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The Apprentice Insider meets Zoe

Ben Rawson-Jones, Blog Editor | 15:20 UK time, Friday, 1 July 2011

A biscuit based boardroom battle concluded with the firing of Project Manager Zoe, with Lord Sugar feeling that she should have strategised better given her past experience in the food and drink industry. The Apprentice Insider caught up with the latest fired candidate for a natter about the good, the bad and the emercrunchy…

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Apprentice candidate Zoe and the Apprentice Insider

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"Of course I can bear to eat a biscuit again - I love biscuits!" exclaimed Zoe when asked if her Apprentice demise has turned her against a certain crumbly food product. She doesn't even have a bad word to say about Tom's dubious emergency biscuit idea: "He thinks outside the box. I don't think his Emercrunchy idea was too bad – you've got to throw everything at it really. So I was kind of appreciative for all the help."

Zoe, who admitted she was "gutted" by her firing, wasn't so complimentary about the roleplay strategy that formed the basis for Team Logic's Bix Mix pitches: "At the time I knew the role-play was completely wrong. I've never done anything like it before and I'll never do anything like it after. But Melody persuaded us to go with it and I couldn't believe what I was watching. It was my downfall I guess."

"Since I've been fired I've been going over every element of the process in my mind, being my own biggest critic," continued the Cheshire based businesswoman. "There were a number of areas I could have improved on… I should have stuck to my guns more in the Biscuit Task and I wouldn't have been here if I had have done."

A broad smile erupted on Zoe's face when she learnt that her rather morbid suggestions for magazine titles in the Freemium Task had taken Twitter by storm: "I think it's fabulous to think that both my names Coffin Dodger and Hip Replacement were trending – but I must emphasise that both names I came up with as literally a last ditch attempt. There wasn't a lot of seriousness within those names. It was a joke."

How stunned was Zoe when her joke was taken seriously and turned into an actual magazine? "I was incredibly shocked when Jim picked up on Hip Replacement. However, within these tasks there is such an enormous amount of pressure. Time was getting short, ideas were getting scarce and we were clutching at straws."

The mention of straw clutching provides a seamless transition to another amusing talking point – the Elephant Dog from the App Task! "My take on the elephant with the dog bark was that it was a miscommunication," explained Zoe. "We thought we were going to get an elephant noise when they went to the studio. We'd done all the graphics for that and then we later found out that they had to do a dog bark but all the graphics were done. We had to run with it but that's the nature of the tasks."

Finally, Zoe gave us an insight into the wacky antics that can happen behind the scenes in the Apprentice house once the suits are put away: "The funniest moment I experienced in the whole process was on one Saturday night when me and Helen turned the lounge into a nightclub to celebrate her 30th birthday. We got everyone in and it was a fantastic time… and then Helen realised she got her birthday wrong! It was actually a different day!"

For more from our chat with Zoe watch the video interview:

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Do you think Zoe should have been fired by Lord Sugar? What are your highlights of her time on the show?

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