Week 1: How clean is your car?

Finally! After all that waiting, it's back. Ah, I have missed Surallen’s grumpy little face, Nick and Margaret's withering looks and even Frances' lovely hands.

The first thing that struck me is that this year there are no 'eclectic' candidates, no Lucindas, no Raifs, no Kevin the Gerbils. Instead we have a man that prefers making money to having sex (!) a shouty teacher, several scary single mums and a 'ruff-tuff cream puff' from New York (are bakery items allowed to compete?).

So straight to business. The first thing we are told is that one of the candidates did a bunk the night before. Surallen seems quite pleased about this, but it means the teams are uneven – one boy less – giving the women an advantage.

Assembled in front of Surallen, the preened, polished, coiffed and starched candidates are given their first task: go and clean stuff, whatever they fancy, but they need to make money, or else, yada, yada, yada...

So off they toddle to yet another unused warehouse that Sir Alan seems to have a never ending supply of. The boys start discussing team names and come up with the rather unimaginative and highly predictable name: 'Empire', however, they quickly elect Howard Ebison, a retail business manager (and apparently an award-winning dancer and self-taught musician) as project manager. They sort their cleaning equipment and appear quite organised as Geordie, Philip Taylor gets on the blower and arranges a deal with a minicab firm.

The girls, meanwhile struggle to decide on team leader and despite Mona (senior business manager, single mum #1 and former Tanzanian beauty queen) putting herself forward, Kate Walsh, the feisty blond seems to take the lead along with Debra Barr, a senior sales consultant – indicating that these are the ones I will instantly dislike. Reluctantly, the team allows Mona to be PM. On to team names...

Old Cream Puff, full of American bravado and air-punching enthusiasm suggests the team are called something crazy like Shazam! The withering looks soon shoot her down and eventually someone suggests 'Ignite'. Agreed, they move on to sorting out their cleaning equipment.

This is the point at which the first coup de grace is made. Anita, a former lawyer and a girl who looks as though she is constantly waiting to hear devastating news tots up the total announcing it to be "under budget, well done!" Nick pulls one of his lemon sucking faces and declares that they may be in for a "spanking in the boardroom". At this point, I wonder whether any of them have ever seen The Apprentice before. Haven’t they learned to always gauge Nick's face to see whether they have made a boo boo? One lemon is pretty bad, several lemons is a disaster.

Anyway, after an hour of the most incredible flaffing, they head over to clean some Hummers. Hilariously, when they pitch their price to the sales manager (£300 for three cars!) and he tells them he usually pays £20 a car, they practically tell him he is a liar and a cheat. I am dumbfounded that they get any work after such rudeness – it must be something to do with the telly cameras. They get on with it while the 'sub team' led by Plasticine-faced Debra head over to a second job.

Over with the boys, the phrase 'too many cooks' springs to mind and they make a terrible job of cleaning the minicab cars. Howard is doing very little project managing but rather shining shoes in a shopping centre with Majid Nagra, a business development manager. They soon decide to decamp after hearing that they boys have taken over an hour and a half to clean one car. It's all a bit pants and they do a terrible job. The boss is not happy. Shame on them.

The girls also miss out on 10 extra cars they could have cleaned thanks to lack lustre polishing by Sad Face Girl but try and make up for it by hassling passersby into getting their cars cleaned. Job done, they all head back to the Boardroom to face the wrath of Surallen.

It all starts off a bit boring. The boys win (cue hissy noises and fists of emotion) while Mona is told to bring back two colleagues: Anita and Debra.

Surallan wants to get to the bottom of it – why spend their entire budget? Anita digs a big old hole and hops into it, and peers up sadly at the other snakes that have put her there. Mona boo-hoos a bit, says she's honest and Sir A says she shows spirit (and absolutely zero management skills.) Debra, who fair dos, can fight her corner, gets off scot free but even Sir A can see she's this year's snake-in-the-grass-in-waiting.

So did Sir A get it right? I can't help but think that Anita would have pined away from sadness had she stayed, so perhaps he did. The one thing this episode shows is that none of the candidates have an ounce of common sense between them. Let's hope that next week's catering task doesn't see half of London come down with food poisoning. Ah, it's good to be back!