I think Raef needs to win; he's just so pompous that it's funny. I find it difficult to take any of them seriously actually.

The "You're Fired" show on BBC2 is great - Adrian Chiles is a leg-end! Great pic this, Frank and Adrian - what a double-act that would be

 

You're LIARED!! CV fibber Lee becomes Sir Alan's new apprentice!!

 

The Liar is hired! Salesman wins £100,000 job from Sir Alan on Apprentice... despite fibbing on his CV

 

By Paul Revoir And Donna Mcconnell

Last updated at 10:05 PM on 11th June 2008

• Comments (0)
  
• Add to My Stories

A salesman who lied about his CV has won a £100,000 job with Sir Alan Sugar after winning this year's The Apprentice.

Lee McQueen, 30, was tonight the surprise victor of the hit BBC2 show, beating favourite Claire Young to the job.

He will become the sales director of a new digital marketing company within Sir Alan's business empire, after winning the final task on the show.

Scroll down for more

 

The liar is hired: Lee McQueen is the winner of series four of The Apprentice. Seen here with new boss, Sir Alan Sugar

 

Lee with fired Apprentice candidate Jenny Celerier

 

Return of the fired contestants: The Apprentice candidates are invited back onto the show to help the finalists with their last task

McQueen won the competition after eleven gruelling weeks on the show.

 

He went up against retail buyer Claire Young, 29, global pricing leader Helene Speight, 32 and sales manager Alex Wotherspoon, 32 in the final tasks.

 

The four were split into two teams with Claire and Lee up against Helene and Alex as they were given a week to create and launch a new male fragrance.

Previous contestants on the series were brought back to help them for the finale of the hit reality show.

Scroll down for more

 

 

Finalists Lee Claire Alex and Helene travel to dinner with Sir Alan the night before the final task

Alpha's attempt Roulette was branded boring and unoriginal and the association with gambling was branded negative.

 

But Team Renaissance's bottle proved more problematic, the dual themed bottle was costly, and would leave them with little room for profit, so it was Alex and Helene who were the last candidates to be fired.

It was then left to Lee and Claire to fight to be hired by Sir Alan in the final boardroom.

 

After axing devastated duo Helene and Alex from the competition, Sir Alan told the final two: "It's been a long journey as you know, and at this final hurdle I have to make a very serious decision.

 

"Claire you have some great attributes and Lee you're very convincing. You are very, very, very convincing. I've concluded...Lee, you're hired!"

McQueen admitted he was 'surprised' to have won because he viewed Claire as a 'formidable opponent'.

 

Bottled it: Alex with the badly designed fragrance bottle which decided his fate - he was fired

 

 

Alex and Helene's fragrance Dual. The dual design proved too costly and would yield little profit

 

Many thought she would win the show after turning around Sir Alan's perceptions of her around on the show and he refused to fire her when given numerous chances.

 

He said: "There was an element of surprise but I have always had confidence in my ability.

 

"I believe I won because I was Mr Consistency. If it had been the Premier League for example I would have been top of the table because I won more than everyone else and I consistently delivered. So on that basis I should have won."

 

"From my point of view I did not need to turn anything around. People described me as a rough diamond, but at the end of the day, if you look at it from my perspective I didn't need a b******** from Sir Alan to help me turn it around.

 

"So I have gone into The Apprentice probably more rounded than anyone else if you look at it that way."

But the appointment of the wannabee tycoon, who previously headed a sales team in the recruitment industry, has already come under fire.

 

Employment experts are angry that the winner, whose father is a milkman and mother is a doctor's receptionist, won after lying about his CV.

 

McQueen, billed as the show's 'rough diamond' suggested he had attended Thames Valley University for 2 years, when he was only there for four months.

 

He also made a series of glaring spelling mistakes on the same CV, which were also overlooked when Sir Alan fired Lucinda Ledgerwood instead last week.

 

Despite these revelations coming to light on last week's penultimate show, he was allowed to stay on the series and yesterday won the whole thing.

 

His victory has led business organisations to accuse the BBC show of 'sending out the wrong message' to the public about lying to employers.

 

They fear his victory will give the impression, particularly to youngsters, that it is acceptable and 'worth the risk' to mislead potential bosses in your CV.

 

Stephen Alambritis, head of public affairs at the Federation of Small Businesses, said: "The Apprentice finalist lied on his CV and he still got there. It sends out all the wrong messages and bodes badly for industrial relations in the UK.

