'Out of his depth' Apprentice leader steps down

The Apprentice candidate Alex Mills plays the role of a nightmare date - as a team leader steps down for the first time in the history of the BBC One show.

Alex, 22, whose plucked eyebrows have become a talking point on The Apprentice, wears make-up and dons purple socks and ripped-jean shorts to play Herbert, the personification of a bad date, in a TV advertising campaign.

His team Endeavour, led by business analyst Jordan Poulton, make the commercial to plug their dating website, Cufflinks, for young professionals.

Meanwhile, rival team Evolve pick Jason Leech, 29, a historian and property developer, to lead their group.

But after Evolve spend 45 minutes deciding on the colour of their logo for their over-50s site Friendship And Flowers, Jason gets blamed for the chaos and is accused of being 'out of his depth'.

For the first time on the show, a team leader abdicates, and retail entrepreneur Luisa Zissman, who boasts that she has the sex appeal of Jessica Rabbit and a brain like Einstein, takes over from Jason.

Lord Sugar's sidekick Nick Hewer says: "Yesterday, I watched the disintegration of Evolve."

But he added: "After Jason abdicated, things have settled down."

The Apprentice screens on Wednesday at 9pm on BBC One.

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.