Doctor for hire

I was a little surprised that Lord (Alan) Sugar chose Dr Leah Totton over Luisa Zissman.  Not over the former’s plan, which even the other candidates acknowledged as exceptional, but because of the verbal cues that Sugar gave.  Last season he turned down Tom’s wine hedge fund, which would start slow but could earn millions after a few years.  On that occasion, Nick Hewer counselled Sugar that Tom’s proposal could bring out the ‘devil’ in Sugar in taking a risk in investing in it.  This year, Sugar used the exact same phraseology as Nick last year (and even name-checked Nick in regard to it), saying the ‘devil’ in him was drawn to Leah’s cosmetic services business because though it was a bit of a gamble in terms of damage to reputation should anything go wrong with a client, it was extremely lucrative.  That’s why I thought he would go for Luisa (earlier in this series, I would have been deadest against this but warmed to her in the last few weeks).  But of course, it was a bluff, probably encouraged by the BBC producers, to make it more unexpected that Leah won.  And it worked.  Naturally, her ‘launch’ in the final episode will be immediately discarded and rebranded in a proper corporate experience.