What's reality television without some good old-fashioned bitching and backstabbing?

Richard Henry—eliminated last night from The Apprentice NZ—says he took the entertainment out of the show by doing the right thing.

In a shock double elimination, the 26-year-old Aucklander and Meena Chaggen were sent packing after the boss, Terry Serepisos, accused them of duplicity.

This week, the two teams – Athena and Number 8 – were asked to renovate identical multimillion dollar apartments in Auckland, with the team yielding the maximum rental return winning the task.

Richard Henry, who was asked to lead team Athena, found himself pitted against his partner Nicky Clarke.

Under Nicky's guidance, Number 8 worked cohesively, taking some design risks but ultimately winning the task.

Athena, on the other hand, struggled right from the beginning, with teammates Meena and Catherine Livingstone having an altercation.

Things started looking grim for the team when Meena's bed suddenly appeared in the lounge, which she later claimed was because of fleas.

However, when Serepisos called her bluff in the boardroom, a fumbling Meena revealed Richard had instructed the team to run with the flea story in order to present a united front.

Richard explained he wanted to deal with issues in a professional way.

An unimpressed Serepisos eventually fired both Meena and Richard for lying and trying to hide things from him.

We talked to Richard to find out what actually happened.

DO YOU THINK YOUR ELIMINATION WAS FAIR?

These things don't run in a straight line. Unfortunately, in the scheme of the game, what I did wasn't what they were looking for.

WOULD THE OUTCOME HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT IF YOU HADN'T BEEN ASKED TO LEAVE NUMBER 8?

Oh yeah, definitely. I think it was because I was trying to bring the culture of unity and professionalism to the girls' team – but it's a bit of a survivor game going on there on that side. On Number 8, we looked after each other, we respected each other and we wanted the best businessperson to win.

MR SEREPISOS WAS QUITE HARSH ON YOU IN THE BOARDROOM, ACCUSING YOU OF DUPLICITY. HOW DID YOU TAKE THAT?

I was a bit blown back from that one. Nathan said after the show my decision wasn't going to make for good TV and that's the reality of reality [TV].

Working in the business world, the feedback that I've got is that I did the right thing but we're stopping the entertainment from being seen on the camera… and I can understand that.

NICKY WAS QUITE VISIBLY DISAPPOINTED AFTER YOUR ELIMINATION. WAS IT TOUGH BEING UP AGAINST HER?

Yeah but when we went into it we agreed that we're just going to have fun. We think being competitive against each other is a great element of the relationship. It's very cool.

HAS IT CHANGED YOUR RELATIONSHIP?

I won't go into that.

WE SAW MEENA GOING INTO A SHELL AFTER THE SHOWDOWN WITH CATHERINE. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT?

I think it's quite funny because on the show, when we were actually doing that, it wasn't like that at all. We were working together as a team and Catherine and Meena were working together. It was just implied otherwise.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU COULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY?

That's a really tough question. The thing is, if I was to play another trick I wouldn’t be true to myself.

The coolest thing I've had over the last 12-hour period or after the show is all the feedback that I've had from the business community – that I was doing the right thing and that I was looking after people. We were being a team to perform and that's what you need to do as a leader.

We were taking the entertainment out of the game, discussing things in the evening when the cameraman had gone home. So I'm really happy to go out on that and fall on my sword for doing the right thing and that's how you do business – you look after people. I'm not gonna change just for TV.

THERE WERE QUITE A FEW CLUMSY MOMENTS ON THE SHOW LAST NIGHT…

We were on the show laughing ourselves silly. There were so many things that were going wrong. We had a great time while doing it. I was packing things up and I ripped a sheet out from underneath the ironing board and the iron flew across the room into the wall, making a little bit of dent. Then I ran out of the room and came back in. The camera zoomed in on the floor and it caught the iron face down and still on. You have got to enjoy yourself. It's a shame that they didn't show that side of it on TV.

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE?

I've got my website and that's just screaming ahead at the moment. I've got 25,000 people on the newsletter and that just continues to build. It's a men's magazine and we do about 35 articles a week. So yeah, it's all really exciting.