Who will be hired? Simon Ambrose and Kristina Grimes, this year's Apprentice finalists. Photograph: Will Rose/Starstock/Photoshot
Tonight, crowning 12 weeks of hilarity, Sir Alan Sugar will finally say "you're hired" to the winner of the third series of The Apprentice. Kate having sensationally resigned in a somewhat fishy manner last week, it's down to Simon and Kristina.
Surely there's no contest. Simon got marmalised in the fake job interview last week (the most toe-curling moment being interviewer read out a long litany of complaints from the tenant of the house he owns - "he employs cowboy builders, we haven't had TV for a year because he's tried to fix the aerial with a wire coathanger..."), and the week before fell so completely to pieces in the shopping channel task that at one point he lost the power of speech.
The gravel-throated Kristina, however, has gone through the tasks with the ease and abrasiveness of dose of salts, achieving such unlikely goals as getting a discount on a jar of leg wax in an Islington chemist, and selling the peculiar Swedish "sunshine machine". Her most memorable success however was in the French market task, where she wrested control of the sausages from the hapless Paul, who was attempting to fry them over what was basically a candle flame. In this she saved the people of the town from salmonella, if not the team from losing the task.
That said, Sir Alan "cocked it up royal", to use his own delicious parlance, last year when he gave the prize to Michelle Dewberry, who lasted about five minutes toiling for Amstrad in Brentwood, instead of the formidable Ruth Badger. So perhaps Simon will be the apprentice after all.
Let us know who you should think will win by voting here.
There will also be live blogging tonight from the marvellous Anna Pickard here.
In the meantime, here are my ten favourite moments from the series, which for the third year running has confirmed that there are few things more joyful than watching a bunch of over-confident idiots making an absolute pig's ear of something. Have I missed any classic bits?
1. The hapless Rory trying to shut Tre up in a meeting: "I am your boss! I am your boss!" Tre: "You're nothing to me."
2. Simon attempting to sell a trampette on the shopping channel by resting it on his groin and screwing the legs in, to inadvertently obscene effect.
3. Katie and Paul's final clash in the boardroom. In a reference to Adam's drinking, Katie snapped "When your two best friends are Mr Pinot and Mr Grigot you want to watch it." Sorry, but if you're going to assassinate someone's character, surely it's best to go full frontal rather than make obscure digs? Even Siralan needed a translation.
4. Adam's revelation in the boardroom the previous week that Paul and Katie were having a relationship. "What, you mean carrying on?" demanded Sir Alan. As Nancy Banks-Smith wrote, he may be the last person alive to call it "canoodling".
5. Adam wondering whether Nigella seeds might be another name for the rubber granules they use on athletics tracks. Sadly not - they're known as rubber granules.
6. Sophie, allegedly a nuclear physicist, admitting that she bought too much milk for the coffee task: "the mistake I made was not realising that milk froths".
7. Katie's cheek-flushed assessment of Kristina once she realised the cat was out of the bag about her and Paul: "a hard, evil little wench".
8. Sir Alan's furious reaction to the women's team "starting their own business" by selling kisses in a Fulham pub (just after trying to start a kids' face-painting initiative during school hours): "Sounds like another old profession I know."
9. Tre's jaw-dropping fluency in critic-aping bullshit during the task where the teams had to sell art - despite censoring pictures of nipples being pinched by a crab.
10. The farmer's market task culminates in Paul and Katie attempting to sell pork sausages to a Muslim kebab shop owner during Ramadan - an episode which took the concept of a glorious disaster to sublime new heights.
