who’s got nothing to lose.’

When the married mother of two was crowned winner in December last year, beating foppish 23-year-old investment banker Chris Bates, she was hailed as an archetypal never-say-die rags to riches success.

Stella grew up on a council estate and spent her childhood in care homes and with relatives after being given up by her mother. Nonetheless, she worked her way up to become a manager on the trading floor of Japanese bank Daiwa, earning £85,000 a year.

Recalling her time on the show, she reveals how she and Chris had to spend several months working in different parts of Lord Sugar’s empire before he made his decision on the eventual winner, although this part of the selection process was not filmed.

Stella was taken to Lord Sugar’s Viglen offices in St Albans, Hertfordshire, in September 2010. The company provides IT systems to schools, universities and hospitals.

She said: ‘He wasn’t overly friendly. He is exactly how you see him on television. He’s not my friend and I’m under no illusions about that.

‘He said, “OK, well this is where you’re going to be working.”

‘The job itself was vague, but he explained that the public sector’s budgets and margins were really tight. It made sense that, with a background in figures, I could spot opportunities to make money.’

Stella moved her family from South- East London to Hertfordshire and her husband Ray Dewar, 39, looked after their sons while she was involved in the show. She believed that this would demonstrate her commitment and boost her chances of winning the Apprentice title.

But Stella soon found that, at Viglen, there was little or no direction for her in her new role.

‘No one knew what I was supposed to be doing. I’d ask a question ten different ways before I got an answer. People thought I was stepping on their toes. I was being tolerated. They didn’t think I would be staying, so saw no reason to help.’


Several weeks went by and Stella had had no contact with Lord Sugar. Frustrated at her lack of responsibility, she called him and asked to meet.

‘He clearly didn’t appreciate having to come to see me. I asked for some feedback. He said, “I’ll tell you the feedback, shall I? Yeah. Nice girl, don’t do a lot.” ’

Devastated, Stella went through a stack of documents that detailed the work she had done for Viglen.

Lord Sugar called in Viglen’s chief executive Bordan Tkachuk and financial director Mike Ray and made her explain it again. Tkachuk is one of the interviewers brought in to grill candidates during the later stages of the selection process on the BBC show.
Stella said: ‘It was terrifying. They put up a fight and had an answer for everything. Clearly I was rocking the boat having brought the boss down to scrutinise them.

‘To them, it was a television programme and I wasn’t there to work. But to me, it was everything. I was shaking. Lord Sugar called me later and said, “I can tell you, you ain’t got any support here.” But he also told me, “It’s hard for any candidate who gets to this stage of the Apprentice. You get put into a company, people have been there a long time and they know what you’re earning. It’s a lot of jealousy.”

‘But I felt I could still win them over', Stella said.

She did – and was told she had won only a few hours before the final was broadcast in December.

‘I remember thinking, “Do I really want this job?” I had got what I had worked for, but there were real doubts.’

Those doubts were intensified after she met Tkachuk in early January.

‘He said, “The cameras have stopped rolling now. Welcome to the real world. There is no job.”

‘He then said, “Luckily for you, someone has just left.”

Stella was to be a project manager overseeing various IT tasks and reporting to technical operations manager, Gavin Burne.

‘My jaw dropped. He was very junior to me and I couldn’t learn anything from him.

‘With all the layers of management, there were now five people between me and Lord Sugar.’

Stella says it was clear Burne did not want her working for him. She is sympathetic, knowing it must have been hard having a well-paid Apprentice working for you. But she says Burne simply ignored her.

‘I’d try to streamline processes to get money from clients sooner, and worked out cost-efficient ways to use engineers but staff were told not to listen to me. Gavin told them that there was only one chief and that
was him.

‘I asked to be involved in meetings but was told I wasn’t needed. Gavin would hire people for my team and not tell me. Visitors to the office were introduced to everyone else but walk past my desk.

‘The attitude seemed to be – you’re nothing in here. People did say they felt sorry for me, that the job hadn’t been what I’d expected.’

In February, Lord Sugar visited to discuss Stella’s progress. But she says Tkachuk warned her beforehand, ‘Alan’s on his way and let me tell you something – don’t make me embarrass you. Because if I have to, I will.’ Stella said: ‘He was telling me that if I challenged anything he said, he would humiliate me.

