Once again 16 candidates – dragging a wheely-case, a padded-out CV, and an ego the size of an early Amstrad computer – descend on Lord Sugar’s glittery job-centre skyscraper in the hope that he’ll make them his partner in business and finger-pointing. Move over Tom Pellereau, The Apprentice is back…

Week One is always a blur of ambitious faces and empty catchphrases, with only the oddest and the noisiest rising to the surface. This year was no different, though all failed to hit the Stuart Baggs level of megalomania. One compared themselves to a lion: “I will literally roar my way to the top”. While another proudly proclaimed “I’m like a shark. I’m right at the top of the food chain.” You’d think they were stupid for employing animal metaphors, but let’s not forget that previous winner Lee McQueen once did a pterodactyl impression in the interview stages.

As ever they set about greeting one another in a friendly but standoffish fashion, as though knowing The Joker was about to snap a pool cue in half and drop it in front of them for ‘tryouts’. Eight series in, the process is pure entertainment rather than business, so, Lord Sugar – why so serious? Especially when you set tasks such as this week’s: stamping hastily designed logos on utter tat.

Leading the testosterone-fuelled Team Phoenix was young Nick the trendy profit robot, who can best be described as a calculator under a haircut. But to be fair to Nick, the boys were passing the team leader role about like a Goldman-Sachs dismissal, and he did a good job of wrangling seven wasitcoated egos, especially that of gobby Stephen. That’ll surely keep the heat off him for a few weeks. For the all-girl Team Sterling (good name), self-described ‘quirky’ print specialist Gabrielle took command, which made perfect sense.

But sense rarely has anything to do with business in The Apprentice. The boys, concerned with ‘margins! margins! margins!’ came up with the most clichéd and generic branding possible (Jack the Bear? Really?) and then proceeded to attempt to foist it on unwitting foreigners at St Pancras. As a result of a focus on profits the products looked liked they’d been salvaged from a factory fire, making the job of selling them all the more difficult.

While the girls had a superior design and a smarter business plan – half in a market, half at the zoo – things fell apart quickly towards the end of trading, and by the end of the day they were being scolded by local shopkeepers for being too aggressive in their ‘shop-invasion’ style sales tactics, while the other half of the team wandered around London Zoo like a bewildered giraffe that had broken free of its cage and decided to ambush visitors with low-quality jigsaw puzzles.

It’s sometimes the case that the show’s editing leaves it easy to spot the winners and losers, especially in the early weeks, but thanks to judicious shots of Nick and Karen’s pained expressions, and focus on cock-ups on both sides, it was genuinely difficult to guess who’d won and lost.

Somehow the Boys (Team Phoenix) scraped a larger amount of money together – total profit, £616, ‘kerching!’ – and went off to eat some art while the girls went to drink tea and resentment from a polystyrene cup, all the while listening to Bilyana attempt to save her skin before the boardroom. It didn’t work.

In went team leader Gabrielle, quiet Katie, and geographically-clueless Bilyana…

The resulting boardroom backstabbing wasn’t pretty or dignified and unsurprisingly Bilyana came off worst, talking herself out of the show and into black cab destined for business oblivion. A predictable firing for what was an average opener, but next week’s home gadget challenge looks like it’ll bring us some of the fireworks we expect, nay demand, from Shugsy’s Business Thunderdome.

Aired at 9pm on Wednesday 21st March 2012 on BBC One.

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