Dillon St. Paul and Sofiane Khelfa have been fired from ‘The Apprentice’.
The art director and the senior sales executive have become the latest contestants to get the boot from reality TV show after their team Titans failed to create the best virtual reality game and their lacklustre pitch was criticised by top gaming firms.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, Dillon said: "Obviously I’m sad to be leaving. I feel like I had a lot more to give and I shouldn’t have been fired when I was."
Sofiane added: "I’m absolutely gutted. I think Lord Sugar made the wrong decision, I still think I’m better than anyone else left in the competition. It’s devastating."
Titans – comprised also of Grainne McCoy and Alana Spencer – appeared to be doomed from the start after Sofiane was made Project Manager and put Dillon and Alana in charge of making the software instead of taking advantage of the Irish hunk’s illustration skills and having him design the character for branding.
Dillon and Alana rushed off to come up with a concept for their game and quickly decided that they’d base it under water and have their lead character put a puzzle together using pieces of sea shell to make a completed larger shell.
Once their plan was in place, Grainne and Sofiane had to design the lead character and work out a title for their game, which they agreed to call ‘Magic Shells’.
Dillon and Alana weren’t completely sold on the name of the game and felt they had to make the theme a little younger to tie in with the illustration of the lead character.
And their pitch didn’t go according to plan either as they failed to impress gaming bosses at the world-famous Comic Con exhibition in London with their sloppy speeches and inability to answer their questions informatively and with confidence.
Nebula – comprised of Jessica Cunningham, Courtney Wood, Frances Bishop and Trishna Thakrar – on the other hand got off to a flying start as they decided to run with an intergalactic theme based on a multi-coloured badger lost in space.
Their pitch proved a success with industry bosses as five out of seven of them said they would be interested in investing if the programme was tweaked slightly.
After learning the outcome of the task, Lord Sugar pulled Titans back into the boardroom and asked Sofiane to select the two people he’d like to join him.
Sofiane opted for Dillon because he felt his game plan was too young for the target audience and Grainne as, on reflection, he didn’t think she’d done any work.
Lord Sugar then decided to axe Dillon and Sofiane from the competition.
He said: "Dillon, you’ve been labelled the creative person, but at the end of the day this wasn’t creative. You know what, Sof disregards instructions but you’re exactly the same I think. I think once you get something in your head, you’re not going to listen to anybody. It’s not a case of hindsight, I keep hearing ‘had you had your time again, if you did this again, had you rethought it again and whilst you are a very, very, very nice person Dillon…I don’t think you have the potential to be my business partner."
He then followed it with: "It’s getting very, very close to the end now. Sofiane, you go on your own, you do your own thing…I’m finding it difficult that you are a potential winner, Sofiane you’re fired!"
Dillon St. Paul and Sofiane Khelfa axed from Apprentice
