Sir Alan Sugar has very publicly blasted the contestants from last years series as being ill prepared and not up to scratch. In fact he told the Daily Star that he only agreed to take part in a third series if the Apprentice’s were of a much higher calibre.

He said of the contestants: “You’d have thought…they’d have done their homework, seen every programme, looked out for certain things to do and not to do, in certain tasks.

“(But) in the second series, they didn’t even know who I was, some of them, or what my business was: what I do, what I’ve sold, what I make, so there you go.”