When Lord Sugar first exercised his dreaded index finger in The Apprentice on 16 February 2005, Daniel Bedingfield was heading into the top 20, Grange Hill was still on TV, London was bidding to host the Olympics and Lord Sugar was plain old Sir Alan.
Lord Sugar, flanked by his aides for the first five series, Margaret Mountford and Nick Hewer
Music tastes and news stories may come and go.
But year after year, Britain seems to produce a crop of razor-sharp business minds bursting with more entrepreneurial talent than the last, able to give of themselves hundreds more percent than mathematicians ever thought possible.
Not all of us can be blessed with such ability – but we can all learn lessons from the candidates’ insightful strategies. No doubt you’ve got your own favourite moments – here are four of ours!
1. Don’t take no for an answer
Selling ice cream to Eskimos, yes. Coal to Newcastle, perhaps.
But there’s a reason why 'selling spades and shower heads to Debenhams' hasn’t made it into the business dictionary.
It certainly wasn’t for the want of trying.
As the candidates dragged their bathroom appliances, garden tools and a large container of soil through spotless aisles of beauty products, none of them seemed concerned by the mismatch.
'You could always expand your homeware store...?'
2. Set a competitive price (and then increase it)
You’ve heard of Price Drop TV. This is Price Rise TV. It’s certainly an unusual approach for a TV shopping channel task.
Yasmina Siadatan and James McQuillan are not entirely sure of the prices of the products they’re trying to sell - but their on-screen double act is priceless.
Yasmina and James present on TV, while teammate Debra Barr directs
3. Make your sales pitches memorable
Company director Alex Mills from Cardiff didn’t get to be a project manager until the ninth task - when he was promptly fired.
Asked to come up with a type of ready meal, his team delivered a brand with a horror theme, which got a cool reception from mums in market research ("I as a parent tend not to buy anything with skulls").
But it was Alex’s contribution to a pitch aimed at supermarket buyers that was the real horror story:
Alex was fiercely proud of both his Welsh heritage and his impressively shaped eyebrows
4. Take an aggressive approach
Organising a team-building away day offered our candidates a unique showcase for their skills, and boy did they make the most of it.
Displaying the impeccable judgment that would lead to her being 'hired' by Lord Sugar, Leah Totton dressed up in a kitsch army uniform, and treated the pinstriped staff of a large corporate bank to a display of sumo wrestling.
Leah ordered Neil and Myles not to properly wrestle in the sumo suits, merely to touch each other
A dignified end, there, to our little collection of awkward Apprentice moments.
Over to you. What were your favourite lessons from the last few years? Let us know in the comments!
Ten Years of The Apprentice is on Monday, 13 October at 10.35pm on BBC One and BBC One HD, 11.05pm on BBC One Wales, and 11.15pm on BBC One NI. For further programme times, please see the upcoming broadcasts page.
Series 10 of The Apprentice begins at 9pm on Tuesday, 14 October, and continues on Wednesday, 15 October on BBC One and BBC One HD. For further programme times, please see the episode guide.
More on The Apprentice
BBC One: The Apprentice: Meet the Candidates
BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat: Six memorable moments of The Apprentice as it turns 10
Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.
