Ian Stringer ('The Apprentice')

On this week's Apprentice, both teams were given the task of running their own pub kitchen and hosting a themed night. The boys' team, led by Ian Stringer, set up an Italian night while the girls ran a Bollywood evening. The boys' outperformed their rivals but failed to take into account the spiralling costs for their food supplies. With lower profits than the girls team, the boys' task leader Ian decided to take Kevin Shaw and Simon Smith into the boardroom to face Sir Alan Sugar. Sir Alan chose to dismiss Ian, telling him: "This was a total disaster. Quite frankly I think you lost it." DS caught up with Ian to talk about his time on the show.

How are you feeling after going out?
"Uh... feeling pretty dejected to be honest. I thought I had it in me to go all the way but obviously I don't. I'm pretty low. I'll get over it."

You've said losing isn't in your vocabulary, so this must really hurt a lot.
"Yeah, it does, because I like to give everything a go in life and on this occasion I didn't win. This time it didn't exactly work out as it should have, but never mind."

You blamed Kevin for the failure, but what did you expect from him in order to succeed?
"I expected him to take over the role of head chef, which is the role he wanted to take and actively put himself forward for. It [involved] taking responsibility for the quantity of goods, the predicted numbers of people, working backwards from our margins and working out what we made from our products, whilst I dealt with marketing and the resourcing for the evening. He didn't deliver on that, and for that reason I think he should have been fired."

He seemed to be getting confused about how many tomatoes to order.
"I put the banker in charge of numbers, which was a fatal error, wasn't it? He is a bit of a banker, isn't he?"

Is there anything you'd tackle differently looking back at the task?
"Looking back I would have certainly sourced the stock and the products from local suppliers instead of doing a trolley dash. We lined the pockets of Tesco, instead of our own."

The two you took into the boardroom were working under you. Did that cost you your place?
"Maybe I should've brought someone else in from the marketing team or something like that to help me get rid of the other person. I didn't, I was honest and I took the two people I thought performed worst. That's what I did. They obviously ganged up on me and I went."

Do you think Simon will be chosen to lead next week based on what Sir Alan said?
"Yeah, Simon did say 'give me a task' so I would imagine Sir Alan will certainly take him up on that. Simon is a great hard worker and is someone you would want on your side certainly, but when it comes to managing that group of people, I think he's going to struggle. I reckon that Sir Alan's going to mix it up a little bit. I have a sneaking suspicion that [the other person] I took in... Sir Alan's going to say: 'you were in the boardroom last week, let's see how you do'."

It's still early, but who do you think could win the show?
"I think Lee McQueen can win the show. He's a good friend of mine and someone I got on really well with. He's got all the skillsets to go all the way. I reckon Lee's in with a really good chance."

The Apprentice continues Wednesday on BBC One at 9pm.