The Apprentice: Dan's first to hear 'You're fired'

The Apprentice: Dan's first to hear 'You're fired'
The Apprentice: Dan's first to hear 'You're fired'

Dan Harris has become the first candidate to be voted off The Apprentice - and admitted having to watch most of the show from behind a pillow. The 34-year-old sales director from Oxfordshire ended up red-faced by upsetting Lord Sugar and his own team members with his failure to lead them to victory in the first challenge. He said: "I spent most of the time watching that episode behind a pillow. Cringeworthy moments on it, certainly. I think I took quite a strong leadership style, I don't know if you picked up on that." That 'strong leadership style' did not go down well with his team, with fellow contestant Raleigh Addington describing him as being 'like a bull in a china shop'. The show started with 16 hopefuls divided into teams of men and women and dispatched in the middle of the night to London's Smithfield market to buy meat before making and selling sausages on the streets of the capital. Team leader Dan found himself up in front of Lord Sugar, with two other members of his team, after the women's team made a bigger profit. He named team-mates Stuart Baggs, from the Isle of Man, and Alex Epstein, from Manchester, as his partners to potentially face the chop. It was Dan's minimal contribution to the team's sales efforts that really upset Lord Sugar. Lord Sugar told him: "You didn't run them very well. The point is that the sub-team, of which you were the leader, sold naff all." Stuart and Alex did not escape entirely unscathed with Lord Sugar criticising their sales efforts. But in the end the buck stopped with Dan and Lord Sugar told him: "You had your chance and you blew it. Dan, you're fired."

Patrick McLennan

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.