 

"It says you can actually get away with it and that may encourage those viewing the Apprentice, who are toying with the idea of lying to leave it in, or to put a lie into their CV and use it as justification."

 

He added: "There is not gradient of lying on a CV. A lie is a lie."

 

Deborah Fernon, an advisor at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) said: "There's a whole range of issues here. Number one what are you doing letting spelling mistakes through. It's not sending the write message to me. The CV represents you.

 

"Also there was the casual relaxedness the show took to the fact he had lied on his CV and that they give him an opportunity to speak up about this and he did not take this. It is an interesting message to send out."

 

She added: "It's not just about who can do the job it is also about things around having personal integrity, honesty and transparency."

 

Her organisation has just published a report which shows 25 per cent of organisations have withdrawn a job offers because a candidate lied in their CVs.

 

Yesterday McQueen, who starts his new job within the next few weeks, was adamant that the issue had been addressed in the programme.

 

But the winner, from Princes Risborough in Bucks, did reveal he was still 'ashamed of the situation' and admitted his actions had been 'not good enough'.

 

Speaking after his victory he said: "I am not condoning it, and I have already said I am ashamed. But at the end of the day it was a long long time ago and it just shows my frailties and insecurities about my education."

 

He claimed he had 'put it to bed' saying it would have been a different issue if he had lied directly about something that was relevant to the job.

 

McQueen added: "I got the grilling and Sir Alan put it to bed."

 

He said while he wrongly suggested he was at the university for two years, he had included on his CV that his studies had been incomplete there.

 

Yesterday clearly sensitive about his academic record he refused to reveal the grades of his GCSEs.

 

He said: "All you know is that I need to know is that I passed 8 GCSEs. I wouldn't say they were very good."

 

He denied he had a problem working with women after he was criticised for his behaviour towards two women contestants on the show.

 

In his new job he will be launching a new mystery product, building a sales team as he works closely with one of Sir Alan's trusted aides.

 

He said: "If I does this well I will continue to work for him over and above the year long contract."

Clearly Sugar is never going to hire a woman again after picking Michelle in series 2 only to have her leave to have a baby.

 

Claire was robbed

Clearly Sugar is never going to hire a woman again after picking Michelle in series 2 only to have her leave to have a baby.

 

 

Well can you blame him??:dozey:

Anyway, Claire looks like she might already be expecting!!:rolleyes:

I don't really think it mattered in the end, Lee still did as well before anybody knew he did that on his cv. He proved himself througout the series.

 

I was very surprised as I thought that Clare had almost certainly got it. but I think Lee will do well. Plus he lives in Bucks, woo!

I feel like Alex would have done well too if he'd got it...even though he was a bit bitchy at times.

I don't really think it mattered in the end, Lee still did as well before anybody knew he did that on his cv. He proved himself througout the series.

 

I was very surprised as I thought that Clare had almost certainly got it. but I think Lee will do well. Plus he lives in Bucks, woo!

I feel like Alex would have done well too if he'd got it...even though he was a bit bitchy at times.

 

A bit?? He was as bad as some of the girls - and that's saying something!!:P

JACI STEPHEN'S Apprentice Watch: Finalists enjoy the Last Supper

 

Last updated at 11:52 AM on 12th June 2008

• Comments (0)
  
• Add to My Stories

There are so many questions Claire could have asked S'rAlan during her 12 weeks on The Apprentice, but no. She was clearly saving it all up for the final: 'Are we having three courses, S'rAlan?'

As a special treat, S'rAlan had taken the four remaining finalists out to dinner. Alex was beside himself with joy at eating fillet steak and truffles, and he went up in my estimation when he was the only one of the group to thank the waiter when he poured him champagne.

Lee could not stop smiling and declared S'rAlan 'a lovely guy . . . down to earth' (I always think the loveliest people are the ones writing the cheque).

 

Scroll down for more

You're hired: Sir Alan Sugar with the winner of the fourth series of The Apprentice, Lee McQueen

I doubt that Helene got to eat anything because her mouth was still glued together in that permanent sulk she has been wearing since about episode three.

But Claire only had eyes for what she was going to stuff her face with next. A bit surprising, really, given that she was the last person round the table who needed to eat much else this side of Christmas.

Alex and Helene were made joint project managers of Renaissance, while Claire and Lee teamed up on Alpha.

