Zeeshaan Shah is a property developer based in London and Dubai. He notably appeared in series 9 of the hit BBC show, The Apprentice. Zeeshaan’s current enterprise is www.oneinvestments.co.uk, a property investment firm based in London. Here, he exclusively reviews the latest episode…

The nights are now drawing in and the weather is certainly getting colder – this can only mean one thing, it’s the final few episodes of the Apprentice! There’s been a lot of drama over the past few weeks with mass firings, arguments, power struggles and surprise poisonings.

The two teams got woken up at 6am with the call to meet Sugar at the Southbank tower. This meeting place evoked memories of Michael Gambon in the film Layer Cake – it was certainly intimidating. They were given the task of selling property, with the team earning the most amount of commission winning the task.

Plumbing to property

I was excited to see that Joseph put himself forward for the project manager role. I’ve often thought that while he may be able to sell a host of ‘basic products’ I really wanted to see how he fared with something a bit more complicated. Property is a much more complicated business than plumbing or handyman work.

His inexperience was really brought to light when he met the architect of the Stratford property. He didn’t show interest in the product and just jumped in and asked for a really high commission. Why would the architect give someone who wasn’t excited or interested in their property a big piece of it?

Richard took control of the other team. He had been on the winning side since what seemed like the first episode so I think that everyone he was working with was excited to see if he could bring that winning attitude this time round.

Different expertise

Vana really impressed me in this episode. Previously she had been fairly dry and hadn’t really done anything of note. However, she dovetailed perfectly with Richard and they complemented each other’s expertise effectively. Richards’s leadership complemented Vana’s knowledge of architecture and the property industry during the negotiation stage.

However, when it got down to the nitty gritty of selling the flats, both teams really started to look like they were going to fail. They had no idea about what they were selling or what they needed to do to persuade people to part with a lot of money. Whenever you sell something, it has to be researched. I think that the buyers could tell that neither team knew what they were talking about.

Boardroom

I wasn’t too sure who was going to get fired by the time that they got to the boardroom and this was backed up by Sugars assertion that Scott was very lucky to find himself on the winning team. However, he caused a massive shock by resigning from the show. I know this has happened before but you have to think there was something going on behind the scenes that made him walk the plank. Maybe Scott couldn’t handle the pressure? Maybe he knew that he was about to get fired?

The four people left on the winning team could all have gone; it was certainly heated with everyone shouting at each other. I felt sorry for Joseph! He was stuck in the middle between Charleine and Selina and that didn’t look like such a nice place.

Selina was certainly in trouble by the time she got to the boardroom and turned the whole thing into one massive petty argument. This kind of childish name-calling always gets on Sugar’s nerves and by this point I was expecting Selina to get canned. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a candidate who was so disliked by their co-workers.

In the end, Selina got fired and I think that was a just decision. However, Gary needs to really step up his game in the next episode. No one survives being in the boardroom three weeks in a row.