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The Apprentice: Did S’ralan Fire the Right Candidate?

By Jane Hendry | March 24, 2006

Did you watch the Apprentice on Wednesday night? Do you think he fired the right person?

For starters, I don’t entirely understand how he chose the winning team. Their whole way of approaching the task was shambolic and they seemed to really struggle with the creative side. Imagine setting up a shoot and casting your actors with no concept, script etc!!

We also got to see how teaching is entirely different to practising. Sharon teaches advertising, and yet seemed to have no clue about how to approach the task of creating a campaign.

I suspect that the creative experts from Saatchi and Saatchi advised Alan to go with Ruth’s team, but he obviously disagreed. I suppose it’s fair comment to say that they’d gone off on a tangent and were advertising the wrong thing. But sometimes I think the criteria used for deciding the winning team are too simplistic and the best team does not always win. (Case in point - the buying task. The boys only beat the girls by £8, and yet the girls had actually got 9 items for far less than the boys, and just mucked up getting the tenth. They had succeeded in negotiation, but had failed in time management.)

Anyway, given all of the above, was it the right decision to fire Mani this week? Personally, I think Ruth should have gone. Described by Mani as autocratic, and by Vanessa Feltz as an automaton - do you think she’s a talentless bore? Whilst I’m not particularly a Mani fan, I thought it was below the belt for her to take Jo into the boardroom, when Jo didn’t appear to have been instrumental in their failure - it struck me as being personal.

I wonder where BBC2 finds these people? And what would Sir Alan do if he decided that he didn’t want to hire any of them?

Please feel free to express your own views by posting a comment :)

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Topics: Musings |

One Response to “The Apprentice: Did S’ralan Fire the Right Candidate?”

  1. Jonathan Davies Says:
    March 29th, 2006 at 1:18 pm

    I have to say I’m not a big fan of reality TV, but I did watch it. I’m not sure of the thought processes that Sir Alan adopts and I guess like most entrepeneurs goes on gut instict from time to time.
    I thought Mani was very up himself, but Ruth is defensive, ignorant (fancy not knowing what autocratic means!) and on the whole pretty useless.
    I think the nature of the programme attracts self publicising individuals with massive egos on the whole and wouldn’t let them run any aspect of my business.
    :)

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