"Well, I think he jumped before he was pushed."
Tim Campbell and Baroness Karren Brady were not particularly happy with Dr Jana Denzel’s decision to quit The Apprentice.
Lord Sugar and the boardroom were left stunned in the latest episode when Jana withdrew before learning the result of the task.
The cosmetic dentist was the project manager for the task, which required the teams to design and market an Easter egg.
However, Jana later told Lord Sugar he was not suited to the process.
His team had lost, and when asked if he wanted to reconsider, he stood by his decision. His departure left a teammate vulnerable to elimination.
After the candidates left the boardroom, Lord Sugar told Karren and Tim:
“That was a bit of a shock, wasn’t it? Jana throwing in the towel like he did.”
Tim replied: “What’s really disappointing for me is that so many people, including myself, would have given their left arm to be in this process – and he’s just resigned.”
Karren added: “Well, I think he jumped before he was pushed. I mean, they have lost, not by a little bit – by a huge margin.”
On The Apprentice aftershow You’re Fired, Karren reiterated:
“I think if you start the process, you really should see it through.”
She added that she “hopes he learnt something” from the experience as “that’s really important to us”.
Lord Sugar ultimately decided not to fire anyone, saying the team followed Jana’s vision. He said he would have “lost credibility” if he had eliminated another contestant simply because Jana had quit.
It had been speculated that Dr Jana Denzel quit after he was given a dressing down for using an offensive term.
However, he revealed his decision was due to a comment Lord Sugar had made earlier in the process.
Jana said: “If you’ve been watching the series so far, you would have seen in Episode Four, Lord Sugar says to me, ‘You’ve been very, very quiet throughout the process’.
“That one line is really what hit me because, in Task One, I did both in negotiations and set a record of The Apprentice history at 48%.
“Task Two, you don’t see it, but Anisa [Khan] puts me in charge of negotiations.
“I overcome with objections, and I do all the work there for us to win the task.
“Task Three is my best episode yet but I just get a 10-second camera feature.
“It was my best in negotiation and Liam [Snellin] put me in charge of doing negotiation there.
“So I felt that comment from Lord Sugar was just not accurate or truthful at all.”
“I told myself, ‘Look, you know what, a business partnership is like a marriage. You’ve got to be a great fit for both parties’.
“And at that point, if Lord Sugar can’t see all the positive contributions I’ve made throughout the show when all my candidates can because it wasn’t me that branded myself the king of negotiations – that was other candidates saying it in the boardroom to Lord Sugar.
“So when he said, ‘You call yourself that’, I did say, ‘I don’t, but okay’.
“I felt like if [Lord Sugar is] gonna say that I’ve been very quiet when I’ve been given 100% my whole time, I just don’t think me and him are a great fit.
“So it was at the end of Episode Four where I already made up my decision to leave the process.”
Speaking on You’re Fired, Jana said he “loved the experience” and was “thankful” for his time on the show.
However, he believed it was “unfair” to stay when others wanted to be there more than he did.
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