It was one of the most captivating scenes in the BBC's The Apprentice series so far: puce-faced high-flyer Katie Hopkins wringing her hands as she contemplated throwing in the towel in the contest to become Sir Alan Sugar's employee. During the series, the 31-year-old management consultant has proved herself utterly ruthless and wished grisly deaths upon most of her fellow contestants while smiling sweetly from under her lashes, like Pollyanna gone bad.

The penultimate episode on Wednesday evening saw the remaining five contenders, including Hopkins, being rigorously grilled in a series of intense one-to-one interviews by Sir Alan's closest business buddies.

Although it was not shown, the female contestants referred to being asked about whether they intended taking maternity leave. After tearing apart the contestants' CVs and questioning them for hours, the trio promptly reported back.

This was when the Hopkins machine seemed to falter. However, despite all the highly visible reasons which Sugar could have used to dismiss her, it was a question about childcare arrangements which finally stopped her in her tracks. None of the people sitting round the board table actually believed this to be the real reason for turning down a place in the final, but it was more palatable to Sir Alan's pride than the truth: that Hopkins was a glory-seeker uninterested in taking up the job. Regardless of this, by enquiring about a prospective employee's family set-up was Sir Alan on shaky ground?

Mel Sangster, a lawyer with Dundas and Wilson in Edinburgh, thinks so. "By asking the question, they haven't broken the law but it does show a potential for a discriminatory attitude. If someone did ask those sorts of questions in an interview it would potentially provide the individual with grounds to use as evidence in a tribunal claim that they didn't get the job because of discrimination on the grounds of sex. It really opens up and provides evidence for the individual and a tribunal would certainly take that into account."

"Obviously there are requirements of the job, whether it is located in London, Edinburgh or Glasgow. We would recommend that if you are asking the question, you ask it in a consistent manner to everybody in a non-contentious manner. For example: The job is positioned in London. Does that create any difficulties for you?'"

Elaine Peacock, a consultant at Joslin Rowe in Glasgow, deals with recruitment to the financial sector. She believes that the interview styles employed by Sir Alan's henchmen were somewhat dated. "Some of the questioning was quite direct. Nowadays, from a diversity, PC and even an age discrimination point of view, you would not come across those questions. However, they all came to the same conclusions about the candidates that, using a more current interviewing method, you would have come to anyway."