Toby Foster

Recap and Review: The Apprentice 2023 (Series 17), Episode 1: Antigua Tourism Score: 2.5/5  The following review contains spoilers When The Apprentice bounded back onto our screens in 2022 after a two-and-a-half year pandemic-enforced hiatus, it delivered one of its finest series to date. Brilliantly-chosen candidates and an enjoyable set of tasks made the show a captivating, entertaining triumph - and my TV highlight of the year.  Which means there's plenty to live up to for 2023's eighteen confident contenders, all scrapping for Lord Sugar's £250,000 investment in them and their business proposal. And scrap they most certainly do, after being dispatched to Antigua for an extravagant first task in which they must sell and conduct tours of the island. The ladies team are at daggers drawn almost immediately, with discord at almost every decision point, while some of the gents try to insure themselves against an early firing by theatrically announcing their disagreement wit...

  In Britain, the world’s sixth-largest economy, it has long been taken for granted by many that our electricity provision is fit for purpose. But for the first time in almost half a century, this supposed guarantee of living in the first world is no longer so cast-iron. National Grid, the organisation responsible for balancing Britain's electricity supplies, has warned in its annual winter outlook that Europe faces a “challenging winter for energy supply”. In the event of reduced gas and electric imports from the continent, coupled with insufficient gas supply in Britain, National Grid warns there will be a “large negative surplus” of energy. This may result in emergency measures that would leave some customers “without power for pre-defined periods during a day – generally this is assumed to be for three-hour blocks.” While National Grid stresses that this situation continues to be an “unlikely event”, and that it remains “cautiously confident” of maintaining supplies throughout ...