Yasmina Siadatan is the new Apprentice.

Yasmina Siadatan has won the TV reality show to become the new Apprentice to Sir Alan Sugar. She beat favourite Kate Walsh in the final task shown tonight.

The Press Association reports

The 27-year-old restaurant owner was hired by Sir Alan on what she described was the businessman's "gut instinct" despite rival Kate Walsh being in a good position to win.

Yasmina triumphed after the final task which saw the women battle it out to create a new brand of chocolates which they had to pitch to a roomful of industry experts.

Kate and her team, which was made up of former contestants Debra Barr, Ben Clarke, Kimberley Davis and Rocky Andrews, designed a box of chocolates for couples. The concept was praised by Sir Alan but he said charging £13 for a box was not commercially viable.

Yasmina's team, made up of Howard Ebison, Phil Taylor, James McQuillan and Lorraine Tighe, created a brand called Cocoa Electric which was designed to 'shock' with flavours such as basil and strawberry, and chilli-flavoured popping candy.

Sir Alan told her the branding and pricing were excellent but that the taste - which even caused one model to spit out a chocolate after filming the advert - needed work.

After winning this year's series of the TV show, Yasmina said: "I don't feel like I've beaten Kate because I feel we both deserved that job, and we feel we just had different qualities and Sir Alan needed my qualities over hers.

"(Sir Alan) described it in a nutshell when he said, 'I can't put it into words why I chose Yasmina, it was just a gut instinct'."

Sir Alan revealed that Yasmina will be working in his Digital Display division supplying display units to be used in the health care industry.

Apprentice UK : Baby task proves too rocky for Ben

Ah Ben Clarke. Rarely have I waited for so long,and wanted so much, to see the firing of an Apprentice (with the exception of Katie Hopkins, but she never actually got fired unfortunately). Today I can breathe a sigh of relief as Sir Alan Sugar finally saw sense and booted Ben out of the competition. I guess there is always Sandhurst to fall back on :-)

This week task was simple pick two baby products from a selection and head off to Baby Show at London Earl's Court and sell as many of these products as possible. There was some rejigging of the teams Ben and Yasmine joined James and Debra in Team Empire, while Howard moved across to Ignite with Kate and Lorraine.

James and Lorraine were teams leaders. OK let's cut to the chase where did things go wrong? Simple Ben and Debra saw a very high end rocking horse took one look at it and dismissed all other alternatives, going for the gamble. With each rocking horse costing between £1700 - £2000, sell one and they were home and dry.

The problem is though people don't go to shows like that for the "once in lifetime, get out the credit card and use it to the max" purchase, no they are there for a bargain and a £1700 rocking horse is not a bargain.

Debra to her credit almost grabbed a last minute show winner, but the punter stubbornly held out for £200 discount, even though Debra threw in a weeks free work from her good self and as that sale faded away so did their chance of victory.

Lorraine, Kate and Howard's choice of a collapsible buggy and a baby head protectors outsold James's team's selection of the aforementioned rocking horse and Birthing pool. Ben, Debra and James were dragged into the boardroom and with that finally the day of reckoning had come for Ben.

Sir Alan saw through the aggressiveness, the untruths, the evasiveness on what he has actually done and at last Ben got fired, and deservedly so. Across the UK the nation cheered.

Apprentice UK : Eight go to Mar-gay-te

OK I am very late this week but as they say better late than never. This week the teams were sent to Margate and the task was to come up with a marketing programme to re-brand the seaside resort.

The teams were unchanged from last week. Mona, James, Debra and Howard were in Ignite while Kate, Yasmine, Ben and Lorraine were in Empire. The task kicked off with both teams selecting a theme for their re-brand.

Ignite opted for a gay theme over Mona's objections, she thought a family theme would be more in keeping with the town. Maybe the rest of the team were hoping Howard who is gay would give them some insight, they were sadly mistaken.

Empire on the other hand went for the family theme and apart form some bickering between Loraine and Yasmine they ran a fairly smooth operation. Although as has become standard Ben chirped in with some less than insightful contributions including the gem "Margate is not Seychelles" talk about stating the bloody obvious!

His other nugget was one that would ensure he gets a frosty reception on his next visit to the seaside resort, in between prancing around pretending to be a director during the photoshoot he asked during one of the photo sessions for "more of the sea less of Margate". Way to go Ben.

However despite Ben's faux pas and the bickering between Yasmine and Lorraine, their presentation while not cutting edge was reasonably professional and well put together.

Ignite of the other seemed to be going along swimmingly despite Mona's awkward interrogation on a transsexual in which she sought to establish what their gender was. She and James in my opinion got a reasonable batch of photos which is what they were tasked with.

