What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (99 page)

A large proportion of the TV production industry is made up of self-employed people who have contracts. The problem is, they have families to look after and the production of a programme like
The Apprentice
means making themselves available not only for the filming period, but also the editing phase. When all that's done, the harsh reality is that they are 'let go' and have to find themselves some fill-in work elsewhere. What's more, they
never know whether a show will be recommissioned. Regrettably, TV companies like the BBC don't tend to commission more than one series at a time. They like to keep their options open, understandably, in case viewing figures start to tumble. And even if a programme is recommissioned, by the time the decision's made, the people who worked on it previously might have taken up - quite justifiably - other work to secure some income.

It's like juggling, trying to tell these guys, 'Hang on, don't take on any other work because negotiations are going on to commission a new series.' It's difficult asking them not to accept assignments elsewhere when, in fact, you have nothing concrete on the table to offer them. In the case of Andy and Mark, I told them that although the new series hadn't been officially commissioned, it was 99.9 per cent sure to go ahead. I asked them to trust me that they
would
be required and not to accept other offers.

The camera crew on
The Apprentice
always consisted of the same guys. That was good because they'd done it before and didn't need retraining. They knew what worked and what didn't work.

TV production is no different from any other form of production. When you have a good product running on a production line, the last thing you want to do is lose your production managers, your production engineers or your quality control managers because new people have to learn stuff by remaking all the mistakes of the past. New people, by definition, must mean a drop in quality. We could not afford to go through that learning curve again, particularly as we were going on to BBC1, where the quality had to be tip-top and we'd be playing to a different type of audience. The art was keeping the team together.

After months of discussion with Michele and the team, some changes were made for the benefit of the show. We decided we would start off with sixteen candidates instead of fourteen, to give us some flexibility. We'd been very lucky in the past two series that none of the candidates got sick or had some personal issue whereby they had to leave the process. If that had happened, it could have had a devastating effect on the flow of the show. Also, there were occasions in the first two series when I felt like firing more than one person - simply because two of them deserved it - but, conscious of the programme's continuity, I restrained myself to individual firings. With sixteen people, if that situation ever occurred again, I would have the flexibility to do so. In my mind, it was never going to be used as a stunt; I would only use the option if needed. And if I didn't, we'd end up with three or maybe four people in the final. I always made it clear I was never going to compromise the integrity of the show.

Michele decided to change the format a bit. At the end of each programme in the first two series you didn't see the losing team returning to the house -
that
was always shown at the start of the following programme. Michele felt this was an untidy way to start the show and that it would be much cleaner to finish the show with the return home, then start afresh the following week. She made a very good point and we changed it.

In view of the growing popularity of the programme, the number of applicants was around the 20,000 mark. The BBC's compliance policy meant that each and every application had to be treated fairly and dealt with on a regional basis. Michele decided to keep me in the loop as far as candidate selection was concerned and take on board some of my comments about the calibre of people we required. By now, I was very conscious of not letting
The Apprentice
be degraded until it became
Big Brother
on wheels. There was a danger of the wrong type of candidates getting in - people who had no real business acumen, just big mouths, like some of those in the second series.

Of course, we also wanted to make good TV, so the candidates should be vociferous and interesting, but I insisted there had to be a genuine reason for their appointment to the show. People like Philip Green, plus a few of my friends and associates, were commenting that all the candidates seemed to be brain-deads and that they would never employ any of them.

I was concerned that we needed to raise the credibility, but at the same time maintain a balance of good entertainment. What people don't understand is that if you have a bunch of sensible people, take them out of their comfort zone and put them into a competitive environment where they want to succeed, they tend to panic. The panic causes bad decisions and sometimes they make themselves look foolish. I remember telling Philip that he had no idea of the pressure these people were under and, with respect, if I had him, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Stelios on the programme, woke them up at six in the morning and told them they had to prepare some chickens to sell at a festival on the South Bank - buying the stuff, preparing it, cooking it, selling it and coming out with a profit, all in a few days -
they
would also panic.

Unavoidably, certain candidates
do
slip through the net, getting themselves on the programme because they think they are going to enhance some sort of media career - it's human nature to want to be on television. However, the majority are there for the right reason. Over the first two series I learned how to detect the media wannabees and made sure their time on
The Apprentice
was used to the show's advantage, as far as entertainment was concerned, before their departure.

