A word of advice to the Apprentice candidates who escaped Lord Sugar’s triple-firing last week: you're still far from safe. Although week eight saw Anisa Topan, Andrew Brady and Charles Burns all eliminated in the show’s third ever triple-firing, Sugar might well hand out more than one P45 next episode.

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The reason: there are still eight candidates left in the process and, presuming the series follows the same structure as previous years, only five of these budding businesspeople will see it to the interview stage in week 11. And that’s now only two episodes away which means Sugar has a fortnight to get rid of three candidates.

How’s he going to do that? Another boardroom purge over the next pair of episodes. In other words, there's a 50/50 chance Sugar will send home two candidates after the next task.

Unfortunately, it’s very likely another triple firing won’t happen again this series. Every episode of The Apprentice has seen at least one candidate go home (apart from the fourth week of series one, where nobody was fired after estate agent Adele Lock quit the process). And unless Sugar changes how many candidates reach the interview stage, a triple firing next episode would mean nobody would have to go home in week 10. That’s hardly a nerve-wracking final team task.

True, Sugar could fire three candidates in the last group task of the process, but that means nobody would go next week. And that requires Sugar to be happy with everyone’s performance in the upcoming task.

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How likely is that? Judge for yourself in this preview clip...

It's not looking great for those candidates.

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The Apprentice continues 9pm Wednesday, BBC1

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