Polar bears are losing their habitat as fast as the ice caps can melt, brown bears are waking up from their winter hibernation, but from next week there’ll only be one bear worth thinking about: the bear with the sore head. Yes, your favourite grouchy boss is back with another bunch of 16 whiny wannabes trying to convince him they should be The Apprentice.

This year’s contest, the fourth series, has attracted more entrants than ever before – 20,000 – and they’ve already been whittled down to include a barrister, a bank manager, a risk manager, an ex-Army engineer, a single mother, an international car trader, an artist, a former championship show jumper and a business liaison manager with royal connections.

While the prize on offer is the same – working with Surallen for £100,000pa, the hoops they have to jump through to get there have been raised, made smaller, and set on fire. Yes, the weekly challenges this time around see the teams sweating it out running rival laundrettes and competing pubs, creating a new perfume, designing a greeting card, inventing a new flavour of ice cream and selling wedding dresses.

On top of that, they will fly to Morocco to barter with the canniest salesmen in the world.

And the fun starts straight away in episode one, when instead of relaxing in their new luxurious pad – a 7,000 square foot, multi-million pound, gated converted glass factory – with a glass of champagne and a glimpse of the high life, Sir Alan kicks them right into his “business boot camp.”

In a boys versus girls race, as each team is given two van loads of fresh fish and told to flog it all before their boardroom deadline at 7.00pm that evening. I thought it was dead horses that got flogged on this show?