Let’s enjoy the ‘best bits’ of The Apprentice

Is that Sergey Prokofiev’s stirring Dance of the Knights coming through your TV speakers?

If so, it can only mean one thing – the biggest recruitment process in the UK is back on TV.

But before you get excited at the prospect of a dozen or more walking clichés spending the next couple of months trying to convince Lord Sugar that they are worthy of his £250,000 investment, let’s not forget that we are in the middle of a global pandemic and countless TV shows has been postponed.

Back in August, The Apprentice bosses announced the boardroom remains closed and that the show will not be airing this year.

“Sadly we have decided to postpone The Apprentice for 2020,” they said. “Production safety and the wellbeing of everyone involved in the show is our No.1 priority.”

Thankfully, the BBC have come up with a way that we can still get our Apprentice fix, and over the next six weeks, fans will be able to see memorable tasks and boardroom bust-ups.

As well as highlights from the past 15 years, there will be brand-new insights from Lord Sugar and his lieutenants Karren Brady and Claude Littner.

The series, narrated by Tom Allen, begins tonight by remembering some of the most unforgettable candidates – those sharp-suited entrepreneurs that made fans laugh, cry and cringe with their unfailing self-belief. They will perhaps include Paul Torrisi from series one, who got a reputation for expletive-stuffed outbursts, which he claimed were down to his “Italian background”.

A year later, in 2006, there was perhaps the most famous Apprentice ‘loser’ of all (i.e. one who didn’t win), Ruth Badger. During the series ‘The Badger’ gained a reputation for her straight-talking and tenacious sales skills, and despite losing out to Michelle Dewberry, she has gone on to massive success.

The now infamous media personality Katie Hopkins grew from the third season of The Apprentice, and verbally attacked the people she was trying to sell products to – calling people who watched the shopping channel overweight and lazy. And then there was Stuart ‘the brand’ Baggs.

Some of his best remarks during series six included “I’m not a one-trick pony, I’m not a 10-trick pony, I’m a whole field of ponies and they’re literally all running towards this job” and his motto: “Everything I touch turns to sold”.

Finally, there was Essex lad Thomas Skinner, who found his way into the hearts of the nation in 2019 when, in a unheard of act of self-sacrifice, he stepped in to save fellow contestant Pamela Laird from the boardroom.

If all this reminiscing has made you pine for new episodes of The Apprentice, then there could be light at the end of the tunnel, as Lord Sugar has hinted that fans might get a double dose of the business reality series next year.

“If filming this year is not possible then it looks like we’re going to skip a whole year,” he said.

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