JIM SHELLEY: The biggest buffoons in business: The 10th year of The Apprentice promises to be as brilliant and excruciating as ever

You’ve got to love The Apprentice, especially the opening episode where the candidates ritually humiliate themselves for our benefit.

It started with the traditional medley of absurdly self-aggrandising statements that the 20 businessmen and women intended to impress us but actually only achieved the opposite effect.

They began surprisingly modestly.

‘I get the job done. I walk the walk. I talk the talk. I dance the dance,’ said Mark Wright (not that one, although their arrogance and idiocy were identical).

‘I AM an alpha male. I can make women do what I want in the business world, and, come to think about it, some men’ was much more preposterous and much more like it.

Take a bow Daniel Lassman, whether the production company made you say it, or it’s what you really think.

We won’t mention the fact that, considering he is such a powerful, persuasive figure/God, Daniel is somehow merely ‘the director of a pub quiz company.’

There’s no ‘i’ in team,’ he continued, like a slick David Brent. ‘But there are five in Individual Brilliance.’

There are two in ‘imbecile’ too.

When it came to pomposity and preening, Sanjay gave even Daniel a run for his money.