The final, won on Sunday by affable self-styled inventor Tom Pellereau, featured an eclectic quartet of entrepreneurs vying to be Lord Sugar’s business partner. Over eight million people tuned in to watch the interview stage which saw the contestants’ business plans scrutinized by Lord Sugar and his hand-picked corporate panel.
While not being a patch on last year’s interview process (love or hate him, Stuart Baggs’s “field of ponies” debacle has gone down in Apprentice folklore), the final was an entertaining one. Among the hopefuls were charming Irish salesman Jim, naïve yet promising skincare specialist Susan, corporate-styled task winner Helen and shy human calculator Tom. Lord Sugar fired two, and with Helen and Tom remaining and it was time for him to pick a business partner. Depending on your viewpoint, his decision could have revealed a major flaw in the show’s revised format.
By the time the final arrived, Helen had only lost one task out of 11. Calculated, meticulously organised with an almost robotic demeanor, Helen was tipped as the deserving winner. Tom, on the other hand, was the nice guy who would not have lost eight out of 11 tasks if he had been more authoritative and assertive. Ironically, he had lost more tasks than any other contestant on The Apprentice.
The two contestants’ business plans were equally shambolic. Tom’s idea – an ergonomic chair designed to reduce back pain in the workplace – was criticized by troubleshooting expert Claude Littner so ferociously that the flummoxed inventor looked ready to concede defeat. Luckily for him, Helen fired a last minute own goal when she proposed her mass-market concierge service. She was exposed for her lack of industry contacts and appeared clueless that many established companies providing such a service already existed.
It would have been fair to call it a draw and sense would have said that Helen, due to her previous success in the tasks, should have landed the job. As it turned out, Lord Sugar picked Tom – presumably on the grounds that, as he had said in the boardroom previously, “likes somebody who can come up with products and take them to the market”. Tom won, dividing Apprentice viewers down the middle. Helen fans, such as this year’s contestant Zoe Beresford, felt that Helen had been cheated. She said: “I thought winning the tasks was what the process is all about – or is this now Dragons’ Den?”
Does it matter that the better performing contestant didn’t win? Or is it more irresponsible that a flagship BBC programme promotes a skewed vision of how business works in the real world? Wayne Clarkson, who runs a self-started web hosting business, thinks that the final was a balanced affair.
“The person who went out in week one may have had the best business plan out of them all,” he said. “But, if they aren’t the right person to work with, then their business plan would be useless. But, on the other hand, in the real world, you need business skills to acquire bank loans and to impress shops who may want to stock your products. The contestants for the next series must possess both the required business acumen and a solid business plan.”
Whether the show carries on with the same format is yet to be seen, but one thing is for sure – Tom Pellereau is proof that sometimes nice guys do finish first.