Ever since the very first episode of The Apprentice, Lord Sugar has been separating his candidates by gender.
At the start of each series we see the hopeful entrepreneurs lining up in the boardroom on different sides depending on whether they are male or female.
Aside from one year, which will we get onto later, the contestants have formed 'boys' and 'girls' teams for the first few weeks of the show.
But some viewers have hit out at Lord Sugar for the move - claiming it shouldn't happen in today's society.
"The Apprentice always feel splitting teams on gender lines is a bit 1970s," tweeted one viewers, while another asked: "Why on earth does The Apprentice split teams by gender? How would we feel if they split them by skin colour?"
Lord Sugar has said he sees no difference between men and women in business - and does have a reason for continuing to split the teams by gender.
Get the news you want straight to your inbox. Sign up for a Mirror newsletter here .
In 2016, he claimed that dividing the candidates into men and women makes it easier for the audience to follow the opening episodes.
"The reason we do that normally in the first episode of the series is because we want the audience to engage with what team they’re watching at the time, and it’s much easier to do that by starting off with boys and girls," he said ahead of the 12th series.
"There is no agenda there of actually purposely putting them together. It’s to make sure that you, the viewing audience, can understand who’s who, and then once you get used to them after about two or three weeks, then we mix them up."
Despite some claims, Lord Sugar has insisted he does not pick out a winner from the start and doesn't mind whether the recipient of his £250,000 investment is a male or female.
"Women, as far as I'm concerned, are great in business, as are men, and I have no preference one way or another," he added.
"Some of the best business people I have employed in my time are women, as indeed they are men."
In terms of a gender split on winners, it's even as Lord Sugar has picked eight men and eight women to either work for one of his companies or be his business partner.
Back in 2015, Lord Sugar made the unprecedented move of mixing the teams by gender during the very first task.
As is probably a reflection of today's divided society and Twitter war culture, he actually got criticism for not sticking to the usual format but was also praised for the move.
The mixed boys and girls teams caused controversy for an unnamed male candidate, who reportedly complained that the new format would jeopardise his chances because 'men are better at selling than women'.
While his identity was never revealed, it seems someone with that sexist attitude and lack of their own ability was probably given the boot pretty sharpish.
Lord Sugar has previously hit out at 'snowflake' millennials and claimed people are "too easily offended" these days.
The business mogul has been involved in a number of scandals involving his tweets, getting into hot water for some of his 'jokes' and 'memes'.
In 2013, Lord Sugar was investigated by police after being accused a posting a racist message on Twitter.
The Apprentice boss posted a photograph of a crying Chinese child on the social networking site last week, and joked: "The kid in the middle is upset because he was told off for leaving the production line of the iPhone 5."
His message was investigated by the force's specialist hate crime investigation team, who decided it should be classed as a "hate incident" but said no crime had taken place.
Then in June 2018, Lord Sugar caused outrage by comparing Senegal's football heroes to 'guys from the beach in Marbella' on Twitter.
He a picture of the team and an image of sunglasses and bags, similar to the products sold on beaches, while referring to the players as 'multi-tasking resourceful chaps'.
Sugar defended the post in a series of tweets after being branded racist, claiming it was a "bloody joke" and "meant to be funny", but later deleted the original tweet.
He then apologised on Twitter, posting: "I misjudged my earlier tweet. It was in no way intended to cause offence, and clearly my attempt at humour has backfired. I have deleted the tweet and am very sorry."
He told Mirror Online: "It was meant as a joke. Someone sent me the picture and I tweeted.
"People know I have fought against racism for years and I sincerely didn’t think this could be interpreted in any other way other than funny.
"However, due to the comments on Twitter I pulled it down."
In October 2019, Lord Sugar shared his bold opinion about "snowflakes who are offended by anything" in a scathing rant.
"The world has gone mad, it’s ridiculous, they are just looking for new things to be offended by," he The Sun at the time.
"It is absolutely crazy, you can’t say anything nowadays without offending somebody with how they look, dress, the colour of their skin or whatever."
He added: "It’s sickening, quite frankly."
The straight-talking business mogul also controversially suggested that non-binary campaigners should be kicked out of the UK.
This was in the wake of pop sensation Sam Smith, who came out as non-binary earlier in the year, asking to be referred to with the pronoun "they" instead of "he".
"They need to pack it in, it’s nonsense. The people promoting it need to be shipped off to Mongolia," said Lord Sugar.
"Send them away, get them out of the country. Go away. It always boils down to a small bunch of people that promote it."
*The Apprentice airs tonight on BBC One at 9pm
Do you have a story to share? Email webfeatures@trinitymirror.com
