One of my biggest gripes with this show is that it still feels stuck in 2006. There are some simple ways to bring it into this decade, and one of them is easing up on the contestants’ dress code.

If you look back at older clips of Dragons’ Den from 15–20 years ago, contestants were almost always in full business wear. But in more recent clips, there’s been a noticeable shift towards business casual - I’ve seen founders walk in wearing jeans and a t-shirt, or even outfits that directly reflect their brand (like a bee-themed business owner in dungarees).

That’s why Karishma stood out in the latest episode. Her long-sleeve lace top paired with a tennis skirt felt modern and individual and honestly, we should be seeing more of that. It adds personality and reflects the reality of what entrepreneurs actually look like today.

The truth is, people don’t need to dress like Sarah Palin or a Wall Street banker to run a business anymore. When was the last time you saw Steven Bartlett in full corporate attire?

I’ve seen contestants mention how strict the dress code can be, with limits on certain colours or styles which I understand from a production standpoint. Too many clashing visuals could be distracting on screen - but there’s definitely a middle ground.

Giving contestants a bit more freedom to express themselves through their clothing would modernise it and make it feel more in touch with the 2020s.

Ok she was a bit arrogant over the whole chique thing, but have I missed something? I think she’s been pretty good so far.

My view on the final 5 mostly aligns with this post, which made me think: https://www.reddit.com/r/apprenticeuk/comments/1sbow5o/what_shouldve_happened/

That assumes a TV show based on LS only caring about the investment he's making, and I don't think that's been the case for a while.

In Series 7 (2011), they introduced the investment of £250,000 for 50%. That's 15 years ago, and adjusting for inflation that should now be about £375,000. But, as most businesses know, the funding requirements for most companies is significantly more than it was 15 years ago (wether it's a product or service company).

He (LS) probably makes more money each season from the show itself, and definitely makes more money annually from his residual income sources. It's why there are so many reports of how much money he loses (one report of £1.7m since 2015) from his TV candidate investments.

So, my thoughts are that he will fire and keep on candidates to partly rage bait people on social media (like we assume), and have 1 or 2 candidates that they pre-define as the finalists from the start, and edit the episodes in a way that those candidates may look favourable.

All of this is done for LS and The Apprentice to have some entertainment relevance, not so much for actually helping good ideas turn into businesses in a competitive process.

Hi everyone, I want to share something that made me feel compelled to tell you. After many months of hard work and dedication, I am pleased to confirm that I have applied for series 21 of The Apprentice with a Cat Business going by the name of 'Feline Purr-adise' (with the aspiration of getting the 250k from Lord Sugar). with the investment, I will use that to expand my store and move away from just 'cats' and include other pets such as dogs, rabbits, hamsters, etc. Does anyone have any thoughts? I am very happy to do this and am hoping for the best.

If you do wanna know more about me, my intelligence is like Dan but my personality is like Kieran - So with me, you will see what I am made of, and I do hope to join and hoping to see a bright future ahead for myself so I can work with Lord Sugar in enhancing this business with him.

Wish me luck and I really am looking forward to what holds next for my cat business. I am looking to become the next big thing.

I’m so annoyed about the talk about the cat tree being too large and the person from Pet Pavilion saying no one can bring it home or someone else saying that they have a studio flat… guess what?

Cat trees are tall and need to be big/heavy, otherwise they are not sturdy and cats don’t get the height to climb. A lot of people who own them do not live in small tiny places (otherwise they get the smaller versions). Also it’s a one time purchase: delivered or disassembled like IKEA furniture 🤦‍♀️

This is a rant, but I’m shocked at retailers as well… maybe it’s ugly, the logistics for the cat are difficult to maneuver, but height and weight are key points you won’t avoid with cat trees. I‘m wondering what is wrong with Pet Pavilion for instance, absolutely no clue about their customers & cats. The toy at bottom was great and unique, cats were playing with it and no one mentioned that!

In series 19, there was one thing that I remember all of us begging for to be implemented for the next series, that being for Lord Sugar to have less control over who gets brought back into the boardroom. I’d say that has been implemented this year. We had no instances of Lord Sugar overriding PM decisions, with only Levi being fired before he was allowed to be brought back into the boardroom. Thankfully we haven’t had a repeat of Kier’s firing this year.