It was back at HQ with Debra and Howard that it all went horribly wrong, their time keeping was atrocious and the poster Debra designed had glaring portions of whiteness with no content, a no-no for the posters.

In the presentations they made to the advertising Execs and Council officials that were judging the teams, Howard tried to cover it up with a silly white lie about reserving the white space for advertising, but is was such obvious bull it got nowhere. To compound matters in response to some other questions he cited spurious statistics that were again a load of bull.

No surprise than that when it came to the crunch, Ignite's marketing plan for Margate was voted a flop and they lost the task. Debra the team leader brought Mona and James into the boardroom. Now in my book Debra should have been fired not only was she the team leader of the losing team, but she also made the most glaring mistake.

Sir Alan however was not to be bothered with facts on this occasion and decided Mona was too be sacked for not being strong enough over the series. Well it his money I guess.


Mona Lewis

So we lose the lovely Mona, but even she admitted that she had really gone as far as she would reasonably expect to.

Stands out this week

Mona Lewis
In the final weeks Sir Alan has more or less decided who he can hire and who he wants to fire and when one of the chosen ones is threatened it seems he fishes around for feeble reasons to keep them in and fire the one if the "unwanted". Mona who did no wrong this week was fired instead of Debra who did practically every thing wrong


Debra Barr
I was disappointed with Debra as she was one I had picked out as one of the better candidates, but she fell to pieces on this task and I really wonder if there really is any substance behind that hard ice cold facade. She cocked up the posters and her time management was a joke. Why she wasn't fired only Sir Alan knows.


Howard Ebison
In some quarters he is viewed as a potential finalist, but I just can't see it. Too often he has stayed out of the limelight and when he steps up to the plate his impact is barely noticeable. This week he wanted to be PM but was brow beaten in submission by Debra, he spotted the issues Debra was making with posters but again backed down in what was a crucial argument and to cap it all in the presentations had to push lies that were barely credible to defend Debra's mistakes.

Apprentice UK : Love conquers all (...except being fired).

It's Wednesday and we are back with the Apprentice. Today's task took the Apprentices to the North West of England (Liverpool, Manchester) and gets them to pick two products from budding inventors and sell as many of those products as they can. Simple really.

As seems to be the norm, there was more reshuffling, Team Empire is now Mona Lewis, Debra Barr, Howard Ebison and James McQuillan, while Team Ignite is Ben Clarke, Phil Taylor, Kate Walsh, Yasmine Siadatan and Lorraine Tighe.

Mona and Lorraine both volunteered to become Project Managers. I initially felt that this might be Mona's demise as she has been very quite since her win earlier on in the series as a project manager, but it did not take long to discover that was not the case as the editing of the programme very quickly pointed us into the other direction.

Some times you wonder to what degree aspects of the show are contrived. We all know that there is no love lost between Phil and Lorraine but we also know that there is plenty of love, lost or otherwise, between Phil and Kate and this week they were all conveniently lumped together. Guaranteed to kick off fireworks? definitely!

However it wasn't just the pairing that led to their downfall, it was also the product selection. While Mona and her team went for some sort of double handed dog leash and a body suit that doubles as a sleeping bag, not inspiring but still not implausible products. Lorraine and co on the other hand universally agreed to go for what can be best described as a collection of painted cardboard boxes and a lop-sided bicycle saddle/shopping bag. To be fair Yasmina did raise concerns about the saddle bag early on, but those were swiftly dismissed by the bag's 'inventor', but then he would wouldn't he.

Both teams went about their selling. Empire had an initial blip not selling anything on the first day, but by the second day they had turned into a well oiled selling machine with the exception of the ever-dreary, always complaining Howard who at one point literally begged Debra to let him close one deal, like she would ! Mona was the star of the show selling a remarkable £2000'ish of the £4,000 worth of deals Empire closed.

In Team Ignite on the other hand had a clear divide. Yasmin and Lorraine seem reasonably diligent in their work, squabbling occasionally about who pitches what but seemed to get over it. They sold about £1000+ worth of orders. On the other hand Kate and Phil seem to treat the whole thing a romantic day out, the only downer being they had a gooseberry in the shape of Ben Clarke tagging along. Between the three of them they sold absolutely nothing, but seem to have had a whale of a time up North.


Phil Taylor


Kate Walsh

Boardroom time Lorraine brought in the two love birds Kate and Phil. I honestly thought Lorraine was toast, because Sir Alan has shown time after time that he has a soft spot for the 'lovable rogue' i.e Phil, and Kate has with the exception of today put in competent performances.

