Don't get me wrong, Stephen totally failed the task, and should have gone over Gabby.

But at the start of the task, Sugar clearly said ONE of you will be fired.

I realise he's in charge (to a certain extent), but it is a TV programme too, surely firing another person unannounced would cause problems with structuring tasks?

And if he has that power, he could have fired Ricky too if he wanted.

Not a problem really. On the assumption that four people were going to be in the final, and with only one task left as we know the series is designed to run to 12 episodes, there had to be a double firing either this week or next. This, as it turned out! The length of the run is simply designed to incorporate one double firing.

Sugar always says that one person will be fired. He couldn't tip them off beforehand before he knew how the task had panned out, could he? But the candidates themselves were well aware that a double firing was due, as Nick was saying back at the house while they were waiting for the outcome.

It's not the first time there has been a double firing.

In the American version a few years ago Donald Trump fired a whole team of four

Yep! He could have, and he threatened to. One of them was fired. And another one.

They've all got to be fired at some point. They always recruit a couple of extra candidates because there's often a spot of attrition... Adam didn't turn up in series 5, another Adam was taken ill in Junior Apprentice, Raleigh had to go home in series 6 - heck, Laura was offered the chance to walk this series!

In the first couple of series there were only fourteen candidates - ten fired on the tasks and four got through to interviews. Series 3-6, sixteen candidates, one extra always dropped out, and five of them ended up reaching interviews. Nowadays they interview four again because there's an eleventh task... but as long as they've got at least two people to interview, it doesn't massively matter whether he fires one, two, or three of them in any given week. He told one boardroom "I'll fire the whole bloody five of you if I have to! I don't give a shit!"

Basically, there's enough of a buffer at the end with the interview round that they can potentially work around any number of candidates. If he decided he wasn't going to fire anyone over the course of the eleven weeks, he could fire twelve of them at interview. If he went as far as a quadruple firing, he'd still have two to choose between. It'd be the editors' problem, and they've always got more footage than they can use.

Seconded. Plus there was another week this very series where he said (in the boardroom when berating the losing team) that he could fire two people if he wanted to and that the one who came close and was spared was on thin ice. I guessed from the dramatic music as they entered the boardroom that it would be a double firing

There was a double firing in series 7 as well.

It's true that there was basically zero flexibility in allowing for multiple firings, or even a candidate resigning between tasks in Series 1 and 2. That all changed thanks to Syed and the hundred chickens, though.

Obviously there's a limit on how often Sugar can conduct multi-firings, and the BBC's much more stringent commissioning requirements prevent him from carrying out any crazy mass-firings firings like Donald Trump used to do. However, it was confirmed at about the time Series 4 finished that Sugar can either do two double-firings or one treble-firing per series (and that his "I'll fire all five of you" claim was just BS), and considering that would leave two teams of two left for the Week 11 task, I'd imagine that's still the case.