As Sir Alan himself put it, this is the moment last night when he acted like "a bloody old fool" and chose loveable doofus Simon over the vastly more qualified and competent Kristina.
Don't get us wrong, we like Simon, he's a funny, charming fellow, but his own claim that he was "acting the fool" all those times when he seemed to make ludicrous decisions all the way through the series seemed a bit of wishful, hindsight-based thinking on his part. Poor Kristina didn't put a foot wrong (except for a few mis-steps during the TV selling challenge – but they all screwed that one up), yet that wasn't good enough for Sir Alan. So what happened? How come Simon won? Was it all down to the final challenge? Hardly.
Simon was about to go with Tre's demented "ship" idea for a building design, until he was out-voted by the rest of the team. And anyway, there was no actual winner of that final task so it all felt a tad pointless, even though both Kristina and Simon did very well in their presentations. No, our feeling, especially having met both finalists and put this point to them both in person, is that Sir Alan simply had a soft spot for Simon. He liked him. He was charmed by him, and – let's not forget – had his ego massively massaged by Simon's almost unfeasible fandom of Sir Alan's life and work. In the end it didn't come down to who was best for the job at all. But maybe that's just like real life!
forum/tm.aspx?m=6788The Apprentice final result