The Apprentice candidate mocked for premature clapping before hearing task results

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first episode of Series 18 of The Apprentice.

Alan Sugar’s searching for a business partner again in a brand-new series of The Apprentice, and as expected, the first episode made for some painful, cringeworthy viewing – not least when it came to the debrief in the boardroom.

After Lord Sugar tasked the two teams – split into male and female candidates - with hosting corporate away days in the Scottish Highlands (with the potential for refunds), it was revealed the girls bagged a profit of £1,266.43, but a refund totalling 40 per cent took this down to a mere £122.43.

The boys, meanwhile, had a profit of £643.60, but received “a lot of feedback” from the client and “not much of it was positive”, to the extent that they requested a refund of a whopping 52 per cent.

It was at this moment that Dr Asif Munaf, the owner of a wellness brand from Sheffield, started clapping, despite the devastating statistic.

As other candidates and Lord Sugar himself gave him stern and baffled looks, with one asking why he was clapping, Dr Munaf explained it was because “we still got £300 profit”.

Except, Lord Sugar’s aide Tim Campbell – who won the first ever series of The Apprentice back in 2005 – wasn’t finished, and promptly continued to say that this equated to £1,150 (because the client spent £2,400), leading to a loss of more than £500.

Ouch.

And to make matters worse, Dr Munaf was filmed at the start of the episode saying he has “got an extremely high IQ”.

Oh dear.

His blunder has since been branded “one of the greatest The Apprentice moments of all-time” on Twitter/X, as users soon mocked the businessman’s humiliating error:

Despite this mistake and being on the losing team, Dr Munaf survived his first boardroom, and will now face the second task of the series, which is to create and manufacture mini-cheesecakes.

The Apprentice continues next Thursday at 9pm on BBC One.

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