Another candidate fired from The Apprentice

Marcus Donkoh has become the third candidate to be fired from the process on this year’s edition of The Apprentice.

Following last week’s double firing of Nikki Jetha and Georgina Newton, Lord Sugar evened up the teams to nine candidates apiece, with the girls selecting Levi Hague to switch across from the boys’ team to theirs.

The candidates were challenged to design an original storybook aimed at four-to-six year olds, plus an accompanying audiobook version.

The girls were led by Andrea Cooper, a mother-of-five and school governor, and were clear victors with 2,855 sales of their book centred around a zebra that had lost its stripes.

Meanwhile, Marcus’s boys opted for a bizarre story involving a five-year-old astronaut in desperate need of a poo – a concept that resulted in just 419 sales to retailers.

Marcus initially chose to bring back Dan Miller and sub-team leader Kieran McCartney, but after contemplation in the waiting area he made the unusual move of returning to the boardroom to ask Lord Sugar if he could swap out Kieran for Priyesh Bathia.

Lord Sugar instead opted to bring back all four and after some deliberation, decided to fire Marcus. “You claimed you could show me what a proper PM looked like,” he told him, “but I’ve got to tell you, you ain’t showed me nothing.”

Talking in the taxi afterwards, Marcus said: “I didn’t expect myself to be fired. I put myself forward as PM… I thought it would be appreciated in the sense of I’m taking a risk, but it is what it is. Onwards and upwards for me.”

The Apprentice continues next Thursday at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer with a task that will see the remaining candidates attempt to make profit from poultry.