Lee is the Apprentice: It's what they're talking about
Sir Alan Sugar included a star alpha female for the fourth time in the four series of The Apprentice - and then chose to hire the other candidate. This time, Lee McQueen was hired and Claire Young was not - although there was no clip shown of her being fired either.
As Claire has said since there are no alpha females walking around in any of Sir Alan's offices so he is consistent in recruiting the people he likes.
Other than CVgate, Lee was a worthy winner. He never ended up in the final three of the losing team. He won all the tasks when he was team leader. His team hardly put a foot wrong in the Marrakech task and he thrashed the other team in the supercar task. His leadership was inspirational and he was never worn down by the more dysfunctional candidates he had to work with but was successful in getting the best from them.
In the final, Sir Alan put Helene and Alex together in one of the teams and as expected they were soon sniping at each other. Their male fragrance was called Dual, characterised by a bloke who wore a suit in the office during the day and casual clothes after work. But it won high prize from a perfume executive.
The famous nose told them: "I may be the most quoted authority on perfume in the world. I might say, having nearly every product in the market sent into my office, considering you'e had only had three days to make this I think it's extraordinary."
However, Sir Alan had to find a reason for firing Helene and Alex and said the packaging was too expensive. However, no one had any ideas on what the container would cost, other than it was more than a standard glass bottle, which presumably would not be much.
Lee and Claire were on fire. Their fragrance was called Roulette, and would be sold to guys who aspired to be James Bond. For decades 007 has been synonymous with fast cars, beautiful women, dramatic locations and danger and the ad Lee and Claire created captured the essence of that image in their TV commercial.
Nick Hewer clearly didn't get it though. His eyebrows lifted for the final time in the series and he intoned: "For me Roulette equals gambling, equals debt, equals misery."
So we can assume Nick is not a 27-year-old salesman who might get a a back, sack and crack. Old Spice will not be worrying about losing its market share just yet.
Lee's "miscommmunication" joins the list of Hillary Clinton who mis-spoke, Alan Clarke's being economical with the actualité and Sir Robert Armstrong's misleading impression. CVgate and the BBC's part in making the task of recruiters across the country more difficult will rumble for a few more days yet.
Lee will not be working for Bordan Tkachuk, the Viglen CEO who caught him out but will be selling ad space on TV screens for another part of the Sugar empire.
The pterodactyl becomes extinct for the second time, Lee's girlfriend will get two more shoes and Lee will make do with a Porsche.
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