Sajan's ad for a 'funky' new car featured Elizabeth careering round a mediaeval village endangering chickens. Lord Sugar ripped up the rules so FOUR candidates faced being fired on The Apprentice, by JIM SHELLEY

• e-mail

It seemed Lord Sugar was finally losing his patience on The Apprentice – or possibly just his mind.

After twelve series and six episodes you’d think he’d be used to how bad, and mad, the candidates were.

But in week seven Graphene’s campaign to advertise a new car via a TV commercial and digital posters on the London Underground tipped him over the brink.

Scroll down for video 

Hot-headed: It seemed Lord Sugar was finally losing his patience on The Apprentice – or possibly just his mind

He was so irate he ripped up the rules of the show, over-riding the format that had made it so successful, and announced he was bringing his own member of the losing team back to the boardroom – an extra one to threaten with firing.

The usual three hapless idiots were clearly not enough.

He had only made things harder for himself though.

Now he had to choose between a candidate with what he called ‘control freak mannerisms’ (Elizabeth); a creative person who was really not that creative (Sajan); someone almost pathologically ‘argumentative and confrontational’ (Joanna); and a Project Manager (James) who had only shown ‘weak leadership.’

‘You were over-powered by your colleagues! ’ Sugar growled. ‘You’re trying to get 250, 000 pounds from me. But you couldn’t even run a bath!’

Furious: But in week seven Graphene’s campaign to advertise a new car via a TV commercial and digital posters on the London Underground tipped him over the brink

In hot water: He was so irate he ripped up the rules of the show, over-riding the format that had made it so successful

‘It looked like any of us could’ve been fired,’ James admitted – about the only thing he got right during the entire task.

Sugar had announced the result by telling the teams: ‘I took advice from the experts. Vitality, yours was clearly the best.’

Not that theirs was not also rubbish of course.

‘I think we’ve got enough footage to drag the ad out to twenty seconds !’ said Vitality’s PM Michaela cheerfully.

It took some doing to lose to a campaign that looked like it was advertising a car rental company in Miami or even bicycles but Graphene managed it.

‘Have you ever seen an advert like that before?’ Bushra asked her team mates.

The ad for ‘a young, funky car’ that they had branded ‘Expando’ featured Elizabeth as a harassed modern-day mum, dementedly driving around a medieval village almost running over the goats, chickens, and other farmyard animals, before zooming off to work in ‘the real world.’

Meanwhile Harrison’s digital posters on the tube for the new car carried the strapline ‘different day, same reliable car.’

‘I think we’ve got enough footage to drag the ad out to twenty seconds!’ said Vitality’s PM Michaela cheerfully

‘There was no co-ordination between the two aspects of the campaign !’ Sugar moaned to James. ‘Why did you allow all this to happen?’

‘I’m not good at the creative side,’ James countered, ignoring the minor detail it was a creative task.

The spineless recruitment executive had put himself forward as PM arguing: ‘I wouldn’t say I know loads of stuff but I like cars. I also had a car wash business when I was 13.’

By this he meant presumably he had a bucket and sponge as he then explained: ‘I was very successful in my local village.’ Didn’t we all?!

James had decided the target audience for the car should be modern, young, families but then chose an ‘English village’ setting as the location for their ad – rather than a city or suburbia (where more modern, young, families lived).

The choice of a village seemed the worst option, particularly when the village turned out to be ‘a re-enactment of a settlement from the Norman Conquest period.’

Bad advertising: Joanna’s name (Expando) was equally bizarre/bad – more like a magician or a piece of gym equipment

Joanna’s name (Expando) was equally bizarre/bad – more like a magician or a piece of gym equipment.

Having lumbered the team with that she spent the rest of the task doing what she does best: arguing. Even having an argument about the accusation she was being argumentative.

‘I’m not being argumentative!’ she tutted to Bushra. ‘I’m just saying…’

In her pitch Bushra did her best to defend Joanna’s brand name.

‘Expando… It’s about expanding your horizons. Then when we teamed it together with the correct font it actually came together really well.’

The ‘beautiful’ font she had chosen for the digital posters was her weird obsession.

