IS it really that time already?

Has it really been a year since S'ralan (sorry, Lord Alan) and his sycophantic minions graced our screens vowing to give it 110 per cent in the 10-week long job interview show, The Apprentice? True televisual schadenfreude, it really is the gift that keeps on giving.

The job interview is surely the most unnatural of human interactions, indulging as it does the unspoken understanding between everyone in the room that you don't really do any of those hobbies on your CV. It is regarded by those doing the interviewing as tedious and time consuming and by those being interviewed as on a par with root canal work.

Yet, so much rides on them and it's the nerves that make people behave rather oddly. And, of course, the strokes of bad luck. I still shudder when I think of one interview when I suffered a wardrobe malfunction en route. I was all dressed up in suit and heels when disaster struck on the subway escalator. On clambering up the metal stairs at speed, I somehow managed to kick my heel right off and watched it bounce back down the escalator. I managed to retrieve it after some comedy hopping but with time being of the essence, I had to shove it in my handbag and continue to the interview.

Ladies, if you've ever experienced such a mishap you'll know that as well as leaving one half of your body slumped four inches lower than the other, your heel-less shoe will point incongruously skyward in the style of a Christmas elf's bootie.

A friend suffered something of a malfunction during the actual interview. On arrival, she was given 30 minutes, a pile of acetate and some marker pens and told to prepare a presentation (listen up kids, this is what life was like before Powerpoint) which was followed by the interview. Unfortunately the marker she was using leaked all over her hands, which was bad enough, but when she is nervous she puts her hand to her face. Repeatedly. It was only on visiting the toilet afterwards she realised she had conducted the entire presentation and interview with a mottled blue face.

Another pal recalls, with a shudder, the time he turned up for an interview with Manchester City Council's press and marketing department having spent weeks swotting up on life in Liverpool. As the question: "Tell us what you know of the social problems in Manchester" echoed round the room, the only sound to be heard was his thumping heart. It was a long journey home that night.