It wasn't to be and I think it was largely down to Phil's out of control personality. His performance in the boardroom ranged from obnoxious to rude having passed through absolutely pathetic. Accusing Sir Alan of favouritism and heaping all the problems of the world on Lorraine's shoulders, he thrashed about like a drowning man and drowning he was. Even Kate picked up on this and in what I guess was a mercy killing (or it could be the ultimate act of self protection) she too turned on Phil at one point and blamed him for not pulling his weight on the task and so it was that the gob from the North East was sent packing into Apprentice history.

Stands out this week

Mona Lewis:
She won as project manager during the first week of the series, although there was a large body of opinion that the suggest the win was inspite of her, rather than due to her. This week however she showed beyond doubt that the victory was all hers in a dominant performance.


Phil Taylor:
I have always said I liked the guy at the onset but he grew more and more concieted as the weeks went on. This week I think Phil's big failing was he thought Lorraine was far weaker than she actually and was blinded by this. Although he denied it it seemed he almost intentionally wanted her to fail confident that that would be here demisr. He failed to see that his relentless attack on her week after week has only seemed to strengthen her position rather than weaken it. It seemed the more he attacked, the stronger she got and the more infuriated he became. A guaranteed cycle of destruction and so it proved.


Debra Barr:
I am pretty sure that you will never catch Debra listening to Dido's song "White Flag" where the singer promises she will go down with the Ship, Debra does not do group hara kiri. This was best exemplified in this edition when Howard struggling to close any deal literally begged Debra for one of hers after all it was all about the team winning in a sense, as if!. she smugly dismissed such a notion and in the interview clip spliced on to the segment the contemptuous look she had about this alien business of doing something for the team was priceless. She was right in herstance though as indivdual sales were also going to be taken into account.

Apprentice UK: Did I mention my Sandhurst Scholarship?

I was going to title this blog post "obnoxiousness reigns supreme", celebrating the return of the Ben Clarke we know, but over this episode of The Apprentice I think Ben reminded us that there are other things about him worth celebrating such as, his constant reminder to us that he turned down a scholarship to Sandhurst and his recurring refrain asking people to "please let him finish" as he launches into another bout of waffle.

Even worse (or better depending on your viewpoint) today we discovered he is ultimately spineless but more on that later.

The task this week was simple, both teams were given a similar set of items of varying value. The teams had to go out, sell these items and the team that got the most money won. Sir Alan appointed Phil Taylor as team leader of Ignite and Ben as the team leader of Empire


We turn our attention to Phil first. I used to like Phil but as we get further into the process I feel the worse aspects of his personality are coming to the fore, especially when it concerns Lorraine Tighe.

Last week they bickered endlessly over the choice of advert, with Phil dismissing Lorraine's concerns of his 'Pants Man' marketing idea. This week Phil promised to listen more and that seem to augur well for his his leadership. That entente cordial however did not last long. Lorraine had at the beginning of the task correctly pointed out that one of the items, a rug, looked promising and they should investigate a little more into its value. Phil wasted no time in dismissing this idea totally.

A fatal flaw but fortunately nothing in comparison to the shambles that Ben considers team leadership. He was unforgivably rude about the buyers behind their backs, he pushed through deals that were clearly unprofitable and his overall strategy was aimless, so no surprise that he lost.

For all his bravado when it came to the point at which he selects the two to go into the boardroom and face Sir Alan he showed why Sandhurst and the British Army were lucky that he chose not to go. For the nominations he initially choose James McQuillan and Noorul Choudhury but when he heard the sound of incredulity in Sir Alan's voice on hearing James nominated, he performed one of the fastest, most spineless flip-flops in apprentice history dropping his nomination of James and going for Debra Barr instead.

Sir Alan always asks that team leaders bring in people who led to the task being failed implying the boardroom judgement was to be based on the task itself. Very rarely is this the case. If that had been the case today we would have been saying bye-bye to Ben, but instead the judgement seemed to made on the series as a whole and once it headed in that direction it was clear Noorul was a goner. For a man who as been so quiet all along he did put in an incredibly spirited defence, but it was too little too late.


Noorul Choudhury

To be honest I think the moment Noorul was nominated, Sir Alan had him down as fired. Plus for some unfathomable reason Sir Alan's side kick Nick Hewer seemed to go out of his way in the boardroom to defend Ben's performance, something that drew Debra's ire and boy did she let it rip, so much so that Sir Alan to issue her a warning about her tone with Nick.

