Ross Noble is to take part in a new version of Celebrity Apprentice down under.

The comic, who divides his time between the UK and Australia, will be competing in the show when it returns to Channel 9 later this year after a nine-year absence.

And Lord Alan Sugar will take his place in the  boardroom for the first time on the antipodean version, replacing mortgage tycoon Mark Bouris.

The celebrities - who also include pop duo The Veronicas, radio presenter Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli and stand-up Rob Shehadie - will be competing to win $100,000 (£55,000) for charity, with Noble nominating the  Australian Red Cross.

On his Nova radio show Wippa told how Noble played practical jokes on the set of the show, whose US version helped burnish Donald Trump’s star status.

'I remember one day I saw [Ross] in a makeup chair and he was a little longer than normal,’ he recalled. ‘He got out of the chair and he looked more orange than Donald Trump. He was covered in make-up, full orange, with the white eyes.

Noble confirmed the prank, saying: ‘I was literally about to walk in and all the sudden you can hear radios going "stop stop, you're not going in like that". 

‘It was ironic because some of the other people on the show had make-up that was more full-on than that!’.

Fellow comic Julia Morris won the first series of Celebrity Apprentice back in 2011, while previous contestants have included stand-up Fiona O’Loughlin and even David Hasselhoff.