The Apprentice who has the strongest personality wins through to the later rounds more easily than those who don’t speak up. However, for stronger personality read “the ability to ride rough shod over anyone else.” Certainly Jenny is a major proponent of talking over people. And in this task she takes this skill to a [...]

Sir Alan Sugar strolls amongst the Wallace Collection before addressing the assembled throng of candidates. He notes that portraits are a good thing and in the same breath tells his motley crew that their next task is to go to the Blue Water shopping centre and take photographic portraits, using a theme. Oh, and just [...]

Food and the Apprentice clowns (sorry candidates) should never be mixed. That is unless you want broad entertainment. And that’s what we got with tonight’s episode. First of all Ian Stringer was chosen by Sir Alan as lead entertainer for the boys and quickly chose his scapegoat (oh sorry, I meant head chef). The top [...]

Running an industrial laundry and pitching to clean clothes isn’t as straightfoward as team Alpha thinks…

The Apprentice Goes Fishing and Sir Alan picks an Apprentice to go

The Apprentice final boardroom show down was a fight between Hardeep on one side and Kelvin and Lembit on the other. Hardeep had an unfortunate habit of over elaborating his contribution to the boys team which came across as simple BS. However, I do think that he actually appeared to contribute more than Kelvin or [...]

The Apprentice roared back to our screens to help charity in the form of Sport Relief this week. The task this time was for each team to operate a pop-up shop next door to each other. Pop-up shops are empty shops that are rented by an entrepreneur, filled with goods which are then sold and [...]

The Apprentice’s first outing was outed by the Telegraph before it even appeared on the BBC channel. Unfortunate. Like several other reviewers (not me unfortunately!) they got to see the show before everyone else! Their dateline says 12:01 GMT. However, I’ve already seen it. It doesn’t give too much away, although I didn’t read the [...]

Sir Alan Sugar dusts down the Roller, shrugs into his suit and the BBC drag the boardroom set out of storage. Why? It’s all because the Apprentice (UK) fun and frolics start today at 9pm. The Guardian have a real-time blog posting following the action. While I do enjoy reading the commentary afterwards it’s not [...]

Sports Relief Apprentice 2008 has got together quite an interesting band of celebs for their 2 episode show. Looking at it they apparently have only one true business-oriented person amongst them. That’s Jacqueline Gold the CEO of Ann Summers. I’ve heard Jacqueline Gold being interviewed in Manchester and she talks a lot of sense. I’ve [...]

For those of us who are suffering withdrawal pangs The Apprentice (UK version) returns with a list of celebs picked to do battle. If you look at the BBC Apprentice home page I think you’ll recognise several of the participants. I also think (although the photo isn’t huge) that the one at the back is [...]

Piers Morgan writing in the Daily Mail noted that Sir Alan Sugar had texted him to say that filming for the next series of The Apprentice started week beginning 24th September. As if one cue I noticed an article from the Gazette and Herald (from the In Wiltshire stable) reported on the 5th October saying [...]

Business reality shows are big business. Previously I blogged about the fantastic BBC series “The Troubleshooter” with Sir John Harvey-Jones. More recently we’ve had Sir Alan Sugar’s “The Apprentice.” Around the same time we got a dose of Brummy with a double glazing firm run with an iron fist in an iron glove by the [...]

  This story has been bubbling under for the last few days as Sir Alan Sugar and Sky agree details for Sky to buy Amstrad. They’ve finally sealed the knot as reported in The Guardian. Of course as an Amstrad shareholder I’m over the moon with the shares racking up a nice healthy premium. And the good [...]

As the Daily Telegraph reports newly crowned prime minister Gordon Brown has appointed Sir Alan Sugar to the new Business Council for Britain. Yet another body that will meet and offer advice to the government that the government will simply ignore. The council is tasked with advising Government the impact its policies have on the UK’s [...]

Right Kristina you’ve done The Apprentice how about persuading Sir Richard Branson to put on another series of  “The Rebel Billionaire” which you could go into and win! But seriously, I’d be surprised if Richard Branson wasn’t deciding whether to offer her a job. After all it’s rare that you get to see a potential employee [...]

After 12 weeks Sir Alan finally made up his mind. Rather than polishing a tried and true older apprentice he went for the one who claimed he would be malleable because he was “not fully formed.” So Simon Ambrose becomes the third apprentice and Kristina Grimes grits her teeth, gets her hair done and smiles [...]

Yesterday I was talking with my brother Roddy about The Apprentice and he said that he “hated it with a passion.” He believes it just doesn’t reflect business. As I said to him and others who commented in a similar vein, “it’s entertainment, it’s not business it’s show business.” What I would also say is [...]

The BBC have really been out scouring their Apprentice archives to capitalise on this years Apprentice success. Last Sunday, just before this season’s final we had “The Apprentice: Why I Fired Them”. This was Sir Alan explaining his reasoning behind each firing. Some of which we’d already heard as voice overs when the candidates were [...]

Tim Campbell won the first series of Sir Alan Sugar’s Apprentice. He wasn’t the favourite to win because like Lohit he was “too nice”. Well nice doesn’t have to be boring does it? I found this interesting video at a great short film site of him telling exactly how the Apprentice producers wanted him to act. [...]