The Apprentice UK 2013

Also, YF has turned into "who can wedge themself furthest up Neil's arse".

Well, obviously after the interviews it was clear the girls were the three choices.

I did call the doctor surgery as the finalists, did think the cupcakes might not make it through, only would dance studios be the one to take the place?

Just catching up with YF right now, but why is self-belief such a wonderful thing in this process? What happens when you are wrong? Carry on anyway?

Neil was so bizarre. Something he'd supposedly researched for a year yet couldn't present any actual fact or reason or argument as to why everyone was wrong, just that 'i believe i'm right'. Like a little kid or something. I can't imagine actually being in a conversation with someone doing that?

it was his self-belief, unwillingness to abandon a bad idea that got him fired. that said, if he had trashed something he'd been working on for a year for another idea, i can't see that going down well either.

Its called having a contingency plan. Some people call it Plan B, some other laugh and reach for a CD album..

I found Neil's back story fascinating and sad. I knew his dad had died and that gave him his drive but I didn't realise his dad was bitterly disappointed in him for not becoming a pro footballer. Then when Neil said he didn't take a single day off after the death because that would be "weak", it started to seem fucked up. So it kind of made sense that his self-belief would have this manic, unyielding, almost magical thinking quality. Unresolved issues with a hard-driving father mixed with years of self-help/elimination show rhetoric about the power of drive and self-belief creates this character who's seriously impressive in many ways but utterly delusional in others. And Sugar's Godfather-like disappointment in him sealed it. I found the whole thing incredibly dramatic and revealing.

But obviously the highlight was Claude demolishing Jordan. I half-expected Jordan to be led out the back of the building and shot in the head after that.

Lead out the back and given a dubstep edited beating.

Did the "You're a parasite" comment get aired this episode, btw?

In the main programme it did, but then when the scene was re-capped in YF it was edited out.

Ah, I must have missed it, will be seeing it again, probably, later.

Leah's business is a bit ethically troubling but tbh Luisa is so evil that I'd want Leah to win even if her business proposal involved harvesting organs from orphans.

Eugh, both finalists just come across as horrible people, and now I don't care who wins :(

i want luisa to win. she's just so brazenly awful it's brilliant <3

this seems like the first year where they've not made an attempt to have a 'goodie' in the final - the fact that luisa is even in there, along with the constant "neil you're an incredible man" patter, makes the whole thing seem like a pr campaign to promote dim-witted evil in business.

DL, that's a fascinating point about neil's dad etc. goes partway to explain why he's so ruthless and dumbly singleminded. the whole 'new sugar daddy rejects you ALSO' is some harrowing shit, though i still can't bring myself to feel any sympathy for a man so humourless, so sly, so dismissive of everyone else's feelings. tenner says he undergoes a massive meltdown next time he gets sacked.

as for a winner, they're both appalling people so i don't really care but the way luisa treats people is revolting so it'll have to be leah.

Yeah, I was worried that Neil might crack in the boardroom and accidentally call Sugar dad.

Business and Personal shit shouldn't be mixed, therefore neck beard just comes across as a massive emotional fuck up.

jordan's business plan aside (and i'm surprised by quite how brazenly freeloading it is) i warmed to the guy over the series, was never unlikeable or cruel to the other candidates. but that business idea, jeez. not much different from how a lot of scumbags make their money these days, (hi buy2let folks!) but still.

'Why I Fired Them' on BBC1 at 10:35PM.

Here we go...

I've been buying dill this week and I keep giggling to myself thinking 'are you hungry for this dill?'

― kinder, Wednesday, July 10, 2013 10:00 PM (1 week ago)

lol

This is like the bit in the Mission Impossible TV series where Jim Phelps looks through the personnel files and selects who's going to do the mission.

Luisa's team: lemonface, neckbeard, useless guy, posh useless guy
Leah's team: terrible ideas guy, run with terrible ideas guy, contestant Leah beat into third place, early bath from episode 4

Here's a real question: why would a properly qualified doctor work in a clinic that just does three procedures on an assembly line basis? Surely they're not going to get paid very well. Is there a massive surplus of qualified doctors in the UK?

I don't know, but suddenly 'Your're Hired' has turned into 'Question Time'.

It also seems to me like this could be a disaster for the BBC if anything does go wrong and someone decides to sue them for putting it all together in the first place. This seems like a much higher profile final than previous years'.

As far as I know there is currently a bit of a surplus in many medical specialisms in the UK. With that in mind at 24 Leah is possibly only just into core training? She could easily go back and re-train/carry on. She would have to build a client base quickly to maintain a business. There is plenty of competition that eclipse her in terms of experience. An odd choice of business to invest in, I can't really see it as very scaleable.

xp Not sure, but given the amount of backside covering in this final bit (Jordan gets a kind word from AlSug after Claude's "parasite" mauling), it seems that they must have all angles covered.

takes a certain kind of person to go through all those years of training in medicine, with all the life-saving heartwarming goodwill and decency that surrounds it, with the sole aim of making a fortune from preying on the insecurities of young women. all this at just 24 years old, impressive

the only apprentice final i can ever remember where there hasn't been one slightly 'nice' person to root for. both awful people with no redeeming features. someone tell the bbc that the words 'business' and 'character' doesn't nec mean 'truly hateful'

Yeah, I also reckon the most training she'll have done in aesthetic medicine will be four months - if she's 24, she'll have done a 5 year degree then two years of foundation training since leaving school, which will be 3 specialties a year i.e. 4 months max in her preferred field, unless she's been supplementing her student income by doing botox on the side, but even then, surely not specialised enough to be training all of her practitioners personally.

