is finally back for another year, which means more cocksure candidates, business catastrophes and fiery takedowns in the boardroom by Lord .
If the is anything to go by, viewers are in for a wild ride… especially as the opening episode features one of the ‘worst’ disasters ever seen on the programme.
For the premiere of series 18,’s aides Baroness and MBE oversaw the men’s and the women’s teams as they set about arranging corporate away days for two companies in the Scottish Highlands.
While one half of each team took their guests on adventurous activities, which included jumping into a slippery gorge and abseiling down a cliff – the other half busied themselves in the kitchens cooking up lunches for them to eat when they returned.
On the women’s team, they had chosen to make hearty fishcakes for their guests… but were met with calamity when Noor Bouziane didn’t realise that she’d coated the fishcakes in the crumble meant for their desserts, instead of breadcrumbs.
Despite eventually figuring out their error, they decided to serve up the dishes anyway… and their diners could immediately spot that something had gone drastically wrong.
But that wasn’t the end of their misfortune.
When the time came to get their desserts prepped and ready, it took the female candidates an extremely long amount of time to realise that they had been trying to cook them in a microwave, instead of the oven.
So, the desserts ended up with burnt crumble on the top, but raw insides. The least appetising combination imaginable.
While the male contestants also experienced their fair share of mishaps in the kitchen, Karren didn’t mince her words when describing the women’s blunders to Lord Sugar when they were all back in the boardroom after the task.
‘I’ll cut to the chase shall I?’ Karren began.
‘It was chaos in the kitchen, breadcrumbs mixed up with crumble which was put onto the fishcake, dessert undercooked.
‘Look, in this process we’ve seen a lot of bad food. This was probably the worst food I’ve ever seen.’
Over on the men’s side, the kitchen team were forced to serve up cold toads-in-holes after the excursion side of the team turned up 45 minutes late for their meal.
Not only that, but when candidate Oliver Medford was given the task of making brownies for the desserts – despite having no culinary experience – he forgot to add flour to the mix.
Sub-team leader Phil Turner, who has previously won the award for Supreme Pie Champion, also had to explain the difference between a tablespoon and a teaspoon in the recipe.
After hearing what the first episode has to offer, we just have one question – would you happily eat a fishcake coated in crumble or a cold toad-in-the-hole?
We didn’t think so…
The Apprentice launches on Thursday, February 1 at 9pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