 

 

More...

 

• The Liar is hired! Apprentice winner Lee: 'Now I want to buy a Porsche'
  
• The devoted boyfriend who's become a sex symbol for women... AND men
  
• Burton & Taylor they ain't - what has Portofino done to deserve the Rooneys' 'wedding of the year'?
  
• STEPHEN GLOVER: If The Apprentice is a true reflection of British business, God help us

Six previous candidates were brought back to enjoy the fun, including Kevin the bank manager, still bemoaning the fact that he wasn't going to win, and entrepreneur Raef still spouting the nonsense that got him thrown off the show in the first place.

 

Both teams were asked to present a new fragrance to experts in the market, and Raef, on Renaissance's team, was championing a design called Dual - a bottle within a bottle-shaped holder - that he claimed was 'all about the duality of human beings' (for "duality", read two-faced, where The Apprentice is concerned).

Scroll down for more

 

Lee doing a 'reverse terradactyl' on the show

'We all have an inner self,' Raef declared, despite having been ousted from the show for being unable to show much of an outer one, even.

Alex thought that the bottle was the most important thing to get right; Helene was pushing the brand and marketing. Well, I say 'pushing'. She was sitting in the back of a cab, whingeing about Alex being 'moody and negative'.

S'rAlan's sidekick Nick, on the other hand, was rather impressed with Alex and thought Helene 'a shambles'.

Over on Alpha's team, Claire and Lee were getting on well, forging ahead with their scent, Roulette, that was being aimed at the 'real man' market.

Filming a James Bond look-alike for the campaign ('There's not a man who does not aspire to be James Bond', he reckoned), he urged the young woman in the ad to come on strongly to the man.

'Really show 'im you wan' 'im thro' your eyes ... you've finally got 'im through the fragrance.'

Scroll down for more

 

And the winner is: Lee McQueen wins The Apprentice

 

Devastated: Clare Young finds out she is only the runner-up

Lee’s presentation had let him down throughout the competition, but after a lot of practice he seemed ready for the job when the experts gathered for each pitch. Renaissance's target consumer was 'Ryan', a 27-year-old aspirational salesman who had rejected metrosexual trends. Instead, he was someone who 'looks like a man, feels like a man and now really wants to smell like a man'.

If there was not a man alive who did not aspire to be James Bond before, there would certainly be plenty after this.

When it came to the boardroom, S'rAlan questioned the wisdom of using gambling as a means to sell any product, and Nick added: 'Roulette equals gambling equals debt equals misery.' Hmm. A bit like people who gamble their working lives in the hope of landing a job through the lottery of a TV show, methinks.

The experts had rated Alpha's design, but recognised that the cost of producing it would eat away all the profits.

Scroll down for more

 

Deja vu: Apprentice contestants were invited back on the show to help the finalists with their tasks

At first everyone had been keen to take the credit, until they sensed the way S'rAlan's sails were blowing. It was 'a grey area' said Alex. No, said S'rAlan, it's black and white: 'Whose mouth did the words come out of - "You know what? Let's do a double bottle"?'

'It was a brainstorming session with the designer,' said Alex.

And so we were down to the wire in what has been an entertaining and often hilarious series. Would the apprentice be Lee, who lied on his CV, yet whose football terrace responses were evidence enough of his educational background?

Alex, his partner in Lucinda-bashing, whose youthful malleability had got him this far?

Helene, who started so well but turned into a cross between Boadicea and Lucretia Borgia?

Or hungry Claire, who underwent what we must presume was a stapled jaw operation halfway through.

So, finally, to the words 'You're hired', which Lee drank in as thirstily as he enjoyed the Bollinger during the show's Last Supper. Now he's on a hundred grand a year, let's hope the lad can at last afford to get a decent shave.

Good for Lee :)

 

I heard Claire is now working for that lady who runs Birmingham FC

Really? That's alright for her then.

 

The 'Reverse Pterodactyl' in the interview was hilarious....as was Claire fancying that interviewer guy.

I think this series has been the best so far... lots of great and entertaining characters. :nice: shame it's over now. I will miss the great aerial shots of London too!

This year all the remaining people are absolute idiots, seriously how did they select them?

 

Also pretty funny pisstake

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxi6QDwQyLU]YouTube - Cassetteboy vs The Bloody Apprentice[/ame]