It's fair to say that last year's contestants came in for some criticism - and much of it brought on themselves.

I include myself in that - we all said one or two outrageous things, some more than others.

The producers love it, those little soundbites about "going back to the north and his northern chums" - and this year's on the face of episode one are going to be worse.

I mean, the Irish lady who is "the best sales person in Europe" and last night's victim who never fails at anything, this lot are setting them-selves up for a big fall.

I did however feel that Alex Wotherspoon went about things in a similar fashion to me last year - he cut out the nonsense and just got on with things, plus he's a northern Lad.

He had the tenacity to elect himself as project manager and Sir Alan clearly respected him for that.

As for the task itself, it is by far the easiest task I have ever seen on The Apprentice.

They were provided with the products, the pricing, the location - everything they needed. All they had to do was sell the stuff!

The boys team took far too long deciding where they would set up camp.

And as for the team name, who cares? It's a one day task, call it the flipping A Team if you want, you don't win the task because of the team name. Both teams were equally at fault for that one.

I'd like to know what they were doing on the way to the market.

Travelling from the boardroom to Islington market takes at least 50 minutes to an hour so they should have discussed their strategy en route, given all the responsibilities out and made a plan, even organised pricing and make some calls to other retailers to get some inside information.

At least once they arrived at the market they would be ready to go.

The next major mistake was neither team realised they could split the team up until later in the day.

The fish they were selling was clearly restaurant quality and credit to the girls, they sold £125 worth to an upmarket restaurant.

They both should have adapted a business model early in the day of some members of the team, perhaps two, to go out selling to restaurants and the rest deal with the public.

Nicholas looked a fish out of water straightaway. He avoided selling to deal with the pricing, didn't look comfortable getting his hands dirty and made a real mess of the only job he was given.

Alex did very well to delegate things to his team, that takes away some of the responsibility from him and makes it difficult for others to lay the blame at him in the boardroom.

The girl's team were really quite anonymous, nobody stood out.

They won but didn't really do a great job so I'm keen to see what happens to them next week.

The boys rift in the boardroom before the results had even been read out was a dangerous move, making enemies on week one before you even know if you are going into the last three is a silly move, people can really talk themselves into that last three by piping up too early.

The remainder of the boardroom was all too familiar.

Alex now knows how I felt last year. Northern accent = uneducated according to posh southern boys.

Alex was educated at private school and went to a very good university so he's hardly from the wrong side of the tracks.

Raef is like Rory mixed with Tre, he's clearly there to make good TV.

Alex could clearly do a good job for Sir Alan but as the North/South divide has surfaced its ugly head again I fear he may not get as far as he deserves.

As for Nick De Lacy Brown, what a twit.

If you're a lawyer just stick to it, he clearly went on it to promote his art exhibition.

If not then he really is more stupid than he is odd looking!

  • Hero of the week - Alex
  • Villain of the week - Raef
  • Lamb to the slaughter - Nick