Standouts this week:

Debra Barr : Say what you like about Debra, as long as you say she has balls. Yes, massive cojones as they say in the country that gave us Swine flu. It is not often that candidates defend themselves in the face of criticism from Nick but Debra did that and more, albeit maybe a tad too aggresively. It tells us thoough that you know she isn't going down without a massive fight and she doesn't care who the opponent is.


Noorul Choudhury : There is a inner beast in all of us, we just need the something to bring it out, for some it does not take a lot, for others it takes quite a prompting, for Noorul it just takes Ben. Noorul found his voice in the boardroom and what a performance he gave. Sadly the baggage of poor performance from the previous weeks was too much to overcome.


Ben Clarke : All I can say is thank God, Ben did not go to Sandhurst. Thousands of young men put their lives at risk in the Army to defend this country. The thought of Ben leading these guys into action is not even worth thinking about.

Apprentice UK : Kimberly Davis was just pants!

"I am a rough tough cream puff from New York " and so we were introduced to the American-born Marketing executive Kimberly Davis, shame though as it turns out tonight it seems Sir Alan Sugar is not a fan of cream puffs.

The task for today's episode was to design a marketing campaign around a healthy cereal with added emphasis on creating a cartoon character which would appeal to kids.

First though a few observations, one shocking and one not so shocking. Shocking: Ben Clarke was co-operative,a team player, gave some good ideas and there was no sign of his obnoxiousness. I still trying to recover from this.

Not So Shocking: Noorul Choudhury probably strung together no more than one sentence in the whole episode. I see a great opportunity for him at the end of the series as the new face of Nytol, or some other sleeping tablet.

Back to the action tonight and I have got to start off by laying down my respect for Kate as the Project Manager of the Empire Team. She has single handedly helped crush any lingering stereotypes about blondes, and in particular good looking ones. She led a tight team with everyone contributing and ended up with what in my opinion was a very viable product, a strong cartoon character and a pretty decent TV advert.

Alan Sugar thought so too and she and her team were rewarded with an evening with a 'laughing yoga' guru, as prizes go this one sounded like a bit of a joke....


Now onto Kimberely Davis she was well up for this task given her marketing background and her experience leading teams of "creatives", but that was just her problem on one hand there was Noorul Choudhury whose only creativty seems to be doing a season-long impression of a French mime, along side Howard Ebison and Mona Lewis who were only slightly more vocal, not that that takes a lot to do.


Kimberly Davis

On the other hand were the constantly bickering pair of Phil Taylor and Lorraine Tighe. It was Phil's forceful nature that was really the undoing of the team. He railroaded through his idea for "Pantsman" a carton character that wears his pant outside his trousers supposedly to remind you that if you have your cereal you wont be caught out doing this. Ultimately the reponsibility was Kimberley's for not being forceful enough to stamp this ridiculous, ill-conceived idea on its head.

Despite all this she could have still saved herself if only she brought Noorul into the boardroom Sir Alan has his card marked and is gaging for the day he can sack him. Like so many before, Kimberly made the classic Apprentice mistake she went for the big egos, the big players rather than picking off the small fry, Phil for coming up with the pantsman idea and Lorraine for bickering.

No surprise when it backfired. Lorraine held her ground and defended her position strongly, Phil whom Kimberly had hoped would help bring Lorraine down, instead turn his anger on Kimberely for having the audacity to bring him in, the man's ego is monumental. It also helps that I think Sir Alan has a soft spot for Phil and so the axe fell on Kimberly.

p.s. We saw the first sign of Phil Talyor's rumored romance with Kate Walsh as the pair shared an intimate peck after he survived the board room...

Stand outs this week

Kimberly Davis: She was weak and ineffectual, but her greatest failing was not being tactical enough, instead allowing her emotions to determine who she brought into the boardroom. The lesson here for future Apprentices focus on surviving, not on getting your opponents fired.

Philip Taylor: In darts they love their nick names and a great darts player of the past was Phil "The Power" Taylor, if our Phil was a darts player he would definitely be Phil "The Ego" Taylor. I like Phil because he is a trier. His failing though is he is a poor listener because he is so cocksure about his ideas being the best, and that will eventually be his downfall.

Lorraine Tighe: First time I have really seen Lorraine in action. While she did come across as a bit negative in this task fundamentally her concerns was valid, the idea was pants. She just needed to have articulate her concerns better, admittedly Phil's "my way or the highway" attitude didn't help.

Apprentice UK : Sandalwood or Cedarwood, the difference is in the price....

...and its huge, at least that was what Paula Jones found out today.

It is our weekly dose of The Apprentice and this week's episode should be probably re-titled 'The Great Escape of Noorul Choudhury'. To describe Noorul as useless would be an affront to genuinely useless Project Managers the world over. He gave uselessness a bad name and it is going to take a while for it to recover.