‘I had to fight to get that font on there !’ she blazed to Lord Sugar, who didn’t strike you as a man who got where he was today by caring very much about fonts.

As for Elizabeth, even though James brought Sajan and Joanna back into the boardroom Lord Sugar declared she would be there too – for the way she had once again turned the task into ‘The Elizabeth Show.’

Not working out: Sajan had finally talked himself OUT of the process – the first person in the show’s history to be fired because he thought photo booths were creative

‘I AM NOT DOMINEERING!!’ she shouted hilariously at Joanna in the boardroom.

‘Are you a control freak?’ Sugar asked.

‘No!’ ‘Yes!’ chipped in Joanna.

‘Any repetition you won’t even need to come into this boardroom you’ll be gone !’ Lord Sugar snarled, giving her a reprieve.

This left Sajan in the firing line.

His tactic of selling himself to Lord Sugar by endlessly emphasising that he was ‘creative’ never had seemed very likely to succeed – mostly because he wasn’t.

‘I can’t see any stand-out moments so far,’ Sugar sighed.

‘The mise en scene is perfect !’ Sajan had exclaimed while directing the surreal commercial. In the boardroom he justified his contribution on the grounds: ‘I thought I had some great camera angles in there.’

Unlikely to be one of Sugar’s priorities….

The offending ad: It took some doing to lose to a campaign that looked like it was advertising a car rental company in Miami or even bicycles but Graphene managed it

‘I’m definitely not the finished article !’ Sajan continued, returning to a familiar ‘defence.’

Again, not a brilliant pitch.

Then again, it was better than his proud boast: ‘I am creative ! I have a photo booth business !’

‘There’s no creativity in that! That’s just people sitting there and you do mug shots!’ Sugar bristled, evidently feeling he was being, um, mugged off.

Sajan had finally talked himself OUT of the process – the first person in the show’s history to be fired because he thought photo booths were creative.

Here were the 10 Best/Worst Dumbest Moments from the rest of this week’s episode:

1. ‘It is obviously poor losing five out of six tasks but you’ve got to take the positives out of it’

- Charles on his record so far, without saying what these positives were

2. ‘They’ve gone medieval ! They didn’t have cars then did they?’

- Harrison hears about James’ disastrous choice of location

3. ‘We could even use the Assisted Parking while she’s putting on some lipstick’

- Northern ‘New Man’ Andrew’s idea to Michaela for their car commercial aimed at ‘modern young women’

4. ‘Michaela and Jade have put me on the sidelines. I thought it was going to be Jason Statham kind of stuff’

- Andrew complaining about his role as the passenger in Vitality’s car ad

5. ‘Er…Cough. Um…’

- the start of Michaela’s pitch to the panel of advertising experts

6. ‘Were you happy with your pitch?’

‘I don’t really remember it to be honest’

- Michaela couldn’t even give a ringing endorsement of herself to Lord Sugar

7. ‘The scenery of Miami makes it look like an advert for Miami and a car rental ha-ha ! Which is really annoying because that’s not what we wanted !’

- Anisa laughs off a fundamental flaw with her digital posters campaign

8. ‘In the car industry the word ‘fast’ is just a No-No !’

‘We thought it might be a concern but we thought maybe we’d got away with it !’

- Anisa brushes aside one of the expert’s observations with her sub-team’s ad copy (‘Move forward. Move fast. Move free’)

9. ‘People thought it was to do with car rental and holidays in Miami didn’t they?’

‘I’m so glad you bought that one up. It was a bit unfortunate!’

‘Did anyone think it was an advert for bicycles?’

‘Yes exactly that ! We had some feedback saying; we don’t understand why there was a car and then a bike !’

- Anisa’s admirably honest but not very bright defence to the experts’ reservations about her campaign

10. ‘We had a picture of a bike. You can’t really see them but there are raindrops on them. We wanted to get across the idea: this is not really the way to live your life’

Anisa’s message to all those sad environmentally friendly losers using bicycles

Sugar growled:  ‘You’re trying to get 250, 000 pounds from me. But you couldn’t even run a bath!’