Fire almost comes out the ears of Lord Sugar after the hot sauce task this week(Image: BBC)

Lord Sugar shocks the remaining business hopefuls on The Apprentice when he tells both teams “you’ve lost” and brands them “terrible”.

The teams are this week tasked with developing and branding their own hot sauce, before pitching to industry experts but do not do well. One team make a basic brand and bland recipe which fails to spice things up, while a forgotten item leaves half the other team in hot water when they try to make a TV advert.

Lord Sugar brands much of the work “pathetic” and sends all the remaining candidates off to the cafe whilst he works out who to get rid of.

Speaking about his rarely seen decision to make neither team a winner, plunging them all in with a chance of being fired, Lord Sugar told the Mirror : “They didn’t deserve it and I’m not going to risk the integrity of the show by picking someone to win just for the sake of it. It happens very, very rarely.

“But on that particular task, their performances were both terrible. On that basis I felt someone from each team should be fired, so it’s a double that episode. There are no participation awards in The Apprentice, absolutely not.”

Lord Sugar wasn’t the only one who was disappointed in the task. His advisor Baroness Brady had to try the hot sauce her team made and was close to tears.

Karren Brady hated the hot sauce on The Apprentice(Image: BBC)

She said: “It was bloody hot! I like hot sauce as well, I really do like spicy food, but there was no taste. It was literally just heat. And the weirdest thing was they thought that just by putting one of the hottest chillies in it made it unique. But it was just nothing.

“It had no taste, no flavour. You normally add a sauce to improve something. This would not have improved anything; it would just make it worse.”

Despite the problems, Lord Sugar is expected to return next year alongside Baroness Brady for an anniversary series.

In January he told the Mirror: “Look, the 20th one, it means it’s not been commissioned yet, but I think there’s a good chance that it’s going to happen, and it’s going to be special, extra special obviously for me.

“But I enjoy doing this thing, and I enjoy finding young people and putting them in businesses and starting. I’m starting from scratch again with them, and that’s what I enjoy doing. So who knows, I’ll go on and on, until maybe the funeral director might have to stop it! You never know.”

Asked about the prospect of slowing down, he shakes his head and added: “I’m not one of those people. I’m not going to go and smell the roses and start gardening and all that stuff, and take up bowls somewhere.”