IF I was a really boring person, I’d talk about how this week’s episode of The Apprentice (Wednesday, BBC1) was all about the gender divide, looking at how some men may be dismissive of women’s concerns, and how Harrison stood back from the rough and tumble of the task as he didn’t know anything about women’s fashion and didn’t seem especially keen to learn: what kind of big strong alpha male concerns himself with dresses and frills? But I’m not a boring person, so I won’t. Instead, I’m going to talk about the dread of being embarrassed.

No-one likes to be embarrassed, but some of us are able to laugh it off or even turn it into a funny story, whereas others writhe and blush and agonise, reliving the awful moment constantly, wondering what they could have done differently.

I had an embarrassing moment yesterday. As I write this I’m in Ukraine, visiting Chernobyl. As we drove along the road to Pripyat my guide showed me a photo of the town when it was still a neat and new Soviet community. We could see clusters of identical apartment blocks. Then he lowered the photo and we looked at the landscape as it is now: there were no buildings. All we could see were trees. My stern Ukrainian guide turned to me and said: “You will understand all the buildings have been stolen.”

I was so dazed by the strange, eerie atmosphere that I looked at him in wide-eyed innocence and said: “Stolen?!”

Behind me, my smug boyfriend snorted and laughed, and I realised that this had simply been a joke, but its severe Ukrainian delivery had masked its humour. It seems when the Ukrainians do deadpan humour, they really do deadpan humour. So the two men grinned at one another over my head: the daft girl thinks buildings can be stolen…? Of course, he simply meant that nature had reclaimed the town and so the previously open, clear view was now obscured.

But I shrugged it off. Hey, I’m on the trip of a lifetime to Chernobyl. I’m not going to worry about having a daft moment.

Not so for the candidates in The Apprentice this week, where a terrible error was made and it was all down to the fear of being made to look silly.

The task was about fashion. Each team had to represent a designer, put on a fashion show to exhibit the togs, and then try to sell as much as possible to the style gurus and retailers who were present.

The losing team were representing an award-winning designer called Helen Woollams, but what kind of funky designer would sell her clothing under such a sensible, pedestrian name? Not her. Instead, she had branded her clothing range as “Hellavagirl”.

But try telling the candidates that. They got the brand name completely wrong, even though common sense suggests that when you’re promoting an item the most basic fact you must learn is the item’s name! So Jade set out to pitch her designer’s work to a fashion magazine, and told the bemused editors, again and again, that she was representing a brand called Helen Woollams. They frowned, they paused, they gently prompted her … Helen Woollams? Is that the name? Are you sure?

Anyone else would have picked up on these not very subtle cues: why do they keep asking me about the name? Is it indeed Helen Woollams? Should I ask for a moment to double-check? But that would have been a tad embarrassing, wouldn’t it? To have to retreat for a moment to confirm some very simple and basic information. So instead of taking that little humiliation and getting her facts straight, Jade just steamed on ahead. Yes! Helen Woollams is the name of the brand! Yes! No doubts!

This panicky desperation to avoid a little stumble, a little pause, a little flurry of fact-checking, meant she made a fool of herself and the editors were not impressed. Neither was Helen Woollams when she arrived at the fashion show ahead of the launch to see “Helen Woollams” spelled out across the room in huge, silver helium balloons. Er, that’s not the brand’s name, she had to say. It’s Hellavagirl. And so the humiliated team had to quickly grab their daft balloons and hide them in a side room.

Jade’s desire to avoid a bit of embarrassment just led her team into a far deeper humiliation and an eventual loss in the boardroom where, quite rightly, she was one of the candidates to be fired.

Harrison was also fired as he stood around like a useless lump for most of the task, seeming to think it was beneath him to be dabbling in women’s fashion, and if there’s anything Lord Sugar hates it’s a candidate who shuffles about being ineffectual. Was Harrison embarrassed to throw himself into the frills and glamour of ladies’ clothing? If so, we can say fear of embarrassment cost them both their places in the contest.