Top 10 Cringe Moments on The Apprentice

This attempt was a masterclass in how to alienate your audience. Perhaps women ARE the primary target market for household cleaning supplies, but there was absolutely no need for this mocked-up advert to go the way it went with the woman’s husband. The idea that Octi-Kleen is so effective that it’s like you have eight hands instead of two makes some sense, but their entire pitch was that women’s husbands won’t want to go to bed with them if the house isn’t clean enough. Already when he started talking, the women in the focus group were alarmed, and the advert itself didn’t help matters when it ended with the husband making a lewd joke and winking.

Welcome to the future! In this 2022 episode, they were challenged to design and market their own driverless vehicle, known as a “pod”. One team thought that pitching the pod as a simple taxi alternative was the way to go, and the others went the luxury route, wanting to make a tiny, little limo. It was the final pitch that proved the most embarrassing, though. After already failing to woo rich clients, they then had to host a launch event. Wearing snazzy, sequined waistcoats they headed out to sell their pod experience, which was either for corporations or stag parties - they never quite worked it out.

What on Earth were they thinking? In this bizarre challenge, the candidates had to come up with a successful smartphone app, and the boys came up with “Slangatang”, an app that was just a soundboard of people saying silly things. To get those initial soundbites, though, they went into the recording booth and had a crack at it themselves. This was after the other team wasted time doodling hats on a whiteboard. Nick Hewer was monitoring them as they started doing bad Welsh accents and stereotypical Welsh phrases - such as asking people about sheep. There was also a clearly classist joke about Liverpudlians in there. Nick’s face said it all.

They just needed to come up with something to sell at a bodybuilding competition. The girls immediately hit on spray tans, something bodybuilders all need - but they didn’t seem to know that the quality of the tan can affect bodybuilders’ prospects, meaning very few were willing to get expensive tans from randos with no training. Most bizarre, they charged for different body parts separately to get a high markup - as if ANYBODY’S going to ask to just have one of their arms or legs tanned. The sub-team had different concerns, namely that their product would only be of interest to the bodybuilders themselves and not to any of the attendees. Unsurprisingly, the tans were rubbish.

It’s always a good strategy when you’re trying to get a good deal to go in there and lowball as much as possible. At least, it is according to James, who wanted to START negotiations from 20% of Hever Castle’s standard ticket prices. Despite the other members of the team being dead against going in at 20%, he steamrolled ahead, beginning his negotiation by insulting the woman they were talking to. She brought out the £12 group rates, but he wasn’t having it - he wanted that three quid or he was going to die trying. He kept going even after she’d already refused him, going all the way up to a tenner for the tickets, but it didn’t wash. “Hever” = “Heever” with a long “E”

Maybe the most cringe moment of this was the giant, CGI Lord Sugar at the beginning, but the actual games created weren’t much better. It seemed like none of them had ever played a video game, with no concept of how to make one fun and interesting. So, both games ended up appalling. But the moment that sticks in our mind is the playtest, where focus groups told them exactly how terrible their demos were without pulling any punches. They completely lost sight of the brief, forgetting that you’re meant to be escaping something, and nobody said they wanted to play the full version.

How hard can it be to remember which room of a mocked-up flat is which, especially considering most of the furniture was already in? Very hard, apparently, if you were Scott. He didn’t remember where the washing machine went or which bit was the dining area and the lounge - which was even more embarrassing since it was a studio flat, so it was all basically one big room with a bathroom. He also didn’t remember the completion date, giving 2017 instead of 2016, which he’d apparently written down wrong. Karren was unimpressed, but Scott seemed unaware of exactly how poorly it had gone. He simply said that it was “not great”.

The first episode of series 16 brought us one of the biggest logo fails in “Apprentice” history - possibly even the entire history of business. They were sent to build a marketing campaign for a luxury cruise line, and what screams luxury at sea than a half-human turd? Well, literally anything else, which some of the team realised. Unfortunately, the naysayers were outvoted, and the wordless diarrhoea logo was approved. But the boys were right: their logo certainly WAS memorable, and that seemed to be their aim. Obviously, they lost that week, which speaks volumes since the girls’ team wasn’t even sure what their brand name meant.

They were in central London to get a top hat, and headed straight to Lock & Co., the world’s oldest hat shop that makes top hats for the King. But they went in there looking for a bargain, saying that no matter what price they got given, they were going to ask for a fiver. They picked the wrong place to buy a hat, and were certainly better off going to a fancy dress shop, as one of them suggested. Nick was on hand to be appropriately appalled by the idea they’d try to haggle with such a prestigious shop on St James’s Street, and it was yet another example of the candidates having no idea how much things actually cost.

You wouldn’t have thought “The Apprentice” could get more cringe than AI versions of Karren, Tim and Alan Sugar performing a track, but you haven’t seen anything yet. The losing team immediately made a mistake by not choosing Jordan as project manager or sub-team leader, since he was the only one with an animation background, and it showed. Their awful pop duo, Fred & Nadz, was plagued by a high-pitched auto-tuner – not that Bami was much better. She may have won, but considering the inspiration was Taylor Swift, they certainly missed the mark. Still, at least they got a real singer instead of performing the song themselves. Which candidate should have been fired immediately? Let us know!