Sugar fires tax adviser over comic book failure

THE second contestant to be fired by Lord Sugar in the new series of The Apprentice has said he is “bitterly disappointed”.

Tax adviser David Alden (32) from East Yorkshire went up against Frank Brooks and Kurran Pooni in the boardroom after the men’s team failed to create and sell a children’s augmented reality comic book.

The seven women and eight men vying for Lord Sugar’s £250,000 investment in their business had to create a book which appealed to the eight-to-12 age bracket before convincing publishers to invest.

The men’s team, project managed by senior marketing manager Brooks (27), floundered.

Lord Sugar deemed their astronaut-themed comic, Benji’s Space Adventures, unoriginal.

The business mogul ultimately deemed Alden the least useful in the task, due to his lack of ideas and poor pitching style.

Alden told the Press Association: “I was of course brutally disappointed to leave the series at this early stage. I felt I had so much more to give.

“I also feel I was just starting to come out of my shell.

“In a group of loud voices and big personalities, I was just starting to get my voice heard.”

The women’s team unanimously chose a unisex, hip hop-inspired protagonist called MC Gogo for their comic and, despite friction between project manager Khadija Kalifa and tennis event entrepreneur Sabrina Stocker, the group sold a total of 14,500 copies.

The men managed only to sell 950.