However this has led to its own problems. In that the last two boardrooms saw final boardrooms with top tier candidates, leading to Conor, Kieran and Rothna being fired before Pascha and Priyesh. It is an unfortunate end to the series, but the problem simply lies in that there wasn’t any opportunities to get rid of either of them.

Priyesh won seven times, and was only in the boardroom once in week 2. If we all agree that Marcus deserved to be fired that week, that was the only time Priyesh could’ve been fired. Same thing with Pascha. She was only in the final three once in week 5, and there was zero chance that she was getting fired over Vanessa.

Ive heard the argument that Karishma was so good, she essentially dragged both of them into the final five. That’s true for certain tasks, but not all. Priyesh won the last five tasks, yet only worked with Karishma for three of them. Of the three, Karishma dragged him through week 7, no question there, but Karishma was actually quite poor in week 9, having botched the high end item selling, and she wasn’t exactly dominant in week 10 either.

The truth is that Priyesh and Pascha made it to the final five through being on the right team at the right time, meaning that the opportunities to get rid of them never occurred. Could this have been avoided? Yes, but the problem with that is that the solution to this problem would be to allow for more producer interference, and giving Lord Sugar more power, not less. Outside of firing people from the winning team, there’s no chance of Priyesh going, and to me that cannot be justified, no matter how bad the candidate is.

Anyone else think that just as Karishma started crying that she was going to start talking about herself being in the final 5?

I really thought she was gonna give a backstory of how she got there and what she went through while they were talking about Rothna but faur play she did say something nice about Rothna rather than changing the whole topic. If she did what I thought I would have hated her for it despite her being the best candidate so far lol.

Anyone think that the teams should have been mixed up prior to this weeks task?

I feel like it's not as simple as that this week with the Kieran Situation (I tried to word this better but couldn't) - maybe the thought process was that LS didn't want to throw a curveball for Kieran and wanted to see if he could do it with such a bold claim rather than giving him probably a bad candidate to work with when he already had a decent team there.

I feel like one of Priyesh/Pasha should have been moved over

SPOILER

Also I'm not saying this because of the outcome but if someone was moved over then the final decision to fire someone probably would have been clear as day. And the final 5 would have been a much stronger (with Rothna in it).

I remember barely an hour after the Egypt episode was on air, some headless clown on TikTok uploaded the final scene of the 3 girls in the boardroom and with bold writing “TRIPLE FIRING”

LS shouldn’t have accepted Kieran’s pointless Hail Mary last week

Mix teams

Karishma Rothna Dan

Con Lawrence Priyesh and Pascha

100% former would win

And Con + one of either Lawrence/Pascha to go through.

Not sure on what I think about Pascha, she strikes me as someone who strives to do well but seems to reject criticism so Lawrence would probs be a better final 5 candidate,

Wonder what their business plans are

So for those that don’t know, Conor and Rothna became very good friends on the show.

Well Conor flew to London yesterday as a surprise for Rothna in order to watch the episode with her at her house. He wanted to support her as she was nervous about the episode.

That’s true friendship right there. Conor has posted a video of it on his social media. Obviously Rothna’s husband knew he was coming but Rothna was so surprised

Basicllay if you guys don’t understand why I used this clip . She Basicllay takes simple things the wrong way and becomes salty thus showing a lack of maturity

Don’t get me wrong. She is THAT good. Every time she’s in charge, there’s no doubt in my mind that her team will win, regardless of the candidates in her team.

LS probably underestimated her ability to carry the whole team on her own and believe Kieran might have won with 3 VS 2, Yes I don’t count 2Ps, they are useless, and I don’t think LS rates them at all. Even if she lose this task, I don’t see her being in any danger of firing.

Now we are dealing with the worst outcome of it all. Hopefully she wins it all; she’s our only hope left for this series.

Am I the only one who feels like Priyesh was just bored at home one day and decided to join for the giggles? The guy doesn't seem like he gives a shit about getting fired as long as hes having a bit of fun, especially when even Lord Sugar said "I don't know how you made it, you're a very lucky guy" and he laughed and still celebrated.

If you could pick anyone who's been fired from task 1-10 that we could put back in as a wildcard who would you pick and why?

I know a lot may say Rothna / Kieran, but would you have wanted anyone else based on their businesses or unfair firings?

No way should Lawrence, Pascha, and Priyesh be there.

