Lord Sugar sacked TWO Apprentice candidates on Thursday night’s episode after a disastrous performance – and both axed stars has furiously hit back at his decision.
The popular BBC show returned to our screens for its 20th series on Thursday night.
Lord Sugar, Baroness Karren Brady and Tim Campbell put the 20 new candidates through their paces as they were tasked with trying to find nine items for the lowest price possible in Hong Kong.
The girls and boys went head to head to locate and purchase them – and the boys managed to come out on top.
But unfortunately two didn’t impress him enough to carry on in the competition.
Mortgage broker Nikki Jetha, who was project manager for the task, and events manager Georgina Newton were fired after failing the task miserably by only managing to bring back TWO of the nine items.
Lord Sugar sacked TWO Apprentice candidates on Thursday night’s episode after a disastrous performance – and both axed stars has furiously hit back at his decision
The girls and boys went head to head to locate and purchase them – and the boys managed to come out on top and project manager Nikki Jetha was the first to be fired. events manager Georgina Newton were fired after failing the task miserably by only managing to bring back TWO of the nine items.
Events manager Georgina Newton was also fired after the girls teams failed the task miserably by only managing to bring back TWO of the nine items (seen)
Not only that, half of Nikki’s team were nearly two hours late to cross the finish line.
When asked if she deserved the boot, Nikki said: ‘No, definitely not. I was brave enough to stand up and take on a challenge during the first task.
‘It was, you know, unfamiliar territory.
‘Not knowing the process, let alone the country, and not having internet and things like that.
‘But I did the best I could do under the pressure, with limited information, and I’d rather be fired for stepping up than staying safe in the background.
‘There’s a saying that ships are safest in the harbour, but that’s not what they’re built for. ‘
When Georgina was asked the same thing, said: ‘No, I didn’t. I think in the first episode, I probably contributed more than anybody on my team, and I think for the show, the person that contributes the least should go home.
‘I thought a had a few more weeks at least left in me.’
Lord Sugar, Baroness Karren Brady and Tim Campbell put the 20 new candidates through their paces as they were tasked with trying to find nine items for the lowest price possible in Hong Kong
Not only that, half of Nikki’s team were nearly two hours late to cross the finish line after losing their driver
When asked if she deserved the boot, Nikki said: ‘No, definitely not. I was brave enough to stand up and take on a challenge during the first task’
When Georgina was asked the same thing, said: ‘No, I didn’t. I think in the first episode, I probably contributed more than anybody on my team, and I think for the show, the person that contributes the least should go home’
When asked if she would do anything differently, Nikki said: ‘Yeah, definitely.
‘In hindsight, I would do a lot differently, but that’s just the luxury you don’t get, unfortunately.
‘But I trusted my instincts, I made decisive calls, and I’ll do that again.
‘I guess I did something that many people think about, but they don’t actually stand up and do.’
Meanwhile when asked who she thought should have gone, Georgina confessed: ‘My answer to that is, if I was Lord Sugar, I would have sent two girls home from Nikki’s sub team because I think there’s no excuse for being two hours late somewhere.
‘But I can’t comment on who that person is because I don’t know what they did or how they worked, because I wasn’t on their sub team.
‘But that’s what I would have done.’
This now means that Andrea Cooper, Carrington Saunders, Conor Galvin, Karishma Vijay, Dan Miller, Tanmay Hingorani, Marcus Donkoh, Priyeshi Bhatia, Lawrence Rosenberg, Roxanne Hamedi, Kieran McCartney, Vanessa Tetteh-Squire, Harry Clough, Pascha Myhill, Rothna Akhtar, Levi Hague, Megan Ruiter, and Rajan Gill are all still battling it out for a £250,000 investment with Lord Sugar.
Lord Sugar revealed that there was a ‘heated exchange’ cut from the premiere after the ‘shocking’ performance from both teams which left him seething with disappointment
He said: ‘I expressed my displeasure, from what I recall, what you’ve seen, you saw a kind of a mild disapproval from me… But there was actually a little bit more of a heated exchange when I told them how disappointed I was.’
Lord Sugar revealed that there was a ‘heated exchange’ cut from the premiere after the ‘shocking’ performance from both teams which left him seething with disappointment.
He said: ‘It is a classic task. You’d think it’s quite simple, wouldn’t you?
‘Just for the audience’s reference, we don’t just pick nine items randomly, we actually sent people out there beforehand to do a dummy run, to go and find these things, so we know they’re there. We know that they are gettable…’
He continued: ‘Yeah, and I was a bit disappointed. I think it must have shown… to spend all that time and money of sending everybody to Hong Kong.
‘And one of the teams only found two of them, and the other team found three of them, and even then they got wrong. It was quite shocking, really.
‘And so I expressed my displeasure, from what I recall, what you’ve seen, you saw a kind of a mild disapproval from me…
‘But there was actually a little bit more of a heated exchange when I told them how disappointed I was.’
The Apprentice airs Thursdays on BBC One and iPlayer from 9pm.
