The Apprentice's Karren Brady slams 2024 stars over 'new low' in first episode

01 February 2024 , 07:00

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The Apprentice's Karren Brady says contestants set 'record low' in first episode

Karren Brady had the "worst tasting food" ever on the history of The Apprentice in series 18's first episode.

Lord Sugar's hunt for his next business partner, who he will award a £250,000 investment, begins tonight with his aides Karren and Tim Campbell watching over the two teams as they vow to impress him. The two new teams will be tasked with hosting a corporate away day but there's soon chaos in the kitchen and one team spectacularly loses track of time, before one candidate is sent packing in the boardroom.

Speaking to the Mirror, Karren opened up on one of the biggest disasters she's ever seen as Lord Sugar's aide on the BBC show. Referring to a mistake one of the team’s made in the first episode, Karren said: “Sometimes you just can't believe your eyes, you just can’t believe how chaotic it is and how unnecessarily unorganised it is."

Karren couldn't believe how badly the team's food tasted (Fremantlemedia Limited)

She continued: "You can't catch your breath and you sit there and you're thinking, ‘Am I really seeing this? Is this really happening?’ It was the worst tasting food I'd ever have. Sometimes it doesn't look pretty but actually it tastes quite good. This looked okay, but tasted terrible. [The mistake] was so self-inflicted. And it's so frustrating, because a little bit more organisation and it would have been so much better."

Karren and co-star Tim, who won the first ever series of The Apprentice, admitted they find it hard sometimes when the candidates make a genuine mistake and they "know they're doing their best". Karren said: "If they make a mistake, they haven't made a deliberate mistake, no one is a self saboteur. But often they make a mistake, because they're not organised enough. They may make a mistake because it’s got chaotic, they may make a very simple mathematical error where they can't divide 1000 by 100.

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"And they over order or under order something and that has a massive impact. They could think they're doing a good thing [for their client] which massively impacts the rest of the service. You feel for them, but mistakes happen in life, and what Alan is really looking out for is how do you turn those things around? How do you make up for those mistakes?"

Tim added: "We care about the candidates doing the best that they can and if something's going catastrophically wrong, both Karen and I have said, ‘Have you thought about this?’ Just to give them an indication, but our role is to be in the background, to let them get on and then see how they perform. But sometimes our faces tell that story in much better ways than anything."

Charlotte McIntyre