EAST Lancashire’s TV business hopeful has survived another week on a hit reality show – despite a brutal double firing in last night’s episode.

Haslingden’s Lewis Ellis dodged two bullets as Lord Alan Sugar fired both Marianne Rawlins and Thomas Skinner on this week’s episode of BBC’s business-based show The Apprentice.

Lewis, who volunteered to take the role of project manager for the task, led his team to failure and ended up back in the boardroom.

But the 28-year-old managed to cling on to his place in the show for another week, despite accepting responsibility for the task’s failure.

In this week’s episode, the candidates became music managers, auditioning unsigned artists before choosing one to represent.

They then remixed their chosen track in a bid to make them suitable to sell for a large brand marketing campaign.

The end goal was to secure sales of the record at their own showcase events and to produce a track to make strong sales.

But the team failed to sell their music to their corporate client, meaning they were beaten by the other team led by the only other remaining male contestant, Dean Ahmed.

Speaking about Lewis while deciding who to fire, Lord Sugar’s advisor Karen Brady said: “Lewis showed nativity – you don’t go into a corporate client and ask them for £10,000 more than their highest budget - they didn’t even like the song.”

Before firing the candidates, Lord Sugar added: “This is the 9th week and no one seems to be stepping up at all.

“I’m just going to remind you that one of the candidates in the process will end up my business partner.

n The Apprentice airs on BBC 1 at 9pm on Wednesday evenings.