Apprentices 'smelled rat' before axeman Cullen's double eviction

Claire Murphy

THE double eviction did not come as a shock to the two candidates fired by Bill Cullen in the Apprentice.

Dublin mum Ciara McManus was the first to be shown the door, but the second evictee Jamie Moran said he realised Bill Cullen wasn't for him after a series of stinging insults in the boardroom.

Jamie (25) said that he knew that it was the "break up of the marriage between Jamie and Bill" several weeks before he was let go.

Plank

"I did let Bill upset me a bit in some of the things he said," Jamie revealed. "In week eight he said a couple of times that I was as thick as a plank. I realised then that I wasn't sure this was the guy for me."

But Jamie said that he didn't feel relaxed after Bill fired Ciara McManus and knew that he was going to turn on another contestant in the boardroom,

"I could smell a rat," he said. "Myself and Bill had got on very well at the beginning I think I relaxed into it in the first couple of weeks. I think he saw this -- he saw that I was a bit calmer," the Bear Stearns-trained stockbroker added.

"It was supposed to be a high pressure situation -- he wanted to extenuate this."

Ciara McManus (34) said that she an inkling there was something amiss when she didn't get the opportunity to shake hands with her teammates after she was fired.

"I deserved to go," she said. "As a project manager I was a disaster. I was at loggerheads with Jamie throughout the day and instead of focusing on the task, I was arguing with him," she added. "If I could go back, I suppose I would have taken Jamie aside and sorted it out there and then."

Ciara, who is now a stay-at-home mum to two of her own children and three of her partner's children, said that although the production of the show painted her as isolated within the house, she made many great friends.

Friends

"Whatever way the show was edited, it looked like I didn't get on with Jamie and Kieran at all, but they are actually my good friends," she said.

"I just think they had it in their heads that I shouldn't be there. My strategy didn't work -- I tried not to get too involved.

"I'm a full-time mum at the moment but now that the show is over I can start applying for other jobs," she added.

And Jamie said that he would not have a "bad word to say about Ciara" and dismissed reports of a clique between Kieran Walsh and Caroline McHugh.

clairemurphy @herald.ie