After the sheer brilliance of last week’s Apprentice, it seems only fair that this week we were brought back down to earth with a bump – Pants man was, after all, always going to be a hard act to follow. Sad to say, then, that this week’s task was probably the dullest one so far this series, although the ensuing boardroom storm – complete with furrowed brows, shocked expressions and over-zealous bitching from some very unlikely quarters – ultimately made the preamble worthwhile.

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This time around, the teams had the task of selling what looked at first glance to be a heap of old junk – a skeleton, some vintage heels, an old bike, an Indian rug and something which looked like an antique chair with a potty inserted (a kind of toilet chair, if you will). It bore some resemblance to the kind of haul you might pick up at a car boot sale if you were exceptionally unlucky; but it didn’t take Lorraine too long to twig that some of the items, particularly the rug, might actually be worth quite a bit of cash. What a pity nobody decided to listen to her.

As suspected, flogging the skeleton was no easy task (although a friend of mine assured me she would happily have taken it off their hands for 75 quid…..) and offloading the rug was even harder, with one team even resorting to trying to flog it via door to door sales, such was their desperation ( I ask you, would you buy a rug from someone who just randomly turned up on your doorstep trying to sell you one? Nope, didn’t think so…..)

Eventually back in the boardroom it became apparent that both teams had made a loss although Empire, led by an increasingly incomprehensible Phillip, were declared winners because they had lost less money. Thus Sir Alan sent them off for a posh steak dinner to celebrate their, er, deficit. The others meanwhile, mooched around in the loser’s cafe and prepared to act all bolshy – well, what do you expect when your project manager is Ben, a man who seems so hellbent on being the next Sir Alan that he even attempted to offer his own lengthy opinions on who should and shouldn’t be fired. Still, if there’s anyone who can reduce the series loudmouth to a speechless gibbering wreck then it’s the man Sugar, and in this instance he did it perfectly.

Although not quite as well as Ben did with James when he suggested he would bring him back into the boardroom,despite him not actually having done anything discernibly wrong during the task. If you’ve ever seen a goldfish attemping to swallow fish food, then you’ll get some idea of the slack-mouthed expression on James’ face at this news. Even Sir Alan was unconvinced. “You think that somewhere there’s a village missing an idiot?” he said of Ben’s decision – and he hurriedly changed his mind and brought back uber-bitch Debra instead.

As it was it needn’t have mattered since it was Noorul who ultimately got the chop – not so much for his failures on this task (selling items for far less than he could have gotten for them) but, we suspect, for being about as ineffectual as they come. To be fair, he argued his case as best he could, even accusing Ben of trying to milk the limelight by continually talking about how many magazine deals he could land post-Apprentice (answer: more than you, Noorul). However, having realised he had slipped under the radar all this time, Sir Alan took his chance and fired the science teacher faster than you can say “So, what is it you do exactly Noorul apart from dress up in silly costumes and spend the rest of the time looking gormless?” Ultimately, the real question wasn’t why he was fired, but how he lasted so long in the first place.

So we’re at the halfway mark now. Things are hotting up and personalities are coming to the fore. Any ideas yet who might win? Because I haven’t got a clue…..