Apprentice 2018: here's how Kurran really broke his arm in the candidates’ house
Frank Brooks explains how the 'arm wrestling' incident between Kurran Pooni and Daniel Elahi left Kurran in a sling. Warning: contains spoilers for episode 3
Over 14 series of The Apprentice, we’ve witnessed many boardroom casualties thanks to Lord Sugar’s firing finger – but the most recent Apprentice episode featured a real-life injury.
Although fighting fit throughout this week's doughnut-making task, candidate Kurran Pooni entered the boardroom with his arm in a sling, telling Lord Sugar he’d fractured it in an arm-wrestling tournament with his fellow contestants the night before.
Although the show's final cut showed Lord Sugar serving up some classic lines at the aspiring actor (“You finally got into a cast anyway… Got your big break. And from what I’ve heard you’ve been in Casualty”), viewers didn’t hear about what really happened in the contestants' house.
However, Frank Brooks, the candidate who was fired at the end of the episode for his lack of contribution, has now explained to RadioTimes.com exactly how Kurran broke his arm.
We're looking at you Daniel Elahi.
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"It started with the girls talking about how strong they were. Somebody then suggested having an arm wrestling competition. The girls actually started it!” Frank said.
“Boys being boys, they wanted to show off their strength as well. A few of us went against one another and the final round was Daniel versus Kurran. About 10 seconds into this arm wrestle there was this most awful noise. I thought somebody had broken a chair it was that loud!
“Poor Kurran. His face dropped and his bottom lip was going. All the colour drained from him. It wasn't nice to see.”
According to Frank, the girls stayed with Kurran to “calm him down”, while he distanced himself from the scene with Daniel who was “feeling really bad" about injuring Kurran. “[Daniel] was really conscious of what had happened and wasn’t laddy about it,” said Frank. “It was really a testament to his character.”
Frank – who was brought back in the final boardroom with Project Manager Tom and Jasmine Kundra – also offered a suggestion for why Kurran wasn’t ready to make jokes about the fracture in the boardroom.
“I think he probably had a sleepless night,” he said. “He might have questioned how he'd continue in the process, whether Lord Sugar was going to say, 'You've been messing about, you've got to go'. I think he was a little bit nervous.”
So now we know how Kurran really broke his arm, but Frank's version of events still leaves us with an impossible question: why didn't Kayode – a candidate who has an arm to spare, according to the Photoshop fail in his official candidate image – make it to the arm wrestling final?
The Apprentice continues 9pm Wednesday, BBC1
