Why do some big successful brands go bust?

Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt.

I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype.

They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time.

And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to owners and employees to ask, what can we learn?

It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just couldn't survive.

Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. Hello and welcome to The last in this series of more or less.

This week, our wage increases inflationary.

What about pension increases?

Stephanie Flanders helps explain the wage price spiral.

Child care seems pretty expensive, but many parents say

they're not struggling to pay for it. What's going on there? The Wiley French are back on the show

with their mysterious ways of counting. I will do my best to figure it out. But first, just when we

thought we'd get through a series of more or less

without a new COVID wave, a pair of surly Omicron variants show up. How worried should we be? And

is more or less to blame? Correlation isn't causation, of course, but every time there's a series,

there's a COVID wave. It's getting a little suspect.

As in all times of crisis, I climbed to the searchlight on the roof of Broadcasting House

and sent out the stat signal. Within minutes, Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter was on the scene.

I began by asking him, was there really a new wave of COVID? And if so, was it our fault?

Probably not your fault, but there is a wave. There's definitely an increase in infections

...