Candidates applying for the fourth series were invited to do so through the programme's official website, leading to 20,000 applications being submitted for the series,"The Apprentice – Let the boardroom battle commence!", BBC Press Office, 18 March 2008 and 16 of them making it through to take part in the show. Its first episode aired on 26 March 2008, with its debut attracting 6.4 million viewers. This climbed to around 8.9 million viewers for the final episode, with an additional 800,000 viewers tuning in for the episode's final 15 minutes, to catch Lee McQueen winning the series. Lee went on to initially work for Sugar's company AMSHOLD, where he phoned in sick on his first day.
