Lord Sugar’s candidates touch down in the Hungarian capital of Budapest to sell and run bespoke tours

Each year, the producers of the hit business show somehow manage to find even more self-centred and deluded entrepreneurs/reality TV wannabes who talk a very good game before having their obvious shortcomings revealed to the nation and egos crushed.

This year’s male candidates in particular were full of soundbites (and themselves), with Sheffield wellness brand owner Dr Asif Munaf saying: “I’ve got an extremely high IQ. I’ve got an extremely high bench press. And to top it off, I’m quite good on the eyes.”

Meanwhile, “international” DJ and MC Virdi Singh Mazaria confidently declared: “The other candidates are just extras on my journey to the top”, and Lord Sugar said Paul Bowen was “talking out of his pie hole” when he claimed he could make him “Lord of the Pies”.

Although most viewers know what they’re getting with the candidates each year, Lord Sugar doesn’t believe they are just lambs to the TV slaughter, and thinks that this current batch are an improvement on previous years.

“Well, I’m very pleased with this series because the quality of the candidates that we have attracted this year is superb. This year, we’ve got a lot to work with.”

And Baroness Karren Brady, who has once again returned as Lord Sugar’s trusty sidekick, alongside Tim Campbell, agrees with the tycoon – to some extent, anyway.

“I think it’s probably the most highly qualified set of candidates we’ve ever had,” she says. “Pharmacist, dentist, some already successful business owners.

“But with high standard and high achievers comes high ego. They think they’re really, really, really, really good.

“And like most entrepreneurs and highly successful people, they often think they’re the best in the room, and working as a team can prove very challenging.”

The 18th season kicked off at the beginning of February, with the teams hosting an event in the Scottish Highlands.

In what has now gone down in Apprentice legend as “Crumblegate”, the girls’ team catastrophically coated their fish cakes with sweet crumble mixture rather than breadcrumbs.

The following week, the boys the marched into the Innocent Smoothies offices, with one contestant trying to convince them to ditch their healthy fruit-and-veg ethos in favour of mini chocolate cheesecakes.

After two disastrous food tasks, Lord Sugar decided it was best to lock the teams up. But as Nexus and Supream competed in the Virtual Escape Rooms task, all logic went out of the window for one of the groups.

For the fourth episode, Lord Sugar sent the candidates to Jersey to secure and negotiate nine items synonymous to the area.

However, more blunders led to a tense showdown in the boardroom.

After launching a new Formula E team – that featured a rare success – and creating a children’s breakfast cereal, the candidates jet off to Budapest tonight with the aim of selling and running their own boat and vineyard tours during the Hungarian capital’s 150th-birthday celebrations.

With tourism booming in the area, one team decides to focus on fun over facts, while the other suffers a last-minute change of plan.

Can at least some the candidates prove themselves worthy of Lord Sugar’s £250,000 investment, or will the tycoon be angry at their performances in Hungary?