"There’s a horrible inevitability to the Apprentice. It just happens without you really wanting it to, like Christmas, or a smear test. Every year, every single braying arse wipe you’ve ever overheard on the train yelling ‘Look Geoff, it’s a no brainer’ applies for the show. Every Autumn, Sir Alan finishes shaving his forehead, puts down his copy of Razzle, adjusts his tie and welcomes them all into his boardroom. In a Nuremberg rally of black Burton suits and grey jackets from Mango, they shuffle in, plopping pellets of misplaced self-confidence all over his shiny floor."

- Lucy Sweet on The Apprentice