‘Graduates need to get on and make the coffee’
Margaret Mountford tells Judith Woods about entitled office juniors, ancient wonders and parallels with Theresa May
Call me a philistine, but do we really need yet another documentary on Tutankhamun? Surely everything has already been said on the subject of Howard Carter’s historic find in 1922? These were my thoughts as I dutifully settled down to watch The Man Who Shot Tutankhamun, presented by Margaret Mountford, the steely corporate lawyer who rose to fame as one of Lord Sugar’s gimleteyed advisers on The Apprentice before packing it all in to do a PhD in papyrology, the study of ancient writing.
“And after you’d seen it? Were those still your thoughts?” enquires Mountford, left eyebrow arching quizzically over that unmistakeable ice-blue gaze.
No. Thank heavens, no. I was transfixed by this insight into the way in which the dig’s official photographer, Harry Burton, captured the black-and-white images that in turn seized the world’s imagination.
Mountford, 65, smiles and those eyes come as close to twinkling as I’ve ever seen them.
“It is totally fascinating, isn’t it?” she beams. “Those photographs are absolutely seminal to our understanding, yet most of us have never heard of Harry Burton. I found it so fascinating, I’m going back to Luxor on holiday later in the year.”
Call it fear by association, but even though she left The Apprentice in 2009, Mountford’s short-shrift air of self-assurance still has the power to unnerve. At one point I find myself wondering why she isn’t off negotiating Brexit for us and cutting those bumptious EU apparatchiks down to size.
Surely this country is crying out for an authoritative Oxbridge-educated woman, driven and meticulous, the highly academic only child of a clergyman with a grasp of both economics and social justice? And then there’s also Theresa May.
The parallels between the two women are striking, I observe, but before I can suggest she would make an ace wingwoman for the Prime Minister, Mountford tilts her head and pinions me with a stare.
“Theresa May is by far the best choice for the job and it’s good the Tory party got its act together, rather than continuing the internecine warfare,” she says crisply.
“I was a Remain voter but I don’t think leaving the EU is the end of the world. Labour is an utter shambles, which is not good because now we must set about bringing together the best minds to negotiate the best deal, rather than endlessly arguing about the referendum result.
“At least May has lots of experience, is measured when she speaks and inspires trust.”
Quite so. In truth, Mountford is a lot less forbidding than her reputation – but what you see is what you get. And what you see is a handsome, white-haired lawyer and businesswoman with a sharp mind and, some might say, an equally sharp tongue. But laughter comes easily, too.
She was such good value on The Apprentice – “I bet he has all his certificates framed and his ideal night is sitting in looking at them,” she drily remarked of one swaggering candidate – that it was quite a shock when she left, but having retired from full-time work at 47 (it’s true what they say about City salaries, then) she promptly took up a full-time BA in Ancient World Studies at University College London, then went on to do a part-time MA in the subject.
Given the choice between prime-time telly and a PhD entitled Documentary Papyri from Roman and Byzantine Oxyrhynchus was, she says, a no-brainer. She had never courted television, so leaving was no great loss – although she concedes it
‘I was a Remain voter, but leaving the EU isn’t the end of the world’
‘I never felt discriminated against because I was a woman’
did lead to some interesting followon television projects, such as her latest programme. In fact, her involvement in a series now serves as something of a kitemark of quality.
In The Man Who Shot
Tutankhamun, she travels in the footsteps of Burton, an archaeologist-turned-photographer with a modernday photographer, Harry Wright. Together, they examine the original plates, which are held in Oxford, and then they travel out to Egypt, where he takes photographs with similar equipment in an attempt to recreate the painterly feel of the painstakingly composed originals.
Mountford casts a sceptical eye over Wright’s first picture, and passes characteristic comment on the sand grains that have somehow found their way on to the glass plate – something that Burton, astonishingly, managed to avoid.
It’s a world away from the usual breathless admiration typical of televised exchanges, but it works because it’s authentic; Mountford always conveys what she thinks, even if it’s just via that raised eyebrow.
Although born in Holywood, Co Down, her accent is so neutral that I would never have guessed, despite being from Northern Ireland myself. “I pick up accents wherever I go,” she laughs. “After a holiday in Pakistan I came back with a distinctive Pakistani lilt.”
The daughter of a clergyman, she was an only child who gravitated towards adult company. She married briefly but divorced and has no children; they were never part of her plan.
After reading law at Girton College, Cambridge, Mountford entered the macho world of the City at a time when overt sexism was rife and yet, astonishingly perhaps, she asserts she has “never” experienced any.
“Maybe I’m just terribly unobservant and it was going on all around me,” she wonders aloud. “But I have never felt discriminated against on the grounds of being a woman. I was brought up to believe there was nothing I couldn’t do, so perhaps I projected that.”
She believes a level playing field is the ultimate goal but that it will be not be achieved through boardroom quotas or positive discrimination.
“I am not a feminist, I am a meritocrat,” she says firmly. “I think everyone should have exactly the same opportunities; that is achieved by enforcing equality, not by favouring any one sector of society over another.
“You get young women complaining they have to make coffee because that isn’t what they went to university for. Nonsense! If you are the most junior member of staff you are expected to fetch the coffee – and sometimes the success or failure of a meeting can rest on something as simple as a coffee break. It’s not sexism, it’s common sense. And young men should be expected to do the same.”
Mountford despairs of the sense of “entitlement” felt by graduates who believe that a degree automatically opens employment doors and she thinks it was a “disservice” to push so many young people towards tertiary-level education, when employers will only ever cherry-pick those with very good degrees from top-class universities.
“I feel sorry for those who have struggled for three years to achieve a mediocre degree from a mediocre university and yet emerge without any practical, employable skills,” she sighs. “I think apprenticeships are the way forward, because they provide training on the job and a qualification.”
It’s no surprise, then, that she welcomes the proposed new “T-level”, which would give those with practical talents a technical qualification.
“It looks like we are back where we were 40 years ago,” she observes. “But it’s a good thing, it has to be. It would lend a much-needed legitimacy and transparency to technical skills and be very helpful to employers.”
Mountford, who lives alone with her two cats, is a voracious reader who rarely watches television. She also juggles various roles: chairwoman of the Egypt Exploration Society, honorary secretary of the Hellenic Society, and chairwoman of the governors of a free school for children with speech and language difficulties.
Then there are non-executive directorships, her chairmanship of a group of food companies and of the Bright Ideas Trust, a charity established by Tim Campbell, the very first Apprentice winner, in order to help young people set up businesses.
“I don’t feel old,” she says. “I’m active and engaged. If an interesting television project comes along, that’s great, but if not, it won’t bother me in the slightest.” Again the thought occurs that we might need Mountford more than she needs us; imagine what effect The Left Eyebrow would have on Brussels bureaucrats as Brexit is being thrashed out.
The Man Who Shot Tutankhamun is on BBC Four on Wednesday at 9pm