‘Lord Sugar seemed keen to pin down my role and Bordan told him I would be in charge of potential new clients for Academy schools. But they hired a whole new team to do that and I wasn’t involved.’

Stella spoke to Lord Sugar only four or five times and did not complain but she argues he never gave her the mentoring the BBC show seemed to guarantee.

‘I did not go on the show to work for Gavin Burne. I had visions of being at Lord Sugar’s side, working with him, like Yasmina Siadatan, who won in 2009, and Lee McQueen, who won in 2008, who did get jobs alongside him with no layers of management in between.’

In May, she decided to quit. She met Lord Sugar at his Amshold offices but left after an unsatisfying five-minute conversation.

‘He told me I was speaking to the wrong person, that I had to sort it out with Bordan. He really didn’t want to know.’

However, Lord Sugar did later ring her, suggesting she confront Tkachuk and ‘demand answers’.

Still feeling frustrated, Stella handed in her resignation the following day – and received an angry call from Lord Sugar.

‘He said, “Look, what’s all this? You want to go now?” I was terrified and shaking. I said, “I’m sorry it’s not working out but it never will. I’m not going to start slating everybody. He said, “Well, you know, if you’re going to start saying negative things . . .”

Lord Sugar’s public relations consultants then rang to ask her why she was leaving and about her thoughts on her former boss.

'They were obviously worried about what I’d say to newspapers, who’d already found out I’d quit.’

Hours later, Lord Sugar rang again and offered Stella a job at YouView, a company jointly owned by television channels including the BBC and ITV and telecommunications firms. It makes set-top boxes that connect to the internet and Lord Sugar became chairman in March.

Stella said Lord Sugar told her that he would say she hadn’t walked out of Viglen but had done well there and that he’d given her a new job at YouView.

She said: ‘I wanted to work for him, but it was like going back to an ex. However, I needed a job and money. So I took it.’

At YouView, Stella was to work with an expert investigating possible security issues. It was an impressive role but one which, as it turned out again, did not require too much work. And now, Stella said, Lord Sugar ‘went off the radar’.

‘I didn’t speak to him for three months. He popped in twice and said hello.’

By this time, the 2011 series of The Apprentice had aired, and was won by inventor Tom Pellereau.

But the prize had changed – instead of gaining an apprenticeship, Tom will get a £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar and access to his business expertise.

On September 28, Lord Sugar called Stella to a meeting, where he pointed out that her contract would be up at the end of December. She said he told her: ‘I dunno what to do with you after that. Maybe you should think about what you want to do.’ Stella told him she wanted to stay where she was.

But, she said, he told her that YouView couldn’t afford to pay her and added: ‘I’ve met my obligations to you as far as I’m concerned. If you think Lord Sugar was s****ing himself when you left the Viglen job, you’re wrong, ’cos I don’t give a s**t.’

Stella said: ‘He told me I was there to protect the BBC and to protect the integrity of the show, to protect himself and – finally – to protect me.’

Stella understands that Lord Sugar’s prime concern was to avoid bad publicity.

‘I couldn’t believe he said that. I’d gone to work there under a pretence. He had strung me along and now he was washing his hands of me.’

Stella has not been back into the office since and on Thursday, posted her resignation letter.

She said: ‘I’m relieved it’s over and angry that I’ve been used. I just don’t understand why he had to stick the knife in.’

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Lord Sugar says: Representatives of Lord Sugar and Bordan Tkachuk declined to comment on Stella’s account of her time as his Apprentice. But a source confirmed Stella had resigned for the second time.

The source dismissed many of Stella’s allegations as either untrue or misrepresentations of facts.

The source said Lord Sugar and staff at Viglen had realised Stella was less talented than she believed, and added she blamed others for her failings and still had a lot to learn.

The source pointed out that Stella had thanked Lord Sugar at an awards ceremony in March for giving her the job opportunity and described her time with him as ‘the best year of my life’, despite complaining she was struggling with debts.

Further, the source said a lot of work had been done behind the scenes to protect Stella from media allegations that her husband had links with criminal underworld figures in South-East London.

 

[turienzo's lovechild]

i've always thought that "lord sugar" was full of shit