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The Apprentice is a BAFTA award-winning British reality television series in which a group of aspiring young businessmen and women compete for the chance to win a £100,000-a-year job as an apprentice to the British business magnate Lord Sugar (previously known as "Sir Alan Sugar"). Winners have gone on to work at Amstrad, an electronics manufacturing company founded by Sugar (but since sold to BSkyB),[2][3] or one of Sugar's other companies, Viglen,[4] Amsprop[5] or Amshold.[6] The Apprentice, billed as a "job interview from hell", is very similar in format to the American series of the same name, which stars entrepreneur Donald Trump.[7] The first and second series aired on BBC Two in 2005 and 2006 respectively and the third series ran on BBC One in early 2007,[8] the success of which led the BBC to commission two more series.[9] The fourth series began in March 2008 and the fifth began in March 2009. A sixth series has been commissioned. The programme has spawned three spin-offs, The Apprentice You're Fired! (a studio-based programme which acts as a companion to the regular series), plus celebrity versions for Comic Relief and Sport Relief.[10][11] Occasional 60-minute special episodes, often concentrating on particular candidates and their stories, also air.[12] Apprentice-related merchandising includes a magazine, podcast, and official books.[12][13][14] The programme has led other production companies to produce shows that follow a similar format, including Tycoon, Beat the Boss.[15][16] and Election (CBBC). It has also been compared to another BBC series, Dragons' Den.[17] Open auditions and interviews are held across the country before a series begins,[18] attracting thousands of applicants.[19] The first and second series featured 14 candidates, increased to 16 in the third and fourth. The fifth series was also meant to have 16 candidates, but went ahead with only 15 after a last-minute withdrawal. The successful candidates are split into two teams, initially by gender (as candidate numbers are whittled down, the composition of the teams is periodically rearranged). The teams are then given a series of business-themed tasks designed to test their skills in salesmanship, negotiation, requisitioning, leadership, teamwork and organisation, with each episode covering a single task. At the start of each episode, the teams each choose a project manager to act as the team leader for the duration of the task,[20] though in later episodes the project managers are sometimes nominated by Sugar himself. The teams are followed in the execution of their tasks by Lord Sugar's advisers, Nick Hewer and Karren Brady.[21]
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