The Apprentice is down to the final five candidates after Thursday’s shock double elimination.
Series 19 has been a rocky ride, from three double firings to one candidate stepping away from the process in a dramatic board room episode.
Lord Sugar fired workwear brand owner Liam Snellin and fan-favourite meal prep entrepreneur Mia Collins on Thursday after a sustainable fashion challenge.
Led by animator Jordan Dargan, the losing team failed to entice potential buyers with their slightly unusual and certainly “niche” garments made from sails and parachute material. However, the winning team, led by Chisola Chitambala, created a more successful sustainable athleisure line and went on to the semi-final.
Next week will be the infamous interview round, but who is going to be put through their paces?
Amber-Rose Badrudin
Badrudin’s run has been very successful so far and she’s won seven out of ten tasks. She’s shown great business nous but has lost twice as project manager. She didn’t manage to lead her team to victory during the recent shopping channel task, where she received criticism from Lord Sugar for telling audiences that a pair of UV hand-mitts “removed all wrinkles” from her hands “after just 30 minutes.”
She told the BBC that reaching the final five was “one of the proudest moments of my life, to be honest.”
Badrudin started a South East Asian food convenience store in Croydon with her business partner after Covid. It is thought that this will be the business she pitches in front of the stern interviewers.
She has also grown a big social media following on TikTok and Instagram. “I don’t have the stress of having to take money out from my business every month because I create my own income and my own lifestyle,” she said. “I live by myself in London as a single, young lady. And I’m able to do that through the power of social media.”
Anisa Khan
Khan has had a turbulent journey to the semi-final having lost eight of ten tasks. She’s gone back to the boardroom three times but has so far come out unscathed. She did however have a win as project manager on the virtual pop star task despite Lord Sugar saying their logo looked “a bit like a suppository.”
She got emotional when she found out she’d be going forward and explained that “it was because out of everyone I’ve lost the most tasks! So that was what got to me.”
London-based Khan quit her successful corporate job after she found it unfulfilling and started a pizza business during Covid. Despite her parents’ concerns, she’s enjoyed the challenge of building up her company.
“Because the food industry is so hard, and obviously my family know that running their own business, they didn’t want that for me because they thought a corporate job would be more lucrative and safer. They said it out of love.”
Chisola Chitambala
Chitambala will be going to the interview rounds feeling confident with her most recent win in the sustainable fashion task. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing though – she’s had plenty of losses. One memorable episode saw Chitambala attempt to treat a corporate client to a luxury away day in Turkey with only “unlimited water” to drink.
After reaching the final five, Essex-based Chitambala said “it doesn’t matter what your background is, where you’ve come from, what your journey has been like, if you put your all into something, the results will speak for themselves.”
Chitambala is a qualified children’s nurse and said her time in A&E gave her the ability to handle pressure and stay calm. She went on to do an MBA and start her own virtual assistant business, which may be what she brings to interview next week in an attempt to attain the £250,000 investment.
Dean Franklin
Franklin, a self-professed “cheeky chappy”, has had a series of near misses on the show. He’s been in the boardroom four times, which is the most of all the final five candidates. Last week Lord Sugar told Franklin he was on his last chance after he proved to be have a fiery personality in the shopping channel episode.
Essex-born Franklin owns an air conditioning company and is the only parent in the process. “None of the other candidates had kids and there was no-one to relate to. So I was the only one missing my family, my kids and my wife,” he said. “Everything I do is for them.”
He originally wanted to be an electrician, but said he fell into the air conditioning trade. During Covid, he and his business partner decided to make the jump and start their own business.
He said: “It's not so much the money that I've entered the process for because the business does well, we've got money in the bank.
“It's more the guidance, it’s the mentoring over the money, for me, that’s what I care about.”
Jordan Dargan
Dargan has impressed throughout the series with this public speaking and business acumen. He’s bringing seven wins to the interviews next week, despite having created an incredibly unusual hot sauce out of mango, saffron and rose petals, which celebrity chef Levi Roots said required “boxing gloves” to get it out of the bottle.
He has been a fan of the show since childhood and hatched a plan based on the previous series. “I knew the format, I knew what worked, what didn’t work” he told the BBC. “I understood out the gate that the loudest candidate isn’t always the most intelligent candidate.”
He is the youngest candidate in the series and at 22 he has already taught himself to create 3D animations and learnt how to monetise it.
As a mixed-race Irish and Nigerian candidate, he said that growing up with “certain slurs and names” gave him a “thick skin” which helped with the process.
The Apprentice airs Thursdays at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer
