Jenny has been fired. Rejoice!

Then why did I feel sympathy for the woman whose look was described as a cross between Lady Macbeth and the snake Kaa in “The Jungle Book”?

Well, perhaps not quite sympathy, but a little more patience.

After all, this is the woman who turned on her colleagues in the boardroom, reduced team mates to tears, had the gall to ask for tips despite losing customers’ laundry, came up with the daft idea of an environment greeting card, tried to bribe a shopkeeper and didn’t know the meaning of kosher.

Financial pundit Alvin Hall had it about right when he said she had ”distorted the idea of survival”.

But afterwards,  as she explained her demonic behaviour on the post-programme analysis with Adrian Chiles, she didn’t criticise her former team mates and even appeared contrite for her brutish behaviour towards Lucinda.

“Miserable,” was how she herself described her callous boardroom tactics.

“I thought I was being shrewd,” she said. “Covering my back. I can’t believe it.”

Aggression can help in the business world, but it can also hinder, she observed.

Am I being soft? Going all American in the face of a public confession?

The other panelists hardly let up.

“You should’ve been fired last week for the environmental card,” columnist Vanessa Feltz told her.

If Alan Sugar wanted to show that integrity and skill wins a deal,  he should also have fired Michael.

The 25-year-old telesales executive said he was a “good Jewish boy” on his CV to impress Sugar, but came a cropper when he didn’t know what kosher was during an exercise in Marrakech.

Worse than that, he mixed up kosher with halal.

“I’m only half-Jewish,” Michael later explained.

This time it was Sugar who went soft, going all dreamy-eyed over his own enthusistic youth.

Jenny does it again.

Despite showing a woeful lack of common sense with the doomed environmentally themed greetings card idea, and exhibiting a total lack of awareness during a sales pitch when she admitted no longer buying cards to be environmental, she still managed to deflect attention from herself in the boardroom by picking on the quietest woman in the room.

She did it in the second show when Shazia was kicked off, and attempted it against Sara in this week’s episode.

This is not to say she is Miss Teflon - Alan Sugar seemed to be aware of what was happening, but it clearly shows her tactics and helps extend her stay in the house.

“The house” is becoming the right phrase as “The Apprentice” is increasingly beginning to resemble the thinking-man’s “Big Brother”.

The barracking of Sara on her return from the boardroom was just aggressive showmanship. Raef, in pointing out the firing had already been dished out by Sugar in the boardroom, was the only one to come out of the situation well.

The sad thing is how the others so easily jumped on the bandwagon, including Lee, who, for me, is beginning to resemble a loose cannon, and Kevin, who was clutching at anything in the boardroom, except the obvious.

Let’s hope it’s not too long before Jenny goes — that way, we can see more of Lucinda’s increasingly odd wardrobe and Alex biting off more than he can chew.

Is this latest bunch of “Apprentice” candidates the nastiest we have had?

Where’s the energy of Saira Khan, star of the first series? Or the sales skills of Ruth “the Badger” in the second? Where’s the personality of the “Nutter” Jo Cameron, or the bare-faced cheek of Tre Azam?

It is now four weeks into the latest series, and all I see is cowardice.

While there were arguments and character clashes in the past, at least the candidates realised you had to pull together and work as a team to avoid losing and stay out of the boardroom.

But this lot just don’t seem to have cottoned on yet. The laundry exercise in the second week was the only time we have seen it, when the boys pulled together under the leadership of Raef Bjayou.

This week, we even had the girls’ project leader risk her team’s success by putting the weakest technical person in the role of handling a computer.

For what? A personal vendetta? Just what does Helene Speight have against Lucinda Ledgerwood?

The only gelling going on, it seems, is on the boys’ hair. I wonder if their vanity has anything to do with their vacuous performance.

This is a bunch after all who don’t know how to spell “accent” and think the Wallace Collection is a clothes shop.

All that’s left to watch is Jurassic Jenny and her prehistoric business skills.

Bring back Katie Hopkins. At least you could sneakily admire her.

“At a business level you have one speed setting and that’s slow, slow, slow. Someone put the wrong speed dial in when they created you sweetie.”

Ah, nostalgia.

“The Apprentice” has found its bully, sergeant major and army officer — oh, and its first scapegoat.

So scary was the bully that she was even likened to the villain of the last series Katie Hopkins.

But at least you could watch and learn from Hopkins and admire her lucidity, if not her morals.

This bully — step forward Jenny Celerier — is just, well … brutish.

Admittedly, the two women share the same naff dress sense — white suits for Hopkins and ties and neck scarves pulled just a little too meanly and tightly for Celerier.

But Celerier just alternates between ignoring her team or shouting at them, reducing some to tears in front of others.

“I am the project manager and I have not finished speaking”, must surely become her catchphrase.

Making Shazia Wahab the scapegoat for the laundry exercise was a masterclass in hypocrisy.

While Wahab showed enthusiasm and initiative, Celerier came up with the idea of charging five pounds to launder a pillow case and asking for tips from customers whose clothing had gone missing. 

Was this even more embarrassing than the kiss-o-gram policy adopted by the girls’ team in the last series?

Unlike her comments on “The Apprentice” Web site, Wahab was not a “stubborn cow who wants to have the last word” — she was too much in shock at Celerier’s tactics and criticisms to put up a fight in the boardroom.

Under Celerier’s leadership the girls, who won the first challenge, were reduced to arguing among themselves rather like washerwomen, as Adrian Chiles described it in the post-programme analysis.

The boys on the other hand were transformed under the leadership of Raef Bjayou, who really can’t be that posh AND be on television.

After the first week of the business TV reality show, the candidates are beginning to stand out more than the boys’ haircuts, and possibly even Alan Sugar’s increasingly garish ties.

And an early likely winner is Simon Smith who slipped seamlessly into his former role as an NCO in the Royal Artillery, following the orders of Bjayou and putting in the hard graft.

As he said himself: “I’m the sergeant major and Bjayou is the officer. It’s like the old days.”