THE HIRED THE AND FIRED
As Pamela Laird becomes the latest Irish contestant on The Apprentice, JENNY FRIEL recalls those who braved the boardroom before her (and how they fared after their contracts came to an end)
ANOTHER autumn, another season of The Apprentice — and luckily this year we have another Irish contestant to help pique our interest. Pamela Laird will already be familiar to Irish TV audiences after her appearance on Dragon’s Den in 2017 when she famously turned down three offers of investment for her beauty brand of make-up removal pads, MoxiLoves.
Already available all over Ireland, in branches of Penneys and other department stores, Pamela now wants her products to go international. And so the 28-year-old from Terenure in Dublin is hoping for a top prize of €280,000 from Alan Sugar in return for a 50/50 partnership.
But what can Pamela expect both during her time on the show and afterwards? We take a look back at six former Irish Apprentice candidates to see what their experiences were like.
Hint: one got hired, the rest were unceremoniously fired...
Jennifer Zamparelli
The Apprentice UK, Series 4, 2008
IT’S 11 years since Jennifer Zamparelli, or Maguire as she was known then, appeared on The Apprentice. Probably the most successful of all the Irish contestants, she’s certainly the most highprofile since her stint on the show. Dubbed the ‘Ice Queen’, the then-27-yearold, who was working in Britain as a marketing consultant, made quite the impression, declaring herself to be the ‘best saleswoman in Europe at the moment’. She lasted until week seven before getting fired and has since spoken several times about how she found the whole experience ‘dreadful.’
‘I nearly vomit at the theme song,’ she revealed recently. ‘Hopefully Pamela is more clued in on what to believe and what not to believe. I hope she has good people around her... It was a really difficult time — emotionally, mentally, physically — I’m lucky I got out unscathed.’
It didn’t put her off reality TV shows altogether, however, as she returned to Ireland to compete on RTÉ’s Fáilte Towers, on which she reached the final. While running her own make-up and beauty business, she landed presenting work on The Republic of Telly and proved to be a talented and bolshy host. She now writes and stars in the spin-off series, Bridget & Eamon. She also got a co-presenting gig on 2FM for five years on Breakfast Republic before recently getting her own solo show at the same station. Last year she landed another big gig, co-host of RTÉ’s Dancing With the Stars.
Married with two kids, Florence and Enzo, she says when she applied for The Apprentice, the plan wasn’t fame.
‘The goal was to make money and run a successful business,’ she explained. ‘TV was just a fun thing I did because I had a profile from The Apprentice... I started doing some small bits and then I got hungry and wanted to do more.’
Leah Totton
Winner of The Apprentice UK, Series 9, 2013
ORIGINALLY from Derry, Dr Leah Totton is the only Irish contestant to have won the UK version The Apprentice so far. Her glamorous looks and romance with fellow contestant Mark Wright got her loads of attention on the show, some of it cruel. But at just 24 years old, she convinced Alan Sugar to invest £250,000 to help her set up a highstreet chain of cosmetic treatment clinics. The following year she launched her first outlet in London and it was quickly deemed a success; within four years it was reported she had made her first million.
She broke up with Wright in 2016, and never revealed the identity of her next partner, who she was engaged to up until last year.
While her love life may not have gone smoothly, her business has blossomed. She now has three clinics in London, with plans to open more and has won multiple awards for excellence in care.
She also managed to continue working part-time as an A&E doctor. Latest figures show she has an annual turnover of €1.8 million, and apparently attracts some very high-profile celebrities, thanks to a secret underground entrance where they can discreetly enter and exit.
Treatments including hair transplants, anti-wrinkle injections and lip enhancements. She’s still in partnership with Sugar. ‘He’s not hands-on in terms of the day-today running of the business,’ she explained. ‘But we have a board meeting every month and he’s very involved from a strategy level. He’s great, we get on very well.’
Leah claims she has been too busy to ever watch The Apprentice since she won back in 2013. ‘But I know all the winners and have them and Claude [Littner], Karren [Brady] and Lord Sugar on my Twitter so I get an idea of what’s going on.’
Dillon St Paul
The Apprentice UK, Series 12, 2016
THIS 39-year-old Limerick man was no stranger to reality television when he took part in series 12 of the show in 2016. He and his extremely well-groomed eyebrows had already made a splash on RTÉ’s Fade Street a few years beforehand. A long-time art director for some of Ireland’s glossiest magazines, he prides himself on speaking his mind at all times.
‘I am famous for the truth bomb,’ he told Ryan Tubridy’s radio show. ‘I’m all about saying it like it is, I don’t mess around, I don’t get too emotional with it. If it hurts, sorry. Facts are facts. It’s a science.’
But he also believed his charisma to be one of his most important business tools. ‘I do think I can charm people, and I can charm and manipulate situations to get results,’ he said just before the show started. ‘I’m quite Machiavellian, so sometimes batting the lashes can get you a lot in business as well. Hence the mascara comes in handy.’
Something Pamela might want to take note of is that while he made some good friends during filming, he later discovered some of those relationships were fake.
‘You really can’t trust anyone,’ he said. ‘A lot of the people that you film with are out for themselves.’
Since his appearance on The Apprentice he has continued his art direction work, for Harmonia Publishing and most recently Image Publications. And although now based in Copenhagen, Denmark, he still regularly pops up at Irish social events, all of which he faithfully documents on his social media accounts.
Breffny Morgan
The Apprentice Ireland, Series 2, 2009
HE may not have made the grade to take part in the UK version of the show, but he certainly made a massive impression on the short-lived Irish programme, where Bill Cullen did the hiring and firing — so we just couldn’t leave the ‘Breffmeister’ out. A Harvard graduate from Co. Cork, he was the stand out star in the second series in 2009 for his tongue-tied boardroom gems.
‘It was in my brain, waiting to come out,’ he declared at one point before getting fired in week nine.
He stayed on the reality show circuit afterwards, taking part in Celebrity Salon on TV3 and RTÉ’s Celebrity Bainisteoir. From there he moved into screenwriting but his day job as an analyst and document editor for financial firms brought him to Moscow in 2012, where it’s believed he still lives.
‘It’s a long way removed from the reality TV and nightclub appearance circus back home,’ he said of his new life in Russia. Asked once about advice for future Apprentice stars, he said: ‘Trust no one. The high point of the experience was having interesting conversations with strangers who are either mad keen to befriend you, or mad keen to fight. The bit of TV exposure sort of turbo-boosts all social interactions, and I love it.’
But he also warned of the effects exposure can have on your private life, claiming an online search cost him his American girlfriend after her parents googled him and advised their daughter to end the relationship.
Other ‘Breffmeister’ advice included: ‘Maintain impeccable manners, as more eyes are on you than would normally be,’ and ‘rarely reciprocate hostility from chancers, but keep a private blacklist of names of people who have caused offence’.