This week Lord Sugar and the Apprentice were briefly transformed into David Dickinson and Bargain Hunt as the contestants were given the task of finding ten set items at the lowest possible price.

Lord Sugar, who lacks the huge smile and orange skin of Mr Dickinson, reformed the teams into boys versus girls.

The boy's team, Synergy, was led by Jamie Lester, who put himself forward in order to prove that Lord Sugar is wrong in saying that he is performing less well as the series goes on. He was joined by the only two remaining boys, Chris Bates and the alleged brand Stuart Baggs.

Meanwhile Apollo was run by Liz Locke, backed up by the remaining girls, Joanna Riley, Laura Moore and Stella English.

The items the teams had to find were chosen, Lord Sugar said, to take the candidates out of their comfort zone, and that they did with team Synergy taking particularly long to find out what some of the items even where.

While the dubious Chinese delicacy chicken feet was a pretty self explanatory item, a "tikka" proved to be a mystery as did the "bluebook". It later turned out that a tikka is small piece of Indian jewellery and the bluebook is the textbook for "the Knowledge" used by London taxi drivers, not an American periodical from the 1920's as the boys at first believed.

This confusion greatly set the boys back, to the extent that of the ten items required only seven were found. A hefty fine was imposed by Lord Sugar for every item missing.

Meanwhile the girls succeeded in finding and buying every item on the list but proved to be hopeless at negotiating for lower prices, which after all was the point of the task. While the girls were asking for one or two pounds off asking prices, the boys, aided by lurid stories from Chris about Scottish weddings and his brother, managed to get real bargains.

This at times did come off a little ignoble, Stella when criticised for not haggling enough said she did not want to appear rude, but it did prove to be effective.

Despite the fines for missing items the boys won the competition thanks to Chris' odd stories bringing down the prices. Had it been Treasure Hunt the girls would have won, but Lord Sugar was playing David Dickinson and not Anneka Rice, so it was the boys who were rewarded with a trip to Paris.

When it came to the boardroom Liz chose to bring Stella and the somewhat whiny Laura in with her. Stella looked like being fired for a short time as she was painted as being "wooden" and "too corporate", the exact opposite of Christopher Farrell, fired last week for lacking spark despite being well liked.

Stella proved relatively dignified throughout the assault and eventually Lord Sugar turned his wrath on Laura, who unlike Stella and Liz, has failed to perform persistently well. And so it was that Laura was kicked out of the process.

However Stella may need to watch out as she seems to have few friends in the house and Liz gave her a look which suggested there will be no quarter given in future contests between the two.