That's what I thought too. Before, I would've said no possible way would he win, but if he's sending Liz home over Stuart, he's clearly ok with the wacky factor and not necessarily looking for a "conventional" business brain.

I like Chris. Although this "stroke of genius" with the 20% on all takings was clearly fluke and not predetermined!! The ticket office woman said... "20% of Everything?" and he just bumbled and stuttered... "Erm.. yep, yep that's right. On everything!". All of a sudden it's getting made out like he came up with this really risky strategy, and went out to deliberately implement it. I don't think that's the case at all, I think he just assumed that was the done thing because the woman in the ticket office suggested it. Fair play to the lad for lapping up the praise though.

Jamie could talk the hind legs off a donkey when it comes to negotiating, very good at that.

I think Liz breaking the record was more about the product than anything else (which Chris did all the work in securing). I mean, they're a baby shop, and the product was brilliant. Unless she'd have made a complete and utter hash of the pitch (credit her for not doing that where others might've) then I think they were always going to order £90,000 worth. You could've sent them the pitch in a letter through the post and they would've bought £90,000 worth. It was a good product. Credit for that record should go to Chris (for securing the license to use the product which he did very well) and Stuart from the other team (for completely alienating the product owner by talking about dead babies) and not to Liz, who just happened to be OK at pitching a brilliant product to a company that specialised in said product's client base.

Really looking forward to interview week though. Funniest TV of the year for me. Did you see the "Next Week" clip, when Stuart said "Oh.... Hi Margaret!!"? Love it!

Stupidly went out yesterday dinner and fell asleep when i got home. Woke up at 11pm and was awake all night!

Feeling shattered now. Ready for bed.

Soft lad

STFU! I've been awake for 16hours now and been asked to work late, i was here at 7!

I have had about 8/10 hours sleep since Thursday, check mate

You dont understand how much sleep means to me!

I love sleep mate, but neck/back/ankle and shoulder ache makes it impossible

Just take some knockout pills!

I have a load mate and they dont work



They make me feel wide awake, meh it will come in handy with the ashes and NFL season getting interesting

Good analyst and I agree with your ‘right place at the right time’ explanation for Chris and Liz. I’d have to say that Dara O’ Briain’s You're Fired is the funniest thing from the Apprentice franchise. It certainly made Stuarts Horror film (where another child pops up at random) look a lot more funny than it did for me the second time around.

Replacing Adrian "Is there any paint I can watch dry?" Chiles with Dara for You're Fired was a stroke of Genius by the Beeb. Perfect man for the job, intelligent enough to know what's going on, but daft enough to take the pi[iss[/i out of it. He's brilliant. One of the highlights for me was when he started introducing Stuart on Liz's week, then did the whole... *Holds Ear*, "Hang on...?.. YOU'RE KIDDING!" He's a class act. I saw him in Leeds a couple of weeks ago. He's the sort of man you could go see every date on the tour because he just speaks to the audience and makes it up as he goes along. Good intelligent humour.

I was looking forward to him ripping Melissa a new one, but unfortunately she was a lot calmer on his show than she was on the main one. Dammit.

The only thing I don't like about the Dara fronted show is that he drags along all his mates from Mock the Week.
I garee that he's a massive improvement from Adrian Chiles, I could never fathom how he got any work as a presenter.

I quite like the comedians on it. It's a panel of three so I'm happy with 2 a bit more "experty" and 1 smart-ar[is[/ie, wisecracking comedian.

I think that You’re fired is the funniest thing on TV at the moment and that’s probably thanks to comedians mixing in with business leaders (or whatever posh name you call them these days). It’s the perfect combination because they stop each other from becoming too boring or too childish.

It would have been great if Melissa played up to her character on the main show. Unfortunately she went all out to prove that she’s nothing like the Melissa we saw. Hopefully Dara and co can get something good out of Joanna whose of similar attitude.

Agreed! Thing is, "The Apprentice" itself was all filmed a year ago (Dec '09) and You're Fired is filmed the Monday of the week of release.

So there's two things preventing that...

1) They probably have quite genuinely changed/learnt quite a bit in that year.

2) They've had time to reflect on what a t[iw[/iat they probably looked on TV and are grateful for a chance to not look a t[iw[/iat this time round.

Just shows how unassuming I am.

I honestly though that the apprentice got filmed something like two weeks before an episode aired.

Nope. It's clever though because the weather matches, and there's Christmas stuff in the shop windows etc. But it was filmed a year ago.

I've got a proper sore lip crack thing at the side of my mouth and I swear it hurts so bad. And it's just beyond doing my head in.

Herpes?

I've damaged my achilles tendon, did it two weeks ago on a train journey, bugger won't go away, if its still as bad tomorrow then its off to the docs for me...

Could well be a nice patch of herpes on my kisser. I always get all the crappy illnesses/annoyances. Lip AIDs and stuff y'know. So horrible and annoying.

I was having my tea earlier (chicken madras) and forgot about it and when I opened my mouth to eat a forkfull I nearly died.

Facial Herpes. Lad at college was in the same boat as you last week. Went to take a bite outta his burger.

Keep putting Vaseline on it, especially overnight...piff, paff, puff

2people have bought me a shirt for xmas, neither are wearable with trousers.

Gotta go out and buy one for the christmas do now!