WHEN life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Unless you’re a contestant on BBC1’s business game show.

In which case, chop them. Chop them all!

Chop them, chop them, chop them, chop them, chop them. CHOP THE LEMONS.

At best, a clear case of unhinged twonkery requiring immediate intervention. worst, the comprehensive, top-to-tail strategy of a project manager nightmare named Sarah for the opening selling task on The Apprentice, back for its 10th series with an almighty roar and a record 20 abject dingbats.

Which might seem excessive during those tricky, getting-to-know-them early rounds.

But the more the merrier. This show can absorb them all.

Any deadwood is simply airbrushed from the action, unlike on Strictly or X Factor,which make you sit through the deathly dull filler acts for hours at a time.

In any case, so many of the jelly-brained mush-heads have already floated to the top.

Most deluded? Robert: “My absolute worst nightmare is getting to age 40 with a 50-grand salary.”

Don’t worry, pal. Absolutely no danger of that.

Scott: “I see myself as a mix between Gandhi and the Wolf of Wall Street.”

The Wandhi of Wall Street?

And Chiles, played by Danny Mills, the Max Branning years.

Those three bit the bullet.

But we still have third-person speaking Felipe: “Felipe’s strategy in the process is to be Felipe.”

Daniel who found himself dressed as a giant hot dog within half an hour and trumpeted: “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’. But there are five in ‘individual brilliance’.”

And four in ‘excruciating prize pillock’.

Nurun who explained her title “marketing officer and fashion retailer”: “I sell scarves at a market.”

“Business management graduate” Ella Jade who didn’t, so allow me: Jobless.

And “former PA and hypnotherapist” Sarah, the lemon maniac who saw profits in selling individual slices.

The casting has produced a sensational start, along with two terrific tasks and the familiar cut-throat editing, wonderful shots of London, soundtrack that included John Williams’ chase though Cairo’s alleys in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the losers’ cafe’s polystyrene cups of despair.

Lord Sugar is at his snappy best, issuing an insta-firing, proclaiming: “I’m not interested in all this Shoreditch, yuppie, arty-farty b*****s,” and trashing the boys’ wearable technology Christmas jumper: “Even the shoplifters would bring it back.”

Two tasks down and it’s 2-0 to the girls, a scoreline due in almost no respect to the girls who contrived to go to the T-shirt printers without any “seed capital”, or “money” as humans call it. And they achieved a first in coming up with a team name so bad, Decadence, they had to change it.

An on-fire Nick Hewer told Sugar: “It is an odd name to choose, bearing in mind it combines decay, decline, even moral turpitude with loads of self-indulgence. Hardly the qualities I would have thought you would wish to find in your next business partner.”

Nick, it makes them over-qualified for The Apprentice.

This week’s Couch Potato Spudulikes...

C5’s Gotham.

Dara O’Briain’s fabulous You’re Fired

The thrilling final 10 minutes of Homeland’s otherwise stilted series opener. The Peter Capaldi/Frank Skinner double act on Doctor Who. (Make him the next companion.)

Mark Wright’s Superman paso doble Strictly routine, the funniest superhero calamity since Delboy and Rodney as Batman and Robin.

X Factor’s Lauren Platt, Andrea Faustini, Mel B, and heroic Stevi Ritchie performing Livin’ La Vida Loca like a Wilko sales manager at the Christmas office party.

And This Morning’s Phillip Schofield asking “the man who’s had sex with 700 cars” about his beloved VW Beetle named Vanilla: “What happens if somebody rear ends her?”

This week’s Couch Potato Spuduhates...

ITV’s historically inaccurate thespian bun-fight The Great Fire

Strictly’s scriptwriters downing tools which dirge like: “This week they’re dancing to a song from Funny Girl, so when she gets in front of the judges, let’s hope she still has a smile on her face.” Because the audience won’t.

Louis Walsh telling five X Factor acts in one night: “You will go far in the competition.” Plus Cheryl bringing nothing to the party.

The One Show’s Matt Baker linking straight from guest Bryan Adams’ grandfather enlisting in World War I aged 15 to his new album because: “Your teenage years, what you were doing, that’s really at the heart of it, isn’t it?”

And the one-minute countdown on Ian Beale’s stopwatch that took only 53 seconds. First time EastEnders has ever felt like it should have lasted longer.