Vice President in charge of Sleepytime, Maria, was sent to bed early last week, leaving 14 candidates to continue battling it out in the corporate Hunger Games that is The Apprentice.

This week the rag-tag bunch were sent to the docks, where Admiral Amstrad himself, Lord Sugar, challenged them to come up with a brand new condiment.

After two consecutive wins by the Boys, Duane took the command of Team Sterling, while Katie had the difficult task of managing the testosterone tea party that was the all-boy Team Phoenix. And with that they set about the challenge of making a meal out of making a perfect mealtime accompaniment…

Award for ‘Condiment Most Likely to Kill’

Should the military ever require a more cost-effective alternative to napalm they’ll no doubt be interested in weaponising Team Sterling’s botched first attempt at a ‘luxury chutney’ (none of that common chutney muck for them, oh no). So spicy was the glutinous mass that it sent Duane ricocheting around the factory like a Looney Tunes character, coughing and spluttering as the girls tried to stifle their giggles.

Nick Hewer, no doubt no stranger to a good chutney, dipped his nose towards the pot and pulled a face that resembled a man catching a whiff of fumes from a septic tank. “Vicious” was his description of the corrosive condiment, and you get the feeling he was being kind.

It meant that the team had to start all over again: a mistake that would come back to haunt them in the pitches.

Word of the Week

“Bellissimo!” shouted Stephen, as Team Phoenix came up with names for their Italian-style table goop. He didn’t really know what it meant, he didn’t really know how to spell it (“Is it a B or a V?” he asked), but by gum he wasn’t going to let a little thing like ignorance stop him.

‘Belissimo’ was plastered on their bottles of sauce and off they went to sell them, only to be told by two different retailers that they’d spelled it wrong. More hilarious was the fact that even in the pitches they still didn’t really know what the word meant, with their descriptions ranging from ‘fantastic’ to ‘great’ to the correct, ‘beautiful’.

You half expected The Princess Bride‘s Inigo Montoya to pop up and set them straight with a “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Strictly speaking ‘bellissimo’ actually means ‘very handsome’ (took us 30 seconds to find that out, Stephen), which is an odd way to describe anything you dip your chips in.

The ‘Excellence in Photoshopping’ Award

A special award for the graphic designer that Team Phoenix used to create their label, as thanks to Phoenix having no idea what they wanted, his job took all of three minutes. Paste a photo of a pepper into Photoshop, put an incorrectly spelled Italian word above it, add a slogan, and voila! Probably an early lunch for that chap on that day.

The label made the product look like badly-counterfeited Heinz ketchup, but it was far superior to the team’s first graphic idea of a ‘Mediterranean’ vista, which would have made the sauce look like an extremely high factor, albeit delicious, sun-tan lotion.

Most Embarrassing Pitch of the Week

An Apprentice – and probably business – first: a pitch without a product. Half of Sterling were at chutney HQ, making a brand new, less ferocious batch, so the other half of the team had nothing but a smile and a handshake to take to their pitches.

“I wouldn’t recommend that they try this product,” chutney chief Duane told Team Sterling’s sub-team. And so Nicolas and company marched merrily into a grocery chain to describe their product without having even seen or tasted it themselves.

Ego of the Week

Two weeks of victory has clearly gone to Adam’s head, which is now so swelled with triumph and hot air that he’ll need to store ballast in his suit pockets to keep him from floating away on a breeze of his own self-congratulation.

He welcomed Katie to the team with a cheery dig, “We like to do things differently here, like winning”, but really showed his colours in the boardroom, where he proudly boasted “I had a major role in the operation as per usual” in a moment of egotism so brazen it would have made cocky Apprentice alumnus Stuart Baggs shudder.

And even when Shugsy called him out on such a statement he riposted “Well credit where it’s due”. Here’s hoping that this week’s taste of loss will keep him quiet next week.

Aired at 9pm on Wednesday 4th April 2012 on BBC One.

> Buy The Best Of The Apprentice on DVD on Amazon.

What were your favourite moments from the episode? Let us know below…