TWELVE weeks of backstabbing, mutiny, Nick Hewer’s remarkable Panama hat during the Dubai trip and an unforgettable pop-pop-pop popty-pinging ready-meal pitch and it all came down to a simple decision.

Should Lord Sugar sign away £250,000 to “clinical” Leah and a possible future claim for damages over a botox injection gone hideously wrong?

Or Duracell bunny boiler Luisa and a certain future claim for damages at employment tribunal?

No contest, really, on The Apprentice series nine final, notwithstanding Leah’s soon-to-be- abandoned “Niks”, second only to Sweeney Todd’s or Death By Sickle as the worst name for a cosmetic treatment centre.

Still, that was more advisable than one Luisa tossed out there for her bakery supplies business, “Masterbake”, not least when she didn’t even consider calling it I’ve Got 99 Problems But A Wilton 233 Nozzle Ain’t One.

I won’t pretend, however, that the final was scintillating TV.

It’s a perpetual anti-climax, especially straight after the interviews task.

But it’s a forgivable dip when looking back on what has been the best series since the Pants Man days of 2009.

And I include the intervening Stuart Baggs “The Brand” and Jedi Jim years in that verdict.

The filming, production, editing, soundtrack and You’re Fired spinoff were all reliably sublime, along with many of Sugar’s one-liners, at least when he wasn’t showing off to his mates in the boardroom after the interviews.

Two are deserving of special mention: “Myles, Kurt would call you Kilometres,” and this savage putdown while reading Zee’s CV: “You aspire to Napoleon. I don’t think Napoleon’s ever been fired from Phones 4u.”

The difference maker for the class of 2013, however, was the inspired casting.

Every candidate has contributed to an ensemble triumph.

They’ve given us Tidy Sidey and Oh My Pow.

I’m most fond of Alex, not just with the popty-pinging, but his assertion that: “I am the Christian Grey of the Valleys,” inquiring, “What are these?” while clutching a bunch of carrots during the farm shop task and turning down Viagara in Dubai: “We don’t need any of that. I’m from Wales.”

Numb-nut Jason will go down in Apprentice folklore for abdicating as project manager with the line: “Everybody here has blood on their lips,” and his clueless Englishman abroad routine.

Neil “Behind every great project manager there’s a Neil Clough”

Clough was one of the series’ great rocks.

And even Luisa’s whiney, croaky, navy destroyer-sinking voice and general abhorrent demeanour made her the perfect panto villain.

She might well feel aggrieved too that Lord Sugar chose to hire Leah who, let’s not forget, asked in week four: “How many potatoes are there in a kilo?”

Nick Hewer also had this advice for the boss: “Under Leah I’ve got ‘stubborn’. Under Luisa I’ve got ‘less stubborn’.”

Under Luisa I’ve got ‘trapdoor above a crocodile pit’.

But write her off at your peril.

Like Stuart Baggs before her, I can see Channel 4 signing her up for Celebrity Five Go To...

And if Sugar lives to regret not hiring Luisa, it won’t be as big as my one overriding disappointment.

That he didn’t bring back Alex, Jason and Zee as a manufactured boyband.

Nozzle 233, the stage is yours.

Spudulike awards

● Chris Froome flying the flag for Britain on ITV4’s Tour de France.

(Sir Bradley who?) ● England’s nail-biting Ashes first test victory on Sky Sports.

● BBC2’s Hunt v Lauda: F1’s Greatest Racing Rivals.

● Luther unshackling itself from substandard previous series and horror-movie pretence to re-emerge as a really cracking cop show.

● Katharina Schüttler and Olivia Colman lifting Channel 4’s Run from being a run of the mill, well-worn, sick-to-death, interwoven storyline drama.

● Ben Shephard’s Daybreak suggestion to make an Afghanistan special of Tipping Point (great idea, take that machine to Kandahar and let the Taliban do its worst).

● And Peter Andre, shortly after, telling Lorraine Kelly: “I got Junior a snake for his birthday.

“It is quite strange when you’re saying to your son, ‘You can go and play with your python for a while’.”

Yeah, they hit adolescence before you know it, don’t they?

Spuduhate awards

● All the idiots with nothing better to do than “inundate” Top Gear with complaints that a snowcapped mountain road wasn’t, as Jeremy Clarkson said, in Hertfordshire.

● Corrie’s ill-conceived race row.

● Rolling news channel reporters reporting on absolutely nothing happening in the two weeks before the royal baby birth.

● The majority of C4’s four-hour Run padded out with lingering looks.

● The requirement for food shows to end in a blasted banquet, like Eat Well For Less which took BBC1 an hour to answer narrator Liza Tarbuck’s question: “Should you save or spend when it comes to fish and chips?” with: “Spend, obviously.”

● A bloke who claims he’s Jesus Christ failing to perform a miracle on This Morning, not even making Eamonn Holmes thin (give a man a real challenge, I say).

● And Gok Live: Stripping For Summer, with this advice to make women’s bodies more pert: “Rub frozen peas on the breast and thigh areas for five minutes each day.”

So my missus tried it. The plus side is that it works. The downside is she’s now banned from Tesco’s frozen aisle.