‘There’s a message in there which has inspired youngsters’
SUITED and booted in the boardroom, a formidable business mogul, uttering that iconic line “You’re fired!’” – that’s my mental image of Lord Alan Sugar.
And when I first meet him, his body language lives up to those expectations. He’s leant right back on the sofa, arms tightly crossed, looking at me across the table... almost impatiently.
I’m half expecting him to ask to see my CV.
One thing I didn’t envision was Lord Sugar on a bicycle.
“I fly airplanes, I cycle my bike...” the 70-yearold TV star reveals. “I’m always a five-day-a-week man, weekends I never work, apart from special occasions where there’s exhibitions or seminars or something like that.”
The London-born entrepreneur, who set up his first business – electronics company Amstrad – aged 21, also smiles more than anticipated as we chat.
And he’s especially animated when talking about mentoring the winners of past series of The Apprentice.
So, off-screen, is Lord Sugar actually a bit of a softie at heart?
“Oh, real softie, absolutely – you should ask my wife,” he quips.
“That’s one of the problems of The Apprentice is that people are a little reluctant to talk to me because they think that ... The way I’m edited is it comes across as I’m a bit abrupt and blunt and all that stuff. But that’s not really me in real life,” adds Lord Sugar, who married wife Ann in 1968, and has three children and seven grandchildren.
I start to relax after this exchange (picturing him on his bike also helps) and pluck up the courage to ask whether he ever worries the business focus of the series is overshadowed by its humour and drama.
“It’s a good balance, that’s why the programme is so successful,” he retorts, explaining: “There’s an underlying business message in there which has really inspired youngsters from the age of 13 upwards. The BBC will tell you the viewing audience is from the age of 13, 14 upwards and [it] inspires them to go into business.”
The Apprentice’s muchloved format has stayed largely the same since series six onwards – each week, the candidates are split into two teams to tackle a business task set by Lord Sugar and his two aides, Baroness Karren Brady and Claude Littner.
Whoever loses the task endures a grilling from Lord Sugar in the boardroom, and then at least one person is fired from the process each week.
Interview week sees the remaining candidates’ CVs and business plans torn apart, before the final episode sees the winner given £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar in their business.
“As you’ve seen with other programmes, when people start to try and tinker with things, it ends up as disastrous,” he says when asked if he feels pressure to keep the show fresh.If it’s not broke, you don’t fix it.”
The 13th series has involved tasks such as creating a range of burgers and planning a corporate experience at a sports event, tense confrontations between team members and many larger-than-life contestants.
I’m curious as to how the formidable Lord Sugar, who has amassed over five million followers on Twitter, deals with being in the public eye.
And not for the first time in our chat, I’m surprised by his answer.
“When I first went on social media I was very conscious of the fact that some of what I would call high-profile or semi-highprofile people had got themselves into trouble, because every time I tweet a message, the whole world of media looks at what I say,” he admits. “If I’ve got to say something strongly, I will. But I’m very conscious of what I put out.”
Not that he holds back on his opinions in real life. Having had a glimpse of his “softer side”, I broach the topic of the BBC pay gap which made headlines over the last few months.
He responds: “I don’t think transparency over pay is the correct thing, it’s a private issue and I think it’s disgraceful, actually, that the BBC were forced to publish what people were earning.”
He also has strong views on how the pay gap can be narrowed: “It can be narrowed by the lady herself saying, ‘No, I want more money.’”
I decide to risk his wrath one more time and ask if he ever worries about how he comes across to viewers.
“It doesn’t worry me,” he affirms. “There’s 140 hours of programming, some of it’s quite fun, you see the funny side of things, the humorous side, the softer side of me in the boardroom. But that doesn’t put bums on seats as far as the TV producers are concerned!”
The Apprentice is on BBC One every Wednesday.