This has always intrigued me.

On The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice, everyone has the piss taken out of them - both contestants and judges. But on You're Fired, it's only the contestants. Not only does Dara O'Briain never crack gags about Alan and co, the panelists never do either. Given how much mileage there is in mocking Nick Hewer in particular, this has always struck me as odd.

It must be a rule. But does anyone know why it exists? Is it a contractual stipulation that Sugar insists upon?

They do mock them occasionally.

Really? I don't think I've ever see it happen.

It'd odd - on Extra Slice, the viewers/audience are invited to be on the side of the contestants and view Paul Hollywood as a sort of panto villain. Something which is broadly true of most reality shows, I guess. But on You're Fired, everyone's encouraged to be on the side of Sir Alan.

Take Sugar's remark about penguins in the Arctic. If a contestant had said that, Dara would have needled them relentlessly for their geographical goof. But because Sir Alan said it: nothing.

I think they mock Claude a little.

Once, when Margaret was on the show, she referred to a contestant as a Cassandra, and on YF they made fun of AS for apparently not knowing what that means. That's the only time I can recall a joke being made at his expense.

It's just a hunch, but I'd tend to take an insistence on being addressed as "Lord" as an indication of a thin skin.

Another one I remember was when Nick commented in Series 5 about how he made it his business to watch Noorul during one task. In context it was because of how spectacularly useless Noorul was, but they re-edited it on that week's You're Fired to make Nick look like some type of creepy stalker.

Then on a food-related task in Series 7 or 8, Nick took the opportunity to help himself to quite a few of the sample products from the team he was watching, which also got poked fun at.

Sugar's intro last year was compared to a suicide attempt, IIRC.

I think it was a couple of years ago, but I remember that as well.

Nick does the rounds on panel shows so he's obviously not averse to some mocking from comedians like Dara. Neither the Lord nor the Baroness strike me as having a great sense of humour or being able to laugh at themselves to be honest. Even if it wasn't contractual, would you dare?

I always thought that rather like corporal Jones, a competitor should wait for everyone to yes/no Lord sugar, and slightly late say Sr'Alan. Wizard jape.

They seem to wait until the end and then just do a massive compilation to mock the board all in one go rather than mock them through out the series. I seem to remember that even the Lord Sugar looking as if he was going to commit suicide came on the You're Hired show. Though Nick and Karen seem to occasionally get mocked during the course of the series if they say or do something particularly mock worthy. Just a theory though

I'd love to see someone in the board room, when confronted by a raging SAS, when he's moaning about "crap product and no thought" to turn round and tell him, "well your Email was well thought out, wasn't it"