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Claire
by Tim Teeman

There are some things that cannot be taken back. After the episode of The Apprentice in which Claire and Alex teamed up to destabilise poor, decent, ex-Army Simon, I wrote that she was “evil dressed in Topshop sale rail”. The task was to set up a photographic studio at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. Claire and Alex cackled behind Simon's back and then, in “the boardroom”, Claire viciously attacked Simon. Sir Alan told her that he didn't like people being victimised and sent her scurrying, unfired, from the boardoom, with a sentiment shared in living rooms across the nation: “I can't bear to look at you.”

From this moment, at least on the surface and for the purposes of prime-time entertainment, Claire has been a woman transformed. Sure, her motormouth hasn't abated - one of the interrogators at last week's interview task begged her to shut up - and she is still ruthless and competitive, but her sheer unpleasantness has been vaporised.

In the lexicon of reality shows, Claire has been on a “journey” and, from hating her, many Apprentice fans are cheering her to a well-deserved victory. She would be a good Apprentice and has been great entertainment. If she doesn't win, it will be down only to Sir Alan's penchant for a) choosing men over women and b) men in whom he sees “something of myself”. The great grumpy gnome has already made one absurd decision this series - chucking out the able and lovely Raef, seemingly just for being posh - and is legendary for throwing a wobbly with the finishing line in sight. How else would you explain choosing Michelle Dewberry over “The Badger”?

Claire should win for the most basic reason: she is the best candidate. Fellow contestant Jennifer, chiefly memorable for her mustard tops, accurately noted that Claire was “a Tasmanian devil”. She began the series by describing herself as like the family dog, barrelling around, smashing through windows. Later she said her inner Rottweiler was stirring. If she doesn't like something she scowls that fantastic hatchet-face and then powers on, like a ball-bearing.

Claire's instincts are right: in the tissue-advert task she knew her team should have got a shot of the product. She also knew that she should have made that dreadful environmental greetings card presentation, rather than “Little Britain” Kevin who menaced, rather than charmed, potential customers.

Claire has been garlanded with compliments about her sales technique and is one of the few candidates, alongside Lee, who is funny: she joked about getting married on the wedding-dress task and was disappointed when Alex wouldn't play her boyfriend in Marrakesh. Last week, she told the group that she could have snogged the face off one of her interviewers - the one that looked like a pug chewing a wasp.

When Claire scraps (often) she doesn't just scrap, as her female team-mates did, with other women. And she scraps only when she can see something going wrong. She may drive her colleagues mad but out of all the contestants who have absurdly sworn to give it “110 per cent”, only she really has. “Maybe I should have learnt to keep my gob shut from day one,” she has said. Yeah, but how dull that would have been. After weeks of drama and incident, who wants a bore, or even worse, an inadequate with a sob story, to win this best-ever series of The Apprentice?

Lee
by Andrew Billen

In the programme about the final five Apprentice candidates, it was explained in saddened tones that Lee McQueen had “entered adult life without a university degree”. That most people “enter adult life” without this handicap, and that even under present official ambitions only half of the nation's school leavers will do so, seemed not to have occurred to the graduate who wrote the script. But that Lee did not make it to college, may not have wished to, and would almost certainly have wasted everybody's time, including his own, had he done so is precisely why I hope he wins.

In an age of MBAs, year-long secondments to business “schools” and degrees in golf course management, Lee demonstrates what an extremely narrow skill set (as he might call it) is required to flourish in trade. Lee does not know the difference between “gender” and “genre” (as in “We was consciously appealing to the female genre”), spells “recognisable” so that it becomes unrecognisable (he additionally made three spelling mistakes in the word “tomorrow”), and thinks that “that” is pronounced with an initial “v”. His ignorance and lack of creativity are aspects of his strength; they leave his mind clear of everything but his drive and native cunning.

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