Week 10’s task began atop a tall building in The City. Was Lord Sugar about to fire a candidate by pushing them to their death? No. This week’s punishment would be far more cruel and unusual: getting discounts for a daily deals company.

Though the prospect of haggling over percentages is the kind of thing that gets Shugsy all excited, it makes for the kind of episode where the dull gap between business and entertainment becomes as horribly apparent as Donald Trump’s hairpiece. Because unless it’s written by Aaron Sorkin, there’s no drama in people discussing business.

Fortunately our remaining candidates still managed to fit in enough idiocy between negotiations to keep the episode vaguely interesting, and give us our Top 5 highlights. It was a Top 7, but we haggled it down…

Facial Expression of the Week

You know you’ve made it in business when you have to watch an incompetent fool have his feet slowly eaten away by a pool of fish… well, that or you’re a Bond villain. Poor Karren Brady had to watch as Stephen tried one of those Fish Spa treatments, or as the fish call them, an ‘All you can feet buffet’.

The look of utter repugnance on her face said it all: ‘I bet Margaret Mountford never had to watch anything so disgusting.’

Pavlovian Scallops of the Week

Ricky Martin was livin’ la vida loca (sorry, but it was inevitable) this week, rushing around high-end restaurants and sniffing out deals like a Michelin-employed bloodhound. And no matter whether he was successful or not he was given a free meal. Not just any free meal though. It was always a tasty plate of scallops.

By the end of the day he’d had three servings of them and it was almost becoming a Pavlovian response to negotiating deals: business, handshake, scallops. We hope he savoured them, because as treats go, it was the closest he was going to get to one this week.

Most Embarrassing Meeting of the Week

Jade and Nick went to chef Marcus Wareing’s brasserie to meet the man himself. But Marcus isn’t all forehead and cookery; he’s also an astute businessman. You don’t get to cook lobster pie and caviar dreams without knowing your overheads.

So he was disappointed when, rather than have a profitable business meeting with Phoenix, he had to watch them work a calculator with the same skill as two escaped lab monkeys who’d just found a GameBoy.

After having his fill of their fumbling – and sensing that the scallops he was cooking in case Ricky stopped by were burning – Wareing left them to get their figures straight, muttering “I can’t run a business like this.” Hey what a coincidence! Neither can they!

Bluff of the Week

Good job Miller Harris is a perfumer, because you’d require a pleasant fragrance to cover the bullshit that Adam was shovelling into the shop. Neither he nor Tom had heard of the company before they burst in unannounced, but Adam wasn’t going to let the truth stand in his way as he wove a compelling tale of how Tom’s girlfriend shopped their all the time.

Never has one man lied so hard just to get a discount on candles. As Shugsy grumbled later, “It’s got to be a bloody good candle”. Well, why don’t we ask Tom’s girlfri- oh, no, wait…even we were nearly taken in by Adam’s lie there! Those Miller Harris folk never stood a chance.

Fashion Sense of the Series

Have you noticed how Jade wears the same outfit – pearls and a black dress – every week when she goes to the boardroom?

Presumably it’s a good luck thing, like how Stephen always brings his gurning face and idiotic cliché-strewn chatter into the boardroom for good luck. That, or Jade just wants to make sure her dress doesn’t clash with the black cab she’s bound to be heading home in before the final.

Aired at 9pm on Wednesday 23rd May 2012 on BBC One.

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