The Apprentice 2015: Five things that happen at the start of every new series

Still mourning the end of the Bake Off? Wipe those tears away, because The Apprentice is back with a whole new set of business loons who will say anything and do anything to get that £250,000 cash injection from Lord Sugar.

Now in its eleventh series, the show continues to be brilliantly entertaining despite – or rather, because – we all know how it works by now. Last week at the press launch, Lord Sugar himself claimed that this consistency was key to the show’s success.

Here are five things that we’re expecting from the first episode of the new series, based on ten years of TV gold.

1) Gender wars

The team dynamics in the early episodes of the series are always glorious – a classic school-disco boys vs. girls set-up sees the former all blatantly trying to out-do each other by measuring up their, um, ‘business credentials’, and the latter preaching “girl power!” to each other’s faces before sniping as soon as backs are turned. In a shock twist, this series will mix up the teams for the first time – but expect all that backstabbing to remain intact.

2) “When I was 16 years old…”

You know this speech off by heart, don’t you? It’s ingrained in your brain, like the first few lines of the national anthem or the Star Trek “to boldly go” intro. All together now: ‘When I was 16 years old, I left school to flog car aerials out the back of a van in the markets’. Expect to hear Lord Sugar’s business origin story approximately five times by the end of Episode 1.

3) The name game

Before things can really begin, the teams have to sit and come up with a name for themselves – cue the worst brainstorming session you’ve ever seen, with every candidate trying to turn a bit of business jargon into a metaphor that perfectly summarises why they’re the all-purpose multi-tool of the business world. This normally takes them hours, and the results are always terrible.

4) Trendy Shoreditch