IT’S THE PEOPLE THAT MAKE THIS SHOW GREAT
With new series The Apprentice Best Bits set to launch, Danielle de Wolfe chats with Lord Sugar, Baroness Brady and Claude Littner to find out more
FILMING for the sixteenth series of business-meetsreality show The Apprentice has been postponed due to Covid-19, so viewers are set to relive some of its most impressive – and disastrous – moments courtesy of The Apprentice Best Bits.
The UK version of the hit show followed close behind the original US Apprentice format hosted by a prepresidential Donald Trump.
“If you recall initially, the prize was to work for me,” recalls Lord Sugar, 73. “After series six, I said it wasn’t working out properly because it was very difficult to find a position for someone where there weren’t any available. I changed it to going into partnership with a winner and that has been very successful.”
Aside from the prize, its format has remained largely unchanged. So, what keeps viewers coming back for more?
“We all have an idea for a business – or we all think there’s a secret businessman in us – and we like to see the decisions that people make and how they make them,” declares Lord Sugar’s loyal boardroom adviser, Baroness Karren Brady, 51.
“Most of us spend lots of time shouting at the television and saying, ‘I would have done it differently!’.”
Together with fellow hawk-eyed adviser Claude
Littner, 71, the pair act as Lord Sugar’s eyes and ears throughout the gruelling 12-week process.
“The Apprentice captures buying, selling, tough negotiations, interviews – a whole host of things which I think play into what today’s young people are aspiring to,” says Claude.
“Nowadays – because
jobs are hard to come by and because of advances in technology – I think more people are deciding that the best way forward is to actually start their own business.
“The show is a combination of great fun and the fact everyone thinks they can do better than the apprentices.”
Nearing the final hurdle of the competition, the interview stage is known for sending even the most confident candidate into a blind panic.
“It’s also the only time the candidates aren’t in a team, can’t hide behind someone else, can’t blame someone else – they really are incredibly exposed,” notes Claude.
“Whether they’ve got the strength of character, the overall willingness to start a business, get the investment and work with Alan Sugar. For me that’s the most defining moment really, because people can talk the talk but that doesn’t mean to say they can walk the walk.”
“It must be the most terrifying job interview process on television,” says Baroness Brady matter-offactly.
“There’s this classic one where Solomon (Akhtar), one of the candidates, comes in for his interview with Claude, and Claude sends him out because all he’s done is issue pictures of sail boats.
“There’s no information in the business plan. And he gets so flustered that he tries to leave through a window because he can’t find the door.”
The Apprentice Best Bits dedicates an entire episode to the show’s larger than life characters.
“We sat down and looked at which outstanding characters we needed to bring in,” says Lord Sugar.
“Paul Torrisi rolled straight off my tongue! Ruth Badger was another one. In later years, we had last year’s candidate Thomas Skinner. If you sit down and think about it, there have been some great characters.”
“It’s the people that make this show great,” remarks Baroness Brady.
The Apprentice Best Bits starts next Thursday on BBC1 at 9pm