So it was the Apprentice final tonight and this post naturally is expressly all about it. So the four finalists had to work on and present their business plan on paper and undergo a tough interview process regarding their plans.
In the interviews no one of course came through unscathed and everyone had their share of flaws which the tough interviewers were fast to pick up on. Susan for starters had the idea of injecting the £250000 into starting her own cosmetics business, but she made some very unrealistic estimates for her turnover for the first year, as she stated she could make a million pounds! Jim came up with the plan to provide e-learning services to educate children and give them employability skills, however he had done no research on this at all, and he also called it AMSmart, which was a rather naff take on Lord Sugar's AMStrad. Margaret, Lord Sugar's previous advisor on the program, rightly pointed out that Jim is the walking cliche man, as he couldn't even describe himself without using a cliche, even when Margaret asked him not to! Tom's business plan however did have a potentially good idea that was to market a chair and other products to help people with problems in the workplace such as RSI, but his business plan was poorly written and didn't make any sense. But Helen's plan turned out to be the most disappointing as she came up with the idea of creating a concierge business to help people organise their lives, i.e. to remind them of appointments for the dentist, booking a table for dinner, etc. However I think her plan was really flaky and aimed to be far too ambitious for one person to try and spearhead, especially as there many services available that set reminders, as a dentist will send out reminder appointments, and people can set their own reminders whether be on paper, email or whatever else!
But in the boardroom it was down to Lord Sugar to make up his own mind on who should be hired as his business partner. Straight away Lord Sugar saw through Jim's plan as he felt it would be more suited to a non profit organisation and there was no business worth in it, so he was given the boot first. I also loved the bit where Jim inadvertently called Lord Sugar "Sugar" before he corrected himself, I think Jim was trying to do more than get "into bed" with him there! After that Susan was the next to go as Lord Sugar tried to make Susan understand her annual turnover profit estimates were totally unrealistic and it would take more than £250000 to make it work. Which left the final two, and Helen started off by saying she had another potential business plan, which was to run a chain of bakeries, which should could run on her own without Lord Sugar's assistance. Now why Helen who has had experience of this service industry didn't go with this idea in the first place is beyond me, as it could have given her a chance of winning and would have seen her get a far more favourable review from the advisors. In fact its ironic because not one of the finalists business plans was given much credit!
In the end it was down to Tom and Lord Sugar saw that he was more viable a candidate to go into business with as he is an inventor who has already marketed products, and I think Lord Sugar had Tom in mind already. Tom has had the experience behind him and that definitely worked to his credit, he was also one of the most likeable people in the house, with a good personality (and some of them didn't have that!) so it was a really good combination. However if it was still the old format of the show where it was all about hiring someone for a job, Helen would have won it hands down so it was shame he couldnt't have given her a job regardless. And as one of the panel on You're Hired said if it was the old format then Tom would have been fired weeks ago, but it wasn't. But big congrats to Tom, he is a really creative, friendly and pleasant chap and he did deserve the win.
So that's another series of the Apprentice over with, it remains to be seen if they will carry on with the new format, which I quite liked. Perhaps next time they could recruit a few more personalities into the show, but there were thankfully a few, such as Susan, Tom, Leon and eventually Jim. And that's TV back to being that bit more boring from now on until something good comes back on.
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