Apprentice Bilyana: 'I think I fired myself!'

The Apprentice candidate Bilyana Apostolova has insisted she's 'not embarrassed' after becoming the first person in the new series to get fired by Lord Sugar. The 25-year-old, originally from Bulgaria, was hauled into the boardroom with Katie Wright by team leader Gabrielle Omar, after the women took a profit of only £214.80 in the print business task. Bilyana, who says she got herself 'from a Communist block of flats in Bulgaria to the top of a skyscraper in the heart of the City of London', was fired after she repeatedly interrupted Lord Sugar to defend herself in the boardroom. She said afterwards: "Having seen the episode I don't feel embarrassed. I didn't make a major mistake. I left there while holding my head up high ... it's arguable whether it was a very fair firing... "I am disappointed that I left so early on, but I'm not embarrassed." Bilyana, a former head girl who is training to be a wealth manager for British entrepreneurs, said she effectively ended up firing herself. "Bringing attention to myself right at the end is something that I think pushed him (Lord Sugar) overboard. "In effect I think I fired myself. He was just about to fire Katie when I brought the attention to me." Bilyana added: "I've watched previous episodes and I've seen Lord Sugar save people who speak up for themselves so I wanted to do that." But she added: "I made it quite easy for him to fire me."

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.