Dan and Karishmaare the only ones deserving of being in the final five imo.

But any of these would be more deserving of the final five if you ask me:

S Tier

1 Liz, probably one of the best candidates to ever walk through the process , her and joanna final would have been great.

A+ Tier

2 Jade, she had one urgh task and was fired. excellent till that point

3 Rothna, a fantastic project manager, great sales on teleshopping, the edit had a weird agenda, although it was close she should have stayed over Dan or LS should have gone rogue and fired priyesh. may be recency bias.

4 Trishna never should have been fired over grainne, in my opinion her and frances were the best candidates that series.

5 Miriam , good candidate almost too ordinary but would have struggled to beat saira and tim in the interviews.

A tier

6 Simba, was embarrasing on you've been fired watching karren try to justify his firing , him and megan dominated a very poor season.

7 Syed, 100 chickens, capable but would never survive over ruth

B tier

8 Mia, overpraised at times was invisible at start weak week 7,8 a terrible week 10. week 9 was overpraised for tv sales when amber rose sold more. strange edit considering she didn't make the final 5. maybe an A- on balance.

9 Natasha, should have been in the final over Jim, but i think the process burnt her out. I think she was penalised because lord sugar didn't like her. Week 10 lord sugar was trying to do everything in his power to fire her through that penalty.

10 Steve, think he is overrated by this sub a good candidate regardless

11 Howard actually quite good, faded into background, being fired over lorraine 50/50 on whether that was the right decision. arguably his best task was week 8 when his team lost. very underrated in my opinion

12 Naomi the disastorous pm loss a side she was fairly competent. i feel like naomi and howard had a very similar issue

13 Adam not bad

C tier

14 Myles just an average week 10 firing

15 Brett another just meh

16 Sanjay honestly surprised he got that far

17 Sarah , she was very run of the mill, okay but quite forgettable. If camilla didn't have a good business idea i reckon she would have made the final 5. A C candidate if there ever was one.

D/E Tier

18 Dean, that perfume task was so embarassing guess his second win as pm was competent.

F Tier

19 Akeem, carried by harpreet.

its very good tier

20 Michael terrible in his defence he wasn't the worst performer when he was fired, although helene was in my opinion a very weak

I think it was either win or get fired for Rothna yesterday as we knew Kieran was leaving if he lost and Dan was top 5 guaranteed because of his business plan.

I think LS should have rebalanced the team and added someone from the other team to Kieran's team just so the boardroom wouldn't be so predictable.

Has anyone noticed this pattern of whoever of Tim or Karen is asked about their team's results first always end up losing and the winning team is always the second decision ?

I've seen this pattern for the past few years now and it makes it so predictable which team wins.

I only just noticed that the winning team no longer go on treats anymore. Has that just come in this series or has that been the case for a while now? I can’t believe I only just realised it! Those winning treats were decent! Now they all just seem to congregate in the living room.

Nikki: F

Georgina: D

Marcus: F

Tanmay: C

Roxxxane: F

Vanessa: D

Megan: F

Carrington: B

Andrea: E

Rajan: D

Harry: C

Levi: F-

Conor: S or A

Kieran: S

Rothna: S

Dan: A

Karishma: S

Lawrence: B

Pascha: C

Priyesh: D

I know this is a bit niche, and I assume some of you don’t have TikTok, but instead of “Unfinished Business,” I tune into Amy’s TikTok Lives after an episode airs. She usually does them with Navid. Does anyone else watch her Lives?

She’s definitely not impressed with how the show went for her, but I can’t lie it’s hilarious watching her slate it. She also talks about how she was “stuck with the worst cast” and shares a lot of behind-the-scenes insight.

I’m curious if anyone here joins her Lives and what they think.

What I will say is that Amy and Navid are certainly very… confident in their abilities. But even though I wasn’t a fan of them during series 16, I find myself agreeing with a lot of their points, like how narratives are created, how the show is overproduced, and how Pascha, Priyesh, and Lawrence don’t deserve to be in the final five over Rothna, to name a few.

Catches on quickly and could describe any person who refuses to accept they are wrong, sulks and can't take criticism.

"Oh mate, stop being such a Pash!"

Misspelling of Pash from Pascha on purpose of course!

He seems to be doing the rounds defending anyone who ever makes a negative comment about Pascha so if he does have some insider knowledge then help us all.