It’s been a while since Sunday’s Apprentice Final on BBC1 — we’ve been a bit distracted by the unravelling hacking saga — but we can’t let this excellent series finish without offering our expert opinion!

Following Tom and Helen’s success with MyPy (despite the ‘Columbus is 100% British’ blunder) and Helen’s record of 10 tasks won out of 11, most people thought she was a dead-cert to become Lord Alan Sugar’s business partner.

The contestant who won the nation’s hearts, however, was Tom Pellereau. Perhaps the nicest Apprentice hopeful ever to grace our screens, Tom appeared wearing a rather glorious hairnet during the fast-food challenge (which really should have won him bonus points), suggested the tasty name ‘Popsquits’ for his team’s biscuit product and gamely sold nodding dogs by the dozen for the reinvestment task.

So when Helen Milligan (30), Jim Eastwood (32), Susan Ma (21) and Tom (31) arrived for their final test, presenting their individual business plans to a number of experts including the legendary Margaret Mountford, we were, against the odds, rooting for Tom.

As it turned out the last task was pretty pointless, as they all ballsed it up. True to form Susan was wildly over-ambitious with her figures and received short shrift from Lord Sugar.

Jim’s declaration when asked to describe himself without using clichés that he was ‘what it says on the tin,’ got one of Margaret’s trademark incredulous looks only matched later by Lord Sugar’s expression when Jim uttered the words ‘non-profit’.

Even golden-girl Helen’s proposal of a concierge service was heavily criticised, so much so that she reverted last-minute to her second choice business plan. But it was too late.

In the end, surprisingly, it was Tom, armed with plans of his latest invention and sets of incorrect figures who clinched the deal to be Lord Sugar’s business partner and get a £250,000 investment.

Whilst Lord Sugar himself claimed that if the competition been for a job as in previous series, Helen would have won it hands down, ironically it was Tom’s talent for invention combined with his lack of business skills that appealed to Lord Sugar. It was also pointed out it would be Tom who would most benefit from Lord Al’s involvement.

Ultimately though it was the mention of Tom’s improvements to his curved razor sitting at home waiting to be put on the market that seemed to get the pound signs flashing in Lord Sugar’s eyes. Evidently he thought Tom’s brilliant inventions combined with his own business expertise would be a winning combination.

Perhaps the fact that the challenges set this series ended up having relatively little bearing on the outcome of the competition could be seen as unfair. But since Tom won… who cares?!!