There is a cosmopolitan flavour to the new series of The Apprentice with a Canadian-born social worker, a lawyer from Colombia and two contestants from Dublin. Now into its 10th year, the BBC1 show will open its doors to 20 business wannabes – four more than usual – to freshen up a format in danger of going stale.
But Lord Sugar, the granite face of the show since it started on BBC2, is less enthusiastic about throwing open the country’s borders to all comers. He says there is a need to “protect the homeland and not let people in to abuse our benefits system. Maybe close the borders a little bit and come up with some innovative ways to protect our country from the people that can come here and get work or allegedly get work – get benefits more to the point – that’s where I would concentrate.”
Of Ukip, the Labour peer says: “There are some of the things that they stand for which you find it hard to disagree with.” Mention of Nigel Farage, however, provokes the sort of tirade usually reserved for a hapless project manager around the boardroom table. “I think they have got a problem with the leader,” says Sugar. “He looks like a bit of a thug boyo with his pint of beer in his hand, he does adverts for golf clubs now [actually a Ryder Cup plug for bookmaker Paddy Power] and all that stuff. Is he a leader? Really?” Not that Sugar, who was (briefly) Gordon Brown’s enterprise tsar after he was ennobled in 2009, wants to get out of Europe. “It’s just not on, it’s total nonsense,” he says. “We are too far entrenched.”
Nick Clegg is also in his sights (“I don’t know what the hell’s happening with him”) and Ed Miliband is not spared. “He’s got his problems also,” says Sugar of the Labour leader. “Unfortunately he’s not liked by a lot of people, he doesn’t come across as someone you would want to embrace.”
David Cameron, he says, “made a very good speech and the polls have swung a little bit on the basis of that. Farage has muddied the waters, I don’t know where it’s going to go. All I do know is that people have very short memories; the last impressions are normally the most important.”
The same might be said of the contestants on The Apprentice. At first glance the new bunch are as back-biting and endearingly loathsome as ever. Unlike with The X Factor, say, the non-talent pool is showing no sign of drying up. “What happens is they get a bit carried away with themselves, some of them,” says Sugar. “There was a core of very clever and sensible people among this lot and clearly there are a couple of characters in the first episode which might not look like that.
“When you put the bunch of them together and they are all fighting for attention and getting their point over, it does come across as a bit chaotic sometimes. They are good candidates selected for their potential as a business partner; how they react when they are put under pressure you never know until it happens.”
Sugar appears more comfortable with the format now that the winner becomes a business partner (backed by Sugar’s £250,000 investment) rather than a £100,000-a-year paid employee. The last series winner to be given a job, Stella English in 2010, launched legal action against Sugar claiming constructive dismissal (she lost). Sugar later launched legal action of his own, and also lost. He says the show is the envy of the business community. “The past three candidates that have won and have got a business with me are all doing very, very well.”
Sugar is committed to an 11th series, which is already in pre-production, but how long will he carry on? “It depends on me, until I conk out I suppose. Perhaps I will carry on until I am at least 70, let’s say. Who knows?” As he’s now 67, that’s another three series then? “I don’t know, you are asking me a question. How old was Brucie when he threw in the towel? 86? Oh blimey.”
In the end, as Sugar readily admits, it will be the BBC’s call. Last year’s final won by Leah Totton had an overnight audience of 5.7 million viewers, down from the previous year of 6.1 million and the lowest rating final since it was first shown on BBC1 in 2006. Sugar says he has a “good dialogue, let’s put it that way” with the BBC. He was openly critical of its decision to axe his spin-off show, Young Apprentice, last year.
“Maybe they didn’t have the budget for it, maybe [it was] too much Sugar on TV,” he says. “In my opinion it got some very bad scheduling, it came up against some tip top ITV shows.” He is concerned the new series might suffer a similar fate after it was shifted later in the year to make way for the football World Cup.
“Obviously you have got the ITV competition, the jungle [I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!] and all that type of stuff knocking around for three weeks while we are on and that gets a big audience,” he says. “It was out of my hands. They made a decision to shift it and logistically it wasn’t possible to film it and get it out before the World Cup started.”
With the BBC’s charter up for renewal and the future of the licence fee up for grabs, Sugar says the BBC is “great value for money. We have all learned to pay £20 a month for our mobile phone, £20 a month for our internet and £12 a month for everything the BBC supplies”.
“I have often said to them they should start a subscription service which may enable them to compete on sports,” he adds. “If I was in charge of the BBC I would say well, you have got your basic £12 a month [licence fee] and you get what we are giving you, but let me go and bid for the football and if you want to watch it I will charge you a fiver a game or something like that, or other things you can pay per view.”
Sugar stepped down from his role as chairman of internet TV service YouView last year, his departure marked by a furious boardroom row with Richard Desmond, who was then owner of Channel 5. “Basically YouView has done a very good job for BT and TalkTalk to enable them to get into the television business with their broadband,” he says.
“I don’t know what else it has achieved yet. I have been critical of the management of YouView for a long time. The shareholders [also including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and transmission service Arqiva] chose not to listen to me. I think they have just announced Netflix [the on-demand service will be available on YouView by the end of the year] which is about two years late. You can go and get Netflix on a £70 tablet you can buy in Aldi. What’s the big deal?”
Sugar denied a suggestion in an interview last week that he behaved like a bully. “It is not bullying to speak your mind,” he said.
Another criticism made of him followed comments that women were more likely than men to discriminate against female employees. He was also reported to have said that equal opportunity laws had made it harder for a woman to get a job. Does he regret that? “I have got nothing to regret,” he says. “What I regret is that people like you are still misquoting what some person wrote incorrectly and it kind of stuck with me like glue, it’s a bit like the Labour leader and his bacon sandwich.
“I never said it, so I’ve got no comment to make. It was the line of some journalist, not me. I never said it. It’s as simple as that. Yeah?” And for the first time I feel like it’s me sat round the boardroom table.
The Apprentice returns to BBC1 on Tuesday, with a second episode in its regular slot on Wednesday
Curriculum vitae
Age 67
Education: Northwold primary school; Brooke House secondary school, Hackney
Career 1968 founds Amstrad 1991 buys Tottenham Hotspur 1993 founds Amsair 1994 Amstrad buys Viglen 2000 knighted for services to business 2001 sells majority stake in Spurs 2005 The Apprentice launches on BBC 2007 BSkyB buys Amstrad 2009 becomes Labour life peer 2010 Young Apprentice series launches, originally called Junior Apprentice 2011 joins YouView 2013 resigns as YouView chair
