The Apprentice Uk, series five, episode six

The task this week was to value items correctly and sell them. Two teams headed by Philip Taylor and Ben Clarke were given an identical set of items and among them some items of real value.

Philip as usual steamrolls his team. He decides straight away that the rug, which is expensive, is just a cheap nylon thing, and carps constantly when Lorraine says she thinks it might be worth more. He divides his team in two and splits the items evenly between them. He has a stroke of luck in a pub when he comes across someone who has always wanted to own a skeleton and pays £160 for it.

Ben is equally arrogant - he splits his team in two and decides that his half of the team can sell seven items, leaving the other half to sell just three. He is impatient - getting rare books valued takes too long and he quits. But he gets lucky in that he visits a dealer that specialises in James Bond books and gets a good price for a first edition. But he ruins things at the end telling his team to cut prices and just sell, when the task is actually about only making a sale at the right price (better not to sell than selltoo cheap as the sale is assessed against expectd value).

Philip's team wins, but not before Sir Alan points out that Lorraine was right all along about the rug and that Philip has a worrying tendency not to listen to anyone else's opinions.

Ben is totally flummoxed at his loss. But as mentioned before, he has good boardroom skills. He brings back the people he thinks Sir Alan might want to fire, rather than people directly responsible for the team loss. Noorul Choudhury is of course brought back, as it was patently clear Sir Alan wasn't happy with him, despite his win as team leader in episode four. Ben wants to bring back James too (also calculating that James is a weak boardroom player - but there is such surprise at this, that he backtracks and brings back Debra Barr instead.

As predicted Noorul got fired. Ben has correctly sussed that when Sir Alan takes a dislike to you, he will take the first opportunity to fire you. This is why people like Majid Nagra and Kimberly Davis were fired on their first trip to the boardroom, while others such as Philip (and Ben himself) keep surviving.

So who is in Sir Alan's sights for firing in future weeks? My feeling is Mona Lewis. I don't think Sir Alan rates her, but apart from week one, he hasn't seen her in the boardroom. As long as she can stay on the winning team, she's safe. Ben himself is in the firing line too. I'm not sure Sir Alan rates him compared to other candidates.