...seem to be worthy finalists with each having quite distinct merits. I cannot decide who is going to win but I am wondering if SAS, sorry LS, pulls a fast one and selects Tom's business plan but has him running it in a partnership with one of the others, probably Helen.

I know he has experience of taking a new product to market, but in every task he has seemed barely competent and lacking in leadership. Yet in several editions of You're Fired (so called because it's catchier than the more honest title You're Not Going to Be My Business Partner) the panel have been picking him out as a likely winner.

It's got to be Helen all the way. Susan has a great back story but seems immature and dumb as a box of rocks, and Jim is charming but manipulative.

Entertaining telly whoever wins.

I watched one episode - my first and onliest. I don't get it. Is the enjoyment purely about the schadenfreude of seeing someone make a twat of themselves on national television? Because they're all such cunts! It made me incredibly edgy, and I haven't been back.

Saw 10 minutes of the first series, wanted to slaughter everyone involved and vowed never to watch it again.

It's a partnership instead of a job, so really with The Lord's backing of money, all he'll need the winner to do is come up with a decent business plan and a product or two, and he can get his henchmen to make it happen. Tom's got that experience already, and is in a much better position to create something that cna get to a mass market.

Susie has experience of a company, but is too immature for The Lord's needs. Also, she would be murdered within ten minutes of being in the same room as a lot of people.

Helen is too corporate for The Lord. He doesn't like clever people, especially clever wimmin wot ain't dun it since they were 17.

Jim's been kept on to be the shredee in the interviews (there's always one)

... is that everything that happened in the first 11 weeks might count for nothing in the final when it's just the business plan that counts, so why bother?

If it's all about previous performance, the winner has to be Helen, who's only been in the losing team once, and conversely, it can't be Tom, who's lost more than anyone else.

I agree Jim is just there to be torn apart at the interviews, but my money's on Susan winning - notwithstanding how different their upbringings were, I think LS sees a lot of himself in her (oh, stop it), she's won enough times to be credible, is usually right about things, and is young enough to grow and make the most of the coaching (and muscle) LS would bring to the partnership.

Never miss it. It's one of the bedrocks of our marriage! We call it King of the Wankers.
What I'd give to have the voicover guy say ' all of them hoping to be crowned King.....of the Wankers.

I hate all reality shows. But I love the Apprentice. I think it's possibly because it doesn't pretend to be even close to reality: if LordSurAlan really wanted an apprentice, he'd just do the interviews. The whole thing is reduced to pantomime, but the contestants still stand to win something really important to them. Perhaps another part of the appeal is that I know I wouldn't stand a chance. It's as much a test of tolerance and one's ability to talk oneself out of a tricky situation. I would lose as soon as I stepped foot in the boardroom.

Anyway, Tom seems a genuinely decent fellow, and I bet he has an interesting (if slightly bonkers) business plan. Helen would have won any previous series, but I can't imagine she's got anything exciting business-wise. I'm sure they'll give it all 110% going forward.

Highlight of previous series has been the interviews round, clearly not taking place this year, if n/w the final. Shame, as the highlight has always been Milords sidekick, Claud, the scariest interviewer in christendom and beyond.

...in Cookstown, NI. But then, as someone who's been to Cookstown a few times, I can see how that can happen - it's a small market town in the middle of nowhere whose claim to fame is that it has the widest main street in Europe, or something like that. Maybe Jim's told everyone round there that he can use his Jedi like conbination of charm and spookiness to convince everyone else that it has the widest street in the whole world, and that it possesses the title deeds to the planet Venus, granted in perpetuity by Prestor John on behalf of the Pope sometime in the 12th century and that he is the reincarnation of Alexander The Great, whose business ideas (with a few quid start-up from LS) are going to conquer the known world.

Alternatively, LS could just go for a cheap hand cream idea from Susan.

One question though: has Tom not realised that there's a fabulous invention out there already called 'the razor'? His Ant Hill Mob look is ridiculous. Maybe some people suit designer stubble, but he's not one of them...

As a Paddy I get really pissed off watching people like him; all unfounded self-belief and 'charm' using that oul' blarney.
I am soooo looking forward to Claud chewing him up and expectorating him into a mouldy dentist's spitoon.

Mmm. I feel better now.
Sorry for the language...

Serious question - I have never watched it, am I missing out?

...strong feelings about the fellow, then, Vorgmeister?

One hears the phrase 'professional Geordie' or 'stage Irishman' used occasionally, but is Jim the first 'professional Ulsterman'? (Apart from that dreadful man, so it is, who was in Coronation Street - whose name, I dimly recall, was also Jim?)

You don't see Rory McIlroy or Graeme McDowell carrying on to interviewers like Jim, with all that blarney/charm cobblers, do you? Maybe there's a touch of it in Dennis Taylor, but he's got a sense of pastiche/irony about it...

Generally Karren Brady has slotted in well but I did find her down-her-nose disdain at some of the lads' mag photos in that publishing episode a bit rich coming from someone who was worked her entire life for David Soft Porn Sullivan.

...I made the mistake of having the laptop out while the remote was in the possession of the FPO. I got about 20 minutes of the Apprentice.

Jesus.

Apparently, Christopher Columbus is a British icon.

is bloody gorgeous.

Surely Helen can not even bother with the business pitch and just point out that time her team sold £1.8 million pounds worth of non-existent biscuits.

I wouldn't need another smarmy salesman, albeit a probably very good one. I doubt he needs another PA either. A 21 year old girl however exceptional I just don't see him picking as a business partner. Which leaves us with the mad professor who maybe, just maybe has one of "those" ideas up his sleeve that will make a £250000 investment worthwhile. It's Tom for me, just my opinion for what it's worth.

I have backed Susan to win since Episode 1 but Tom seems to be peaking just at the right time and think he may be someone that could work well with Lord Sugar.

I think Helenis a bit too much like Stella from last year so that could go against her.

Looking forward to the final tomorrow night though

... many of us were right. Though it has to be said that his win had nothing to do with his business plan which has been instantly deleted and calls into question the rules of the show.

Helen made a fool of herself at the 11th hour - "OK, er erm, I'll set up some home-made bread shops instead" - and none of the business ideas would have got past the Dragons Den pre-TV preliminary rounds.

But good luck to Tom, and Susan who looks to be part of the Lord's plan, he seems a really nice chap.

...it's very heartening to see a basically nice bloke who doesn't talk corporate drivel and isn't full of arrogance winning. And also someone who *actually* makes things. I worry a lot that the economy seems to be based on offices full of people whose jobs are essentially passing bits of paper and emails around. How many employed people in the UK make or do anything any more? It can't last.

...and I'm delighted to hear the country isn't yet sinking in a mire of paper-pushing mediocrity. Thing is, when you work in exactly that environment (and have done for 10 years), as I do, it can really get to you. It certainly affects one's perspective (obviously not accurately). For some reason I have a well-known song by The Animals running around in my head at the moment...

Only one sure fire crack, aimed at Tom, about his career going nowhere. Except alongside him in the boardroom,mayhap?

was when Margaret asked Jim to describe himself without using a cliche and he said something like 'I am what it says on the tin'. Classic.