Chiles Cartwright is the first candidate to have been fired by Lord Sugar in the tenth series of The Apprentice, but the businessman doesn’t think he should have been the first one to go, or at least not the only one.

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“I don’t think I should have gone,” Chiles tells RadioTimes.com. “I think Felipe’s management style was very good, but he didn’t always make the right decisions.

“If you’re the leader of the team, not the sub-team, the leader of the team, you should be held accountable. He wasn’t controlling Robert as he should have been and our sub-team wasn’t given the right direction, so probably Felipe [should have been fired]."

In fact, while Chiles admits he “kind of knew it was coming” from the way the conversation in the boardroom was going, he didn’t think he was going to be the only one that got the chop.

“I thought maybe two of us were going. I thought it might have been me and Felipe.”

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Chiles admits he’s “absolutely gutted” to have left the show, which he went into with every “intention of winning”. And he says he’d definitely do it again, but maybe not the firing…

“The bit I probably wasn’t prepared for was the firing bit. I’ve never even had a verbal warning. To be fired on national TV is a baptism of fire. “

On facing that firing finger of doom he adds, “I kind of blacked out really. I can’t remember the actual pointing. You know it’s happened, but a bit shell-shocked really. “

It’s much easier watching, says Chiles who admits “everybody with the beauty of hindsight would make different decisions in those situations”. And of the business he planned to pitch to Lord Sugar had he made the final, Chiles laughs that it’s rather ironic, given his team’s fiasco with the t-shirt selling.

“Ironically, I was looking at going into business with Lord Sugar with a company called Run GB, which is a luxury sports brand. Obviously that would involve selling t-shirts…

“The irony is certainly not lost on me,” he laughs.

Away from the selling, Chiles says he hadn’t expected how much fun it would be to live in The Apprentice house with the other candidates.

“We all got on really well. I’m sure that’s going to change as they become a bit more cut throat,” Chiles says.

Any gossip…?

“There was one situation where I was in the bedroom and James shouted at me, 'Come here quick!' Turns out he was in the bath, I thought there was a problem, but he wanted me to talk to him while he was in the bath. Which is a little bit shocking. I immediately exited the bathroom…”

Oh, and Robert walks around in a silk dressing gown. But, what did we expect really?

Now he’s out of the competition, who does Chiles think we should have our eye on?

"I can’t comment on the girls, because all I really saw was the bickering in the boardroom, I don’t know any of them well enough.

“Out of the boys, the ones I think that have got what it takes to do well would be James. He's a very strong character, he’s got a silver tongue and can talk anyone into buying anything. He needs to hone it a lot but he’s a really strong character and a really nice guy. Daniel, he’s very professional, he backed me all the way, I saw that in the boardroom.

“But actually, who’d I’d like to see win, because I think he’s got the best ideas and the best intellect and could really benefit most from Lord Sugar’s business investment is Solomon. I think he could go far, his business ideas would go far.”

Do you think the right person was fired? Vote in our poll.

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The Apprentice continues Wednesdays at 9:00pm on BBC1

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