Joy Stefanicki fired by Lord Alan Sugar on The Apprentice

Joy faced Lord Sugar’s wrath in the boardroom for taking too much of a back seat.

He said: “I haven’t seen anything from you and neither have my two colleagues. Joy – you’re fired!”

Joy admits that she was more daunted by the boardroom experience than she had expected.

She said: “It was really tense and normally I’m the type of person who cracks a joke in that sort of atmosphere.

“But you just wouldn’t because it’s very serious.

“It’s the most surreal situation with the lights, the other candidates and Lord Sugar just sitting there in front of you.

“To be honest, I had a bit of a moment – maybe I hadn’t had my cornflakes or something.”

Joy, 31, is the second candidate to leave the show, after the girls’ team botched their attempt to design a beach accessory.

A former pupil of Sherborne House school in Chandler’s Ford, Joy says that she was trying to stay out of team arguments.

She said: “Lord Sugar didn’t think he’d seen me do anything.

“But actually there was just constant arguing in the girls’ team and I made a strategic decision not to get involved.

“I decided I wanted to behave professionally and it went against me.”

Joy’s team opted to design a beach bookstand during the task but they ended up with no orders and were beaten by the boys’ team, who designed a beach towel with an integrated pillow and drinks cooler Joy thinks that if she had been on the other side, she would have had more of a chance to shine.

She said: “When Stella moved over to the boys’ team I was really jealous.

“I got on well with the guys, I tended to spend more time with them in the house.

“And there was some real eye candy amongst them as well.”

But single Joy insists that she wasn’t looking for romance. She said: “The only man I wanted to impress was Lord Sugar.”

Joy applied for The Apprentice after being made redundant from her PR and marketing job in New York.

She said: “I’d just come back from New York and I was in a financial pickle.

“I was even housesitting for people because I couldn’t afford rent.

“Basically, I had nothing to lose at the time and once you’ve been given this kind of opportunity, you can’t not take it.”

She’s not the only one in her family to have been affected by the tough economic times.

Just last week the Daily Echo reported that her parents, Noah and Carol Stefanicki, from Ower, were shutting their Southampton handbag and jewellery store Pippa Janes.

Joy is now based in Birmingham and runs her own PR and marketing company, Joyous Communic-ations, but she hasn’t decided yet what the next step in her career will be.

She said: “I’m just going to wait to see what happens next.

“I’ve got a few ideas but I’m open to offers of all varieties.”

She’s tipping banker Stella English to win the show.

She said: “Stella’s a little bit like a robot, in a good way – she’s totally focused and full of confidence.

“She’s got her eye on the prize and I just don’t think she’ll slip up.”

Another candidate joined Joy in leaving the show this week.

Graduate Raleigh Addington decided to walk out after his brother was badly injured while serving in Afghanistan.