Apprentice candidate Poulton is out to impress

Dan, who runs his own fragrance company, was the first candidate to be fired after his team’s dismal result in a fish buying and selling task.

Since Lord Sugar started becoming a partner in the winning candidates’ businesses, he has invested £1,000,000 – and he wants this year’s candidates to remember just how successful the previous winners have become and what the process can do for them. “No, not at all”.

Lord Sugar was also surprised to find that throughout the whole task Dan didn’t sell one product, helping to affirm his decision that Dan was the first to be fired.

Making a profit is the name of the game so with that in mind Team Versatile and Team Connexus (as bad as they sound one of them could have been called Team Sugababes, if Dan had his way) headed off to Billingsgate Market in the early hours of the morning. “Many of our customers make money from property and I’d love to go into property development one day”, said Mr Wright.

Over on team Versatile, meanwhile, April Jackson, a former Miss Jamaica, was positively elbowing her way forward to be project manager because, she helpfully pointed out, she had a food blog. They swapped the teams round to give the age-old “boys vs girls” format a break – hardly revolutionary but anything that gets away from judging or labelling based on gender is a plus for me as a viewer.

L-R Dan, April and Brett. Natalie will join Team Connexus, led by 30-year-old inventor and hair extensions specialist Aisha Kasim. Yeah, yeah, I think the world knows by now, you started with very little, worked really hard, did everything, did really well, now you’re a peer with a private plane.

She’s survived six years as Lord Sugar’s right hand woman, and now as a fresh crop of candidates battle it out on The Apprentice, straight-talking Karren Brady, 46, isn’t joking when she says this is the most jaw-dropping series so far.

Impressing Lord Sugar and taking home the title of The Apprentice in the BBC One series has become an annual battleground for aspiring business people for the past decade. The remaining candidate was Dan and I am afraid I knew his fate was sealed from the moment he uttered something along the lines of “I wasn’t good at sales but have other strengths”. “I’m still not sure what that means”.

“It took off from there really, the business grew so much it was nearly too big to handle”. He was weak during the task, self-admittedly terrible at sales and didn’t stand up for himself. These people are your colleagues, your competitors, your friends and they’re your family, they’re the only people you socialise with in the process’.

Littner admitted that he’d initially turned down the promotion from Lord Sugar and had to be convinced to take the role by his old boss and the BBC. I’m happy to work with whoever.