Imagine being woken up at 6am and told that you have a hospital appointment with Sir Alan Sugar, a man whose bedside manner might make Dr. House look like Hot Lips Houlihan. Yes, I'd go back to bed as well, and also hold a pillow over my face for as long as it took.

However, the premise of dropping one's kecks and being asked to cough by a grubby-fingered Amstrad boss doesn't deter the likes of Ben, James and Howard, who squeeze into a people carrier with their fellow female job applicants and await their delivery.

Yes, it's week nine of The Apprentice! And soon another member of the jobseekers' cabal will be fired - hopefully out of a nuclear submarine. But which of the seven business-mangling dwarves will it be?

Speaking of delivery, Sir Alan has summoned the remaining candidates to the new maternity ward at UCL hospital. The task, apparently, is "something to do with babies." Making them cry, perhaps? After all, something tells me that even the most jovial tot wouldn't take too kindly to coochie-coos from the world's most bad-tempered Brillo pad.

Well, perhaps it will be - as this week's disaster waiting to happen is going to take place at Earls Court Baby Show, where the candidates have to sell sprog-related paraphernalia to the yummy mummies of Kensington and beyond. Sugar makes mum and dad – Lorraine and James – head up the teams.

"You've been there, seen it and done it," Alan warns. "So you should be able to guide your troops when they bawl and squabble and need changing." Or something.

There's good news for Team Ignite when Lorraine declares that she's been to the aforementioned baby show once before. And – wouldn't you know it – her juniors are actually feeling good about the arrangement. "I'd rather work for Lorraine than for James," Howard whispers to Kate. "How many people is James going to ask when they're due, when they're not pregnant?"

While they slag off the opposition, Lorraine nips out to view a buggy with a difference – the difference being that it has an ejector seat. Well, that's what the red button indicated to me, and the way Lorraine ends up grappling with it, it's difficult not to wonder which of the poor mites attending the next day's event will end up in orbit first.

Meanwhile, Kate and Howard view their first potential thing to flog – which is a ghastly array of high heeled shoes for babies. A perfect selection should they be expecting Octomom to be in attendance, but a crummy idea otherwise.

And as Lorraine climbs into a birthing pool while cackling more like she's laying an egg than having a baby, Kate and Howard visit a woman who has invented a crash helmet that mothers can put on their toddlers before getting on with their daily chores, such as making a start on that new bottle of Gordon's and settling down to an afternoon of online bingo, while their sprog toddles back into the kitchen to clamber onto the worktop and have a good old fiddle with the gas taps.

After thumbing their noses at a cardboard crib (a solution to all the problems that occur when sending your newborn by post) and a rocking horse that Croesus would grumble about having to fork out for, Lol, Kate and Howard take the time to teleconference. Lorraine is in love with the buggy and the birth bath, but after Howard points out that only 2% of women give birth at home (unless they're in EastEnders, where most women shun sterile units in favour of spawning on Dot's fag-ash covered carpet), Lorraine agrees to ditch the idea as long as she can have the pushchair.

"We liked the Thud-Guard", Kate offers – and the deal is done. "We're great salespeople and if anybody can shift that product tomorrow it's going to be us", quoth Lorraine. Blimey. Attempts at kindness and motivational speaking on The Apprentice? Really? Apparently so – but no amount of esteem-boosting is going to make a difference if they continue to make the simple task of unfolding a pushchair look like they're trying to put up a marquee in a monsoon.

- Read part two of Joe's blog >>