Noorul Choudhury

The task was to create beauty products from natural ingredients and once again Sir Alan Sugar tinkered with the teams and Noorul emerged as Project Manager for Team Ignite on the basis of his Chemistry background while Empire team chose Paula Jones.

My first thought when I saw this is where did Paula come from?, I hadn't noticed her before, has she been with us all along? You got to give it to her, so far she had executed the low profile strategy perfectly.

Ignite chose a honey based range tagged 'Honey I am home' and away they went with Noorul deciding nothing, selling nothing, coordinating nothing, but simply being a witness as the other team members busied themselves around him.

Paula by contrasts was deeply involved with her team, probably too involved. In a crucial moment that decided her fate she and team mate Yasmina Siadatan got in a spot of confusion over whether they would use Sandalwood or Cedarwood as the essential oil in their products.

To the uninitiated not a big deal, but in the world of essential oil and fragrances Sandalwood is king costing 500 times as much as Cedarwood! Guess what they choose, yes they went for Sandalwood. Unfortunately theydidn't pick up on the cost implications, although Paula had asked Yasmine and the extremely obnoxious Ben Clarke to watch over the costs

At this point the rest of the script writes itself. Despite a high quality product and a good team effort at selling, the high cost base wiped out Empire's profits. To add insult to injury, Noorul's failure to make any decisions meant he failed to make even bad decisions, and slipped through almost by default to win.

As it was all down to costs, Paula dragged Ben and Yasmina into the Boardroom. Ben dug into his seemingly unending stash of obnoxiousness as he went to battle in the boardroom with Paula firmly in his firing line.

Yasmina who apparently was Paula's good friend on the show also had no hesitation about stabbing her in the back. Poor Paula, who I thought was excellent (bar the Sandalwood \ Cedar wood fiasco) lacked the the ruthlessness to really go after either of the other two and ended up getting fired.


Paula Jones


Stand outs this week

Ben Clarke: Small minded, conceited and obnoxious. A walking advert for why people think extremely short men are driven by a powerful need to overcompensate.

Noorul Choudhury: Exhibit A: Initial Strategy Low Profile and cruise through the early rounds. Get to the middle round and show what you are made of. Answer: Nothing. One of the poorest candidates I have seen, will be out very soon.


Paula Jones: Exhibit B: Initial Strategy Low Profile and cruise through the early rounds. Get to the middle round and show what you are made of. Answer: you could have been a prime candidate to win it all but you forgot one thing, if you can't back stab, bitch and crawl into the gutter with the best of them, you are just another name to add to the list of those who didn't, and Paula you couldn't.

Apprentice UK : Getting high on your own supply

Purveyors of illicit pharmaceutical - Drug Dealers to you or me - have a saying "don't get high on your own supply" and it seems that is just what team empire did in The Apprentice today, well certainly Ben Clarke and Majid Nagra were doing just that.

Sir Alan decided to mix up both the teams this week ending the boys vs. girls face-off, and the task was create and market a personal fitness product. Team Empire, which was formerly the boys team, decided initially to create something to tackle Bingo Wings. The team did a product survey and found the biggest sellers were the simplest products. The message to the Ben and Majid who were in charge of product development, keep it simple!

Did they heck, Ben obviously fancying himself as a ultimate body building dude was along with Majid, adds also sorts of bells and whistles. Well you know how a product tries to be "everything to everyone" well what Empire ended up was "nothing to no one".

It had defeat written all over it and so it proved. Enter the showdown in the boardroom and James the Project Manager took in Ben and Majid. James who had developed a reputation of talking a lot but not saying much, proved why this is the case as he astutely failed to point out his clear saving grace, which is that he had all along stressed the product should be simple.

Instead he engaged in circular arguments with Ben. As the bickering went on Majid just looked on confident that the likely apprentice to be fired wasn't him, think again Majid. In a dramatic turn, the searchlight switched to Majid and Sir Alan made clear his displeasure with what he saw as Majid just cruising along, needless to say Majid was fired.

Stand outs this week

Ben Clarke: Proved how obnoxious he can be, calling one of the other contestant obese and wallowing in narcissistic pleasure as seem more interested in demonstrating his physique than concentrating on the job at hand and to my money he should have been fired this week.


Debra Barr: Was the team leader of Ignite. Although she won, she once again proved why she will never win "cuddliest Apprentice of the year" with a barrage of snide comments and put downs.


Phil Taylor: Yes he is an estate agent, but he was the creative spark on the Ignite team and came up with the product idea that won the day. Early tip for the final.