Warning: This story contains spoilers about the Apprentice winner
Lord Sugar has hired his newest business partner in the final of the 19th series of The Apprentice.
He had a choice between Anisa Khan, who sells Indian food-flavoured pizzas, and Dean Franklin, who runs an air conditioning company, in a battle he billed as “chilli versus the chiller”.
The final signalled the end of a bruising 12-week process that started with 18 budding entrepreneurs vying to become Lord Sugar’s latest protégé.
In the end, Lord Sugar chose to give his £250,000 investment to Dean, from Essex, despite noting there had been “a few rocky moments” where he had only remained in the programme “by the skin of your teeth”.
“I can’t believe I’ve just won The Apprentice,” Dean said. “This is going to mean the world to me and my family. My kids are going to be over the moon.”
He made it through to the final despite having a difficult time in the penultimate episode, the interviews with Lord Sugar’s famously tough advisers.
He froze and started laughing after one interviewer, Mike Soutar, challenged his nonsensical claims about climate change, including that there was “an increase in climate control” and “the climate zone is depleting”.
He was also asked about his company’s website, which says his engineers would “always treat your home as if it were their own”. Soutar then produced a picture from Dean’s social media showing a sex toy that he had stuck to a customer’s air conditioning unit.
In the final, the show’s previously fired contestants returned to help Dean and Anisa create advertising campaigns for their companies.
Dean tasked some of his team-mates with making a TV ad – which had to be hastily reshot because it showed someone being persuaded to buy air conditioning to heat up their house, not cool it down.
During the episode, Lord Sugar said air conditioning made Dean an “honest living” but he needed to show a “scalable proposition”.
Ownership of Dean’s company was previously split between his existing business partner and their two wives, with each having a 25% share.
Lord Sugar will now be given the wives’ 50% in return for his investment.
He asked Dean: “They’ll give it to me and they won’t get the hump over that then, will they? They won’t make you sleep in the spare bedroom?”
Dean assured him: “They know the plan. We’re still married so what’s mine is hers. So it makes no difference.”
The amount Lord Sugar invests has remained the same since 2011, and previous winner Tom Pellereau – the first to receive that sum – said: “Fourteen years ago, £250,000 went quite a lot further than it does today.
“My controversial point is, I do think they should double the money.
“I think £500,000 or £1m would be an incredible prize,” Pellereau told BBC Radio 5 Live.
The Apprentice final is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
