It’s that time of year again. The time for gathering around the TV on a Thursday evening to watch as 18 candidates in brightly coloured suits take part in entertaining challenge. There will be endless boardroom bickering, plentiful poor decisions, brutal honesty from Baroness Karen Brady, and woeful cups of coffee in the losers’ café, as Lord Sugar chooses his next businessNow that the first episode of season 18 has aired, let’s take a closer look at this year’s contestants, and their performance so far.

In the first episode, the candidates were split into two teams, with the boys on one and the girls on the other, and were asked to plan a corporate retreat in the Scottish highlands. Thrown right into the deep end, with a range of exhilarating activities, from abseiling, to fitness coach Sam Saadet bravely facing fears by jumping into a gorge, the 18 hopeful business partners were certainly put through their paces this week.

There were catastrophes in the kitchen , on both teams. One of the highlights includes the girls cooking their fishcakes in crumble mix rather than breadcrumbs, ending up with a fishcake cold on the inside and covered in burnt crumble on the outside. Karen called it ‘chaos in the kitchen’ and ‘the worst food I’ve ever seen’. The boys’ team also faced a culinary crisis when sales executive,, Oliver Medforth, after already having to be show what a tablespoon was, forgot to put flour in the brownies. I’m not sure about you, but that doesn’t sound particularly appealing, especially to corporate clients expecting the 5-star experience.

Despite a few business blunders along the way, the girls fared better than the boys, making a profit of £122.43, in comparison with the boys, who ended up losing £506.40, a sum which Lord Sugar declared will be taken away from the cash prize at the end of the show. Ultimately, it was Oliver Medforth who got fired, as Alan sugar was not impressed by his lack of involvement in the task, and wanted a more forthright business partner, willing to take the lead. One could ask whether this was this correct decision, as to some viewers, who were expecting Project manager Virdi Singh Mazaria to get the boot, it came as a shock. After all, the latter wants to invest the prize money in an events company, and yet fell at the first hurdle when asked to organise an event.

To summarise the overall performance of this year’s contestants thus far, as Sugar states himself, ‘shambles is an understatement!’ However, as we know, what makes the show so enjoyable is laughing over these mistakes and going on to declare our certainty that if we were on the show, we surely could have done a much better job.

Featured image: Alev Takil via Unsplash