The Apprentice Final recap: Nuts against bikinis

Twelve weeks of The Apprentice and it all comes down to this. Camilla and Sian, head-to-head in the boardroom.But let’s start at the beginning. In The Apprentice, some things never change. Even after three months, the candidates are still surprised by the early morning phone call.

Getting the band back together

And some old Apprentice favourites are returning. Eight former candidates are brought back to help the two finalists make their final push.

In a replay of that awful ‘choosing sides for a playground game’ thing that has scarred so many young minds over the years, Camilla and Sian pick their favourites.

Camilla gets BFF Daniel, plus Jackie, Tom and Claude’s favourite Kayode. Sîan goes with Khadija, Jasmine, Kurran and…surprisingly picked last… semi-finalist Sabrina.

Kayode instantly starts selling nut milk as soon as the teams are picked. The man is a machine.

Meanwhile over on Team Sîan the competition to see how many times we can describe swimwear as a ‘saturated market’ has begun.

At first Kurran – being the only boy on the swimwear squad – doesn’t get much to do except hang around awkwardly outside the changing room while the girls slip in and out of bikinis.

It’s perfect. let’s start again.

But there will be a lot to do soon enough. Because the format of The Apprentice means that the carefully-crafted brands that the candidates have been honing for months – years in some cases – are thrown out in favour of a campaign kicked together over a couple of days by the former candidates.

Which yields mixed results. Tom tries his hand at modelling nut milk, but Kayode steps in at the last minute and aces it.

Sîan begs her advertising team to make sure Sabrina’s hair is wet for the swimsuit photos so Jasmine obviously ignores her – and – most astoundingly – Kurran starts talking sense.

‘Absolutely sh***”

The animated GIFS they produce get very different receptions. Camilla, justifiably, likes Kayode’s cashew-inspired clowning while Sîan declares the swimwear ad to be “absolutely sh*te.”

However Kurran steps in to direct Sîan’s TV commercial and…despite pulling some classic Kurran where he airily compares himself to Tarantino and Scorsese… delivers a decent result.

By contrast Camilla’s ad – directed by Jackie – is terribly corny.

The Apprentice: Endgame

The pitches, delivered to a vast audience in City Hall, look terrifying.

Sîan is slightly flustered by some informed, pointed questions from a major swimwear designer but it’s Camilla who really loses her way through sheer nerves.

She finds her fire again, though, in the boardroom section. After some good-natured joshing while everyone’s there Camilla is first to get personal when it comes down to a head-to head.

But in the end, Lord Sugar likes bikinis more than he likes nut juice and it’s Sîan that walks away with the £250,000 prize.

You can actually buy both the swimwear and the nut milk right now. It’ll be interesting to see which – if either – actually becomes a success.

Still, their success isn’t what’s important. It’s whether we’ve had fun – right?

See you all here again next year?