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• Thu Apr 17 2025

Chilli vs the chiller: Lord Sugar hires new Apprentice

11 hours ago Share Save Ian Youngs Culture reporter Share Save

PA Media Anisa Khan and Dean Franklin were competing to get hired by Lord Sugar in the final

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 prot?g?. 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.

Matt Frost