Gerri Blackwood has become the latest apprentice to be fired by Sir Alan Sugar.

Gerri revelaed today that before taking part in the sow she had been offered a job with MI5, but turned it down for the chance to be Sir Alan’s Apprentice.

Blackwood said: “I’ve no regrets about turning down MI5. Five days before filming started it was made clear to me that it was one or another. I couldn’t choose both.

“I really thought about it, and for me there’s still no regrets.”

She said of Sir Alan: “He does exactly what it says on the tin. I thought that he’d not be as scary as all that and might be a bit of a pussy cat, but he’s not. I’ve got a large amount of respect for him.”

Sir Alan Sugar is set to front a new series of The Apprentice this year, in favour of Comic Relief.

Media Gurdian reports:

Like Big Brother spin-off Celebrity Big Brother, the celebrity version of The Apprentice is expected to take place over a shorter time span, but the rules of the contest would remain largely the same.

The celebrities will be divided into two teams for a series of business challenges, after which members of the losing team will have to go into Sir Alan’s boardroom, where one of them will be fired.

Celebrity reality shows have been a feature of the last three Comic Relief campaigns, beginning with Celebrity Big Brother in 2001 – which has since transferred to Channel 4 – and Celebrity Fame Academy in 2003 and 2005. The next Comic Relief is due to take place next year.

Jenny at Newsblog has collected a nice bunch of Sir Alan Sugar’s nastiest quotes from The Apprentice so far.

For my money, the defining moment of the series was when he turned to Mani and said:

you seem to have gone from anchor to wanker

I actually did a double-take (did he really say wanker?) before bursting out laughing. The business media are have been knocking Alan Sugar’s management ’style’ on the basis that nobody else would get away with it and that he’d be a magnet for employee lawsuits.

Whatever your opinion, by the time you’ve watched the hapless contestants fumbling around for the best part of an hour, Sir Alan is easily the hero of the piece when he starts tearing strips off them!

Anybody got a favourite quote that Jenny’s not covered yet? Yer a lightweight. You’re fired!

Another Week, another dismissal. Alexa Tilley may have narrowly escaped being fired last week, but this week after another very poor performance Sir Alan Sugar said to the Cambridge graduate Management Consultant those immortal words; “Your Fired” and Alexa Tilley left the building.

This week saw Sir Alan shaking things up a bit by asking one woman and one man to nominate themselves for the job of project manager of the other team.

Mani Sandher, Management Consultant from London put himself forward to lead the ladies team Velocity while Alexa Tilley offered to manage the mens team Invicta.

Sir Alan had booked each team a Marquis at Tower Bridge and during the ‘Festival Of The Thames’, each team had to set up their Marquis as a themed restaurant. Whoever made the most profit would win. Simple as that.

Manni, although a bit dictatorial in style, managed to plan Velocity’s activites very well. Sharon had issues with Manni’s management skills or lack thereof, and got upset as she felt constantly ignored and under valued, but when it mattered the girls team under Mannis supervision worked well together. As a result of their excellent planning and preparation for the task, the Classic Oriental noodle bar which they set up was busy all day, well received by the public and most importantly at the end of the day had made the team a profit of over £300.

The boys team Invicta unfortunately veered from one disaster to the next. Alexa having no restaurant experience left much of the planning for the task to Tuan and Syed, taking their word as gospel the whole way through.

Tuan suggested preparing 500 pizzas for the day, even though that would have meant they had to sell one slice of pizza every 9 seconds. So enough ingredients were bought for 500 pizzas and more! Syed then ordered 100 large chickens even though they were only planning to make 100 tandoori chicken pizzas, he also over ordered on Mozzarella cheese and that mistake cost them £300 out of their diminished £2000 float.

While Manni and the girls were rushed off their feet, Alexa and the boys twiddled their thumbs most of the day. In order to make a profit the team needed to charge £4.23 per slice of pizza, by the end of the day they were charging customers £1 per slice, and though they managed to sell all of the 90 pizzas they had actually managed to make they failed to make back the money which they outlaid in setting up the restaurant. At the end of the day Alexas team had made just over £1100, they had spent £2000 in preparation for the task and so lost over £800 in one day.

Unsurprisingly Sir Alan was unimpressed by the whole fiasco. He dragged Alexa, Tuan and Syed over the coals in the boardroom, and said that if he could he would fire all three of them. As project manager Sir Alan held Alexa ultimately responsible, she was fired and the girls lost another member.

Can they pull it back next week? Do any of the girls have what it takes to become ‘The Apprentice’?