It’s that time of year again, when a new batch of enthusiastic, backstabbing recruits gather to sort the wheat from the chaff.
No, not more of The Traitors, alas. It’s now time for The Apprentice. Lord Alan Sugar is returning to Canary Wharf to cajole 20 candidates into laughing at his miserable jokes.
But from what the 78-year-old has said so far about the show, it wasn’t all bad gags. There was one certain exchange that he said turned so ‘heated’ it had to be left on the cutting room floor.
The 20th series kicks off this week with a sojourn to Hong Kong for a scavenger hunt for local specialities like shrimp paste and golden paper pineapples.
Lord Sugar described this first of 12 episodes as a ‘classic task’ that most would assume was simple enough to do.
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Speaking at a Q+A for the show, he continued: ‘Just for the audience’s reference, we don’t just pick nine items randomly. We actually sent people out there beforehand to do a dummy run, to go and find these things, so we know they’re there. We know that they are gettable.
‘I was a bit disappointed. I think it must have shown. To spend all that time and money on sending everybody to Hong Kong and one of the teams only found two of them. The other team found three and even then, they got it wrong. It was quite shocking, really.
‘I expressed my displeasure, from what I recall, what you’ve seen, you saw a kind of mild disapproval from me. But there was actually a little bit more of a heated exchange when I told them how disappointed I was.’
The businessman turned professional firer is joined as ever by his trusty sidekicks Baroness Karren Brady, 56, and Timothy Campbell, 48.
If you thought that the 20-strong candidate count sounds like rather a lot, you’re right. The numbers have been bumped in a nod to the show’s two decades on air.
The Apprentice series 20 line-up
The 20 fresh faces will face a host of new challenges, including creating a children’s book to sell on live TV as well as hosting a corporate away day on the Red Sea in El Gouna, Egypt.
Among the contestants, there’s a barbershop owner, a Kim Kardashian-inspired mortgage broker and a loungewear businessowner who has already had to apologise for filming her nails while driving.
Another member of the cohort, Levi Hodgetts-Hague, has also apologised after social media posts resurfaced featuring ‘vile’ racist and sexist comments.
You can meet the full line-up here.
As Lord Sugar teases from the off: ‘Just because we’ve done this for a while, doesn’t mean you know what’s going to happen next.’ I suspect one thing that is going to happen next is chaos and sheer ineptitude, but maybe this series will indeed shake it all up.
There is another definitive change, however. Tom Allen’s You’re Fired has reached the end of its journey, to be replaced with Angela Scanlon’s rebranded spin-off show Unfinished Business on BBC Two.
Much like Uncloaked, it will be a ‘visualised podcast’ featuring interviews with the latest axed contestants.
The Apprentice returns on BBC One and iPlayer on Thursday, January 29 at 9pm.
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