Celebrity Apprentice 2025 may have crowned JB Gill and his team as winners, but it turns out their festive creation Gary the Penguin hasn’t gone down quite so sweetly with shoppers.
JB led teammates Sarah Hadland, Angela Scanlon, Matt Morsia, Shazia Mirza and Thomas Skinner to victory in Lord Alan Sugar’s Christmas spin-off, thanks to their quirky charity biscuit. The team secured major retail deals and shifted an impressive 452,000 Gary the Penguin biscuits through stores including Tesco, ASDA and Ocado.
All profits from the sales went straight to Children in Need, but customers who actually sampled the biscuit have been far less generous in their verdicts.
JB Gill’s team won The Celebrity Apprentice with Gary the Penguin (Credit: BBC)
Celebrity Apprentice’s Gary the Penguin biscuit
JB, Shazia and Thomas were responsible for developing Gary the Penguin’s flavour, settling on an unusual mix of bubblegum, lemon and white pepper.
Explaining the thinking in the boardroom, JB told Lord Sugar: “You tasked us with doing something that was going to stand out on the shelves. Our whole focus was trying to do something that’s a little bit different but still wasn’t offensive to any palate.”
Even Lord Sugar himself seemed taken aback, muttering “blimey” as the white pepper hit. And judging by online reviews, many shoppers felt the same – and then some.
After the biscuits launched earlier this month, one Tesco customer handed it just one out of five stars, writing: “Horrible, tasted like it was not edible and super spicy.”
Another added: “Sadly it was completely inedible – like eating a spicy bar of soap. Had one bite and had to bin the rest as no one else in the house would eat it! Not sure how you get gingerbread so wrong.”
Gary the Penguin was described as ‘spicy soap’ by one customer (Credit: BBC)
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