Episode Thirteen. Also known as Episode Surely One Of Them Must Win By Now. Or Episode Can’t This Moron Just Ring Reed Like The Rest Of Us? Or Episode If He Doesn’t Hire Someone Soon I’m Staging An Intervention. That’s right; it’s the final. And as the credits roll their last, and the foghorn narrator thunders his final humourless intro, it’s time to look back over all the biznez people too stupid and inept to fool a dimple-chinned geriatric into employment.

Bye bye Sandeesh, see yer later Hollyoaks Jamie, astaluego Bambi Liz, so long Mel, do one Naan-faced Stuart and farewell Sulky Laura; it’s been a pleasure. It’s been real.

As we rush headlong in to the most postponed first day since Prince Charles tried on his mother’s headwear, only milk-haired Stella and vertical-haired Chris remain in the fight to become Lord Sugar’s apprentice. Seeing as no-one else has bothered all season, perhaps now is the time for someone to address what an apprentice actually is. According to this Oxford illustrated dictionary sitting beside me (that’s right – I’m writing this from the 1980s, where we still have to use ‘books’ for information) an apprentice is a ‘Learner of a craft, bound to serve, and entitled to instruction from, his employer for a specified time.’ Not a single mention of sausage-flavoured crisps, sandy-knickered bikini shoots or public humiliation. Those lexicographers are idiots.

Undeterred, Chris runs to answer the phone at 6am to receive these, his final pride-stripping, esteem-quashing, CV-blighting orders. It must be pretty empty rattling around that house on their own. I wonder if they had an Amstrad slumber party last night, playing first generation, single-player, 1D doss computer games on the tank-sized Amstrentertainment system hidden in the basement. Or maybe they just painted each others’ nails and played with their mini Sugardolls.

Once the two milky bar kids have assembled at The Langham, Mini Mod Sugar turns up in his batmobile to stand in front of twelve square feet of false marble and fart instructions out of his grizzled mouth.

“Your task is to invent a brand new premium alcoholic drink,” yaps Sugatron. “And I think you’re gonna need some assistance,” he nasals. Cue awkward walk in of all the ex-canditates (well, all the candidates who haven’t learned the tough love lesson of the editing suite). So, it’s up to Stella and Chris to pick their teams for the final task. Yikes, it’s like the worst PE lesson ever! Paloma, of course, is the last to be picked. But where’s Baggs?!? Sitting in a bush outside Margaret Mountford’s house armed with a can of whiskers and a hacksaw, I’ll be bound.

Save for Handsy Marine Chris and Bambi Eyed Liz, the teams basically fall in to gender groups; Stella leads the women, Chris the men. Well, the men and a human orange apple pie (love you Alex).

For Stella’s team, Joanna wants a heritage drink. Which, apparently means whisky. Presumably it’s the heritage of groupie-rogering, fume-puking, guitar-plucking leather-clad alcoholics that she thinks will sell. Stella likes the idea of blue bourbon. Joanna likes ‘a twist of lime’. Hey gals, why not just add a shot of cold puke and be done with it?

Over on Chris’s team, talk turns to spiced rum. Perhaps rum cubed. Rum three times? Why not have a little boy whispering “redrumredrumredrum” in your marketing? It’d be a knockout! Meanwhile, the girls go for urbon bourbon with a touch of honey and spice. I guess bin gin and frisky whisky didn’t make the grade. Shame.

Chris’ alcoholic cuboid is apparently going to include white rum, pomegranate and aromatic bitters and will be called Prism. “Like a pyramid is like a prism….?”

So, the drinks done (or not, in Stella’s case) it’s time to think about advertising. The whisky mists are advised against showing shots. Frankly, with competitors like this I’d go for full vaccines.

The boys, on the other hand, are warned off sexualised adverts. So, no licking lips, no boozy dates, and absolutely no close ups of rohypnol.

So, with the product in place and the adverts filmed it’s time to plan that all-important presentation. “It’s the balance of making sure there’s emotion in there. But equally not being something I’m not” drawls Christopher the Monotonbot.

The presentation ceremony is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen; the bottle of Prism is passed around like an enormous alcoholic metronome as dancing girls buck and jolt to ear-wrenching 90s pop dance. We then move on to a truly dreadful advert. Prism apparently ‘reflects every side of you’. So be careful not to bend over in the shower. The bottle is so dangerous it might as well be called The Pomgrenade.

On to Stella. “The proposition is simple: it’s the new way of drinking bourbon,” says Stella. Instead of drinking it up your arse, or down your legs, like we usually do.

So, hungover (and possibly blind, if that load of moonshine is anything to go by) it’s time to head to the boardroom for the last time. Marine Chris stands behind his female team, meekly covering his bollocks like a footballer in a penalty shootout.

Eagle-nosed Nick tells Lord Sugardrop that Monotone Chris may be “no Richard Burton, but he’s come a long way.” Joanna, who has had her makeup put on by a particularly ham-fisted transvestite, tells Alanstrad that Stella is ‘the girl for the job’.

Which must surely mean that it’s like for Alan’s Final Thought. It all comes down to experience. Does he want young blood or old hacks? Does he want a green shoot or a thick trunk? Does he want a ‘revered theological scholar’ from the upper crust or a banker from Europe’s largest council estate?

After much dithering (during which I assume Lord Sugar is desperately trying to remember why he came in here and what he was looking for while making involuntary scissor movements with his fingers) the human tortoise comes to a decision. Stella will be his apprentice. And the search is over.

Thank god. Or Godstrad as he shall henceforth be known.