I’m always in a good mood when an episode of The Apprentice starts because, well, an episode of The Apprentice is on. But then they have to go and spoil it by having that opening spiel that goes on for what feels like hours: “Six-figure salary… job interview from hell… London skyline… opera… I’d like to fire the whole bloody lot of ya.” Yup, we’ve got it. We’re watching The Apprentice. Then of course we get the detailed summary of last week’s show, this time taking the chance to get in some laundry-related puns. Let’s just get on with it, shall we?

Finally the show started for real, and the cars came to collect the candidates at 6.30am. They all headed off to the Tate Modern, which apparently had some sort of link to the task they were going to be asked to carry out, but not much of one. Basically, the two teams, still divided by gender at this point, would have to take an ordinary pub and turn it into a proper restaurant, with a lunch and dinner service the following day. So so far they’ve had to work on a fish market, set up a laundry and establish a restaurant. If I were the candidates, I’d be starting to wonder quite what sort of job I’d applied for…

Sir Alan chose the team leaders this week, and it was one of the Hollyoaks brigade, Ian, for the guys, and “destroy the opposition” Sara for the ladies (I really shouldn’t call them girls). Ian’s team Renaissance were given the Duke Of Hamilton pub, where they brainstormed a few ideas: “Light bulb moment!” Ian cried when the idea of the century entered his head, “Keep it up or shoot it down!” Yes. They decided on an Italian theme, which seemed safe enough cooking-wise, and thought they might even feign Italian accents and wear false-moustaches all evening. They didn’t in the end. Cowards.

For the girls (sorry, comes naturally) Sara came up with the idea of having a Bollywood night, which again meant making bucket-loads of curry and not having to fiddle around with making individual dishes too much. It’s just a shame no-one stopped to think whether any of them knew how to make a decent curry. Rachel’s idea of traditional English food was rejected (understandably I think, it’s hardly the quickest food to whip up) and she never forgot it.

Kevin (pictured) saw himself as a bit of a culinary expert, and so said he’d be the main cook (though later he’d deny that he ever wanted the title “Head Chef”). When it came to him offering ideas for the menu, he was hardly on sparkling form, but then no-one exactly stepped in to help, either. And this is how things proceeded from then on. You might think that being the head chef was a big enough role by itself, but somehow Kevin also found himself in charge of working out how much of each ingredient they’d need, and how much each dish would cost. In other words, Kevin was in charge of buying, costing and cooking. I’m surprised they didn’t stick an apron on him and tell him to take the food out to the punters as well. The “marketing team” had a rather easier job of things, they just ordered hugely expensive flyers and menus, and picked pricing out of the air before the other team had even had a chance to work out what each dish would cost to put together. In other words, Renaissance were not having an amazing time of it.

The ladies were doing rather better on the organisation front, as they’d managed to blag a few Bollywood outfits for free in return for advertising, and got all their printing done for absolutely nothing. As Sir Alan would later point out, that was probably how much they should have paid for the rather uninspiring flyers and menus they got, but at least they didn’t pay a penny. Their problems came, unfortunately, when they entered the kitchen and realised they didn’t have a clue where to start. Both teams had a kitchen supervisor “to make sure no-one gets poisoned” but even he couldn’t prevent the ladies’ curries looking “like sick”, as Rachel delicately put it. Their curry was so bad, in fact, that despite all of their good work up until this point, they completely missed out on the lunchtime service.

Not that the boys were doing brilliantly in the kitchen either. They were determined not to miss lunch service, and so even though they’d missed out on the wholesale retailers the day before, they decided to just plough on, and buy all of their ingredients from the supermarket. Including Dolmio sauce. As things got fraught in the kitchen, one of the marketing-team-turned-front-of-house-staff (tough life) said to Kevin “Don’t shout at me!” “I’m a chef…” Kevin replied, rather dejectedly, “that’s what chefs do.”

Basically, it became very clear that it was not a great idea to volunteer to do the cooking on this task. Although the front of house teams had to put up with hearing that the food was “disgusting”, they could then just toddle off to the kitchen staff and call it “feedback”. I was pretty happy, then, when Kevin gathered the rest of the team together and told them that he really needed to be asked what was left on the menu. The ladies finally got their act together for the evening service, and it seems that the Bollywood night went down a storm. Sure, they hired a waiter from a local Indian restaurant to throw shapes that could never be rightly called dancing, but most of the punters saw the funny side.

Into the boardroom then, and while the girls didn’t take as much money as the boys, they won by virtue of the fact that they didn’t spend a ridiculous amount on food down at the local Tesco. Sir Alan was also impressed by their idea to sell tickets for the night for £5, which then would be taken off the bill. It guaranteed a few bums on seats, and if they didn’t turn up, well, at least they’d got a fiver out of them. “We were in profit before we’d sold out first meal” one of the ladies said, and for once their smugness was rather justified.

For the guys, team leader Ian chose his two kitchen staff, the two people who had been working directly under him, Kevin and Simon, to face the sack with him. Sir Alan, unlike last week, saw what was going on instantly. He knew that Simon hadn’t been at his best on this task, but neither had he done anything to actively hinder it, and that Kevin had just been lumbered with an absolutely ridiculous amount of responsibility, in nearly every single area of the task, and had, almost inevitably, somewhat cracked under that pressure. He also saw that Ian had made very little impact on the task, taken no responsibility, and been a poor leader. He had to go, and go he did.