Sorry, foundation training = 2 years covering 6 specialties.

Anyway I've just googled her, and turns out she trained in cosmetic procedures alongside her actual studies, which is fair enough, student doctors need to make money.

yeah that was weird, how it was never ever brought up that she might not be fully competent at this considering she's just 24, instead it was all 'you're brilliant leah, all your clients will want YOU'. i guess the set-up of the show dictates they can't really bring that up but seems pretty immoral to ignore it. didn't know the breakdown of a medical degree but that makes it even more dodgy. surely you'd expect some medic types to pop up in the press saying ALERT ALERT

xpost, ah so she's fully trained. still though, she's v young to be the head honcho/key trainer of something as dodgy as this, and that wasn't once brought up (unless it was in the you're hired? i couldn't bear to watch that or YF this year, can't hack the shameless brown-nosing of such toads)

Also, ffs, they're calling it "Doctor Leah". Really? She was all about the clinical ethical blah-di-blah image and now it's bimbo-fronted bimbo-named fluff of the highest order.

also spotter's badge for the person elsewhere on the internet who remembered/found this:

http://www.amstrad.com/press/news/news_firstday.html

http://www.amstrad.com/products/integra/

ha! all that shite about taking a leap into the unknown, a big risk etc

have any of his apprentice winners been a success with (or post) sugar?

that pic of tim though, recall him as being a bit dull and prob not much fun to know but fundamentally decent and fair, not like the naked greed and shameless lack of compassion of this lot. 2005, britain's tv business bods glory years

Well, if you'd watched You're Fired, you'd have seen Inventor Tom all excited about his baby nail clippers to stop you chopping your baby's fingers off.

xpost

btw, Inventor Tom's nail-files were not his actual business proposal when he won (it was actually something to do with a chair that stopped you getting backache, iirc). I don't think we'll be seeing Doctor Leah branches down the high street any time soon, I expect she'll put her face to something that Sugar's health and beauty empire has up its sleeve (probably Tom's fucking nailfiles) and be back practising medicine within the year.

Also, also, spurious firing reason: he didn't want Luisa because she has other businesses and it might deflect from her flogging cake-tins on the internet, but Leah said she wanted to continue to practise medicine, which wouldn't be AT ALL distracting from training flunkies in skin peeling, no sirree.

she has to, otherwise lose registration

I have a feeling that 'Doctor Leah' is just going to be the face of the product, and that someone with a lot more experience is going to be doing the actual training.

Maybe the company name could be changed to Amsface, in line with AlSug's other businesses (Amscren, Amsprop, Amscrap, oh wait that was Amstrad). In fact, I fully expect a) AlSug himself to appear in Amsface ads as the 'before' picture (much like Hitchcock appeared in that 'before' picture for that fake weight loss ad in the newspaper the survivors were reading in 'Lifeboat'), and b) the term 'Amstrad facelift' enters general public usage.

In other AlSug invests in health & beauty news, remember Susan from 2011 that was just too young and inexperienced and was fired for that reason?

http://www.tropicskincare.com/news/tropic/lordsugarinvests

I'd like to think the real reason that Luisa didn't get the gig is because everybody realised suddenly that she'd lied about her businesses in her plan/cv. I've said it before, but the only registered one (the cupcake shop in St Albans, which is defiantly "bimbo-fronted bimbo-named fluff of the highest order" with cutesy/sexey uniforms to match) has a net worth of £194 and a turnover of about £100k. And is actually owned by her husband, who has liquidated three other businesses since 2008 with debts in the £M each time. Her 'electronics' business, which she claims is the "4th biggest electronics retailer on eBay in Europe" currently has 6 items listed one of which is a pair of second-hand hair straighteners. Neither than one, nor her online bakery tat store, is registered for VAT or corporation tax which means to be within the law they can't be turning over more than £1k. Or that she appears to have at one point in the past been listed as a director in a business using the honorific "Lady", which is ever so slightly against the law. But I suspect it's just that after yet another tabloid expose on her she just became too toxic.

Well, if they branch out to breast procedures, it could always go by Sugartits. xp

impressive sleuthing aldo, esp "currently has 6 items listed one of which is a pair of second-hand hair straighteners" lol

re: leah's age & inexperience, as if by magic there's this (daily hate link, sorry):

consultant plastic surgeon Nigel Mercer, a former chairman of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, warned yesterday she lacked the requisite medical skills to carry out the procedures.
He said: ‘At her level of training, she will have a basic knowledge of immunology and some knowledge of anatomy.
‘She may have done a few weeks’ training in aesthetic medicine, but that is simply not enough. It may not be quite as dangerous as putting a hairdresser in charge of cosmetic surgery, but it is still putting patients at risk.’
Miss Totton – labelled ‘Dr Totty’ by some of her detractors – works in the A&E department of Newham General Hospital in East London having qualified as a trainee doctor at the University of East Anglia only last year.

gotta love the needless use of 'hairdresser' and 'doctor totty' but hey, it wouldn't be the mail if it didn't.

each apprentice winner year on year seems to prove more useless and/or more troublesome than the last. here's hoping this is the one that finally forces the bbc to kick sugar out, head bowed in shame (the whole murdoch thing has given me a taste for old rich scumbags ending their lives drowning in ignominy)

could have gone for the maxwell version there...

actually getting round to watching this now.

Did nobody notice or tell Luisa her logo is the same as the Food Network, just in a different colour?