Boardroom farce

As someone who has followed every series of The Apprentice, it has been clear for some time that the quality of candidates in this year's competition leaves a little to be desired. They probably won't thank me for saying it, but I could look around my office and spot three or four people who would have made a better fist of it than the current lot.

So the fact that four of these no-hopers have been deemed worthy of a place in the final seems somewhat farcical to say the least.

A gruelling day-long series of interviews designed to eliminate three of the remaining five candidates succeeded only in revealing that £100,000-a-year business analyst Lucinda was "too zany" to work for Sir Alan, which, privately, most of us could have told him all along.

Then again, Sir Alan's decision-making in this series has been pretty idiosyncratic all around.

He fired pert Irishwoman Jennifer Maguire well before she had a chance to mess-up big time, got rid of nice-guy Rafe even though he won nearly every task, and kept the completely clueless Michael Sophocles in the contest until the third-from-last episode.

Of the remaining four, I hope Lee McQueen manages to win. Despite bullying Sara and lying on his CV, he deserves it. And apart from anything else, if he wins he might do his reverse pterodactyl impression again.