One shining example of this was James Max from the first series. He was
a highly intelligent and successful businessman who had worked in City circles and made a lot of money. He was on the winning team many times and I recall one task where I saw him rescue Saira Khan from certain defeat. She was project manager on the farmers' market task and was really going off the rails on costings. You could see Max's brain ticking over as to whether to let her fall on her face or rescue her. He stepped in and pointed out the ridiculous things she was about to embark upon. As a result of his action, her costs were low and her team came in with a massive profit. However, observing this guy, I could tell he didn't want a job with me - he wanted to be famous on TV.

He lasted until the eleventh show. I let him go on the basis that I didn't think he was there for the right reasons, and I was right. This fellow put himself around the media world so much in his search for a TV career, he started driving people mad. A few days after the final, he was on telly in some kiddies' game show in a field somewhere - just to be on TV. I thought to myself, 'You pathetic man, what are you doing?' I even went to the trouble of meeting with him and told him he was wasting his time. Why should a clever chap like him not use his financial brain to carry on doing what he's best at? But he just had a death wish to be in the media.

He was the only contestant to blab to the press about what he perceived had gone on in the production process. He told people that, in the boardroom, my chair was purposely elevated on a box to make me look taller. This was manna from heaven for some of the media, as you can imagine, but it was a load of rubbish. What the set builders had done was build a frame on the floor into which my chair would fit. As the chair was on wheels, the frame was built to stop it sliding around if I moved while I was being filmed. Besides, as any halfwit would know, office chairs are adjustable, so if I wanted to make my chair higher, I could easily do so; I certainly wouldn't need to put it on a box.

This rubbish gave James Herring, PR consultant for
The Apprentice,
a load of aggravation. The poor sod, he even went to the trouble of photographing the lash-up so he could show it to the media. Max was naffed he didn't win and had been sussed, and I don't think he's ever forgiven me. To be fair he now has his own radio show so I guess he got what he wanted. He has made the occasional adverse comment about me so when I met him a couple of years later I asked if I could come on his radio show - on the condition that it was live - so we could go over all the things he'd been saying.

During the selection process, Michele shared with me the information on the last hundred candidates. She showed me their CVs and some very short video clips they'd made at the interview stage and together we discussed the
final sixteen. As Michele and the team had seen them and spent time with them, I deferred to their judgement, since it was quite difficult for me to appraise them properly with so little information.

At least Michele was being very fair in giving me visibility. And, I guess, she was covering herself so that I couldn't accuse her or Kelly of lumbering me with a load of brain-dead wannabees. We all agreed that keeping me distanced from the candidates was the best thing to do. The first time I would meet them and speak to them would be in the boardroom on day one.

One thing that shone through was how hard Michele and Kelly worked. The amount of hours they put in every day was incredible. No disrespect to Peter Moore or Dan Adamson, but these two girls were working all hours to make sure the thing was perfect - they were all over it like a rash. It kind of reminded me of myself, inasmuch as I always say, 'I know where every nut and bolt is in my company.' I think it fair to say that Michele knew every single thing that was going on. She was clearly determined that
The Apprentice
was going to be a big hit in its new BBC1 slot.

The third series went exceptionally well. I did have a few of my usual tantrums about having to be up very early in the morning. I'd leave Bramstons at 5 a.m. to get to a location like Greenwich by 7.30, just to introduce a new task. The traffic would do my head in. By the time I got to the location, I'd be ready to tear someone's head off, considering I'd travelled only eight miles in two and a half hours, just to do three minutes of filming. Nevertheless, we made a very, very good series and the viewing figures were exceptional, way beyond the BBC's expectations. The winner was Simon Ambrose, a Cambridge graduate, who joined our property division and took some exams to qualify as a surveyor. After three years, he chose to leave to try to replicate what he'd learned from us and start his own property business.

It's quite strange when the winner of
The Apprentice
comes to work in the firm. There's a certain resentment from some of the staff when a new person suddenly comes into the fold, especially when it's well publicised that his or her salary, as a prize for winning, is PS100,000 per annum. They would have seen the candidate make mistakes in the series and classed him or her as a twit, as so many others do. Like Philip Green, my staff members have no idea what it's like to work under such pressure on an
Apprentice
task.

So part of the problem I have with
The Apprentice
is weaving the winner into the firm while trying to keep the morale of the others up. Human nature being what it is, this is a tough task. I tell all the winners that part of winning
The Apprentice
is to gain respect from their colleagues and earn their wings in the real world - my business.

Meanwhile, other TV channels had tried pathetically to replicate
The Apprentice
with various knock-off shows. Each and every one of them failed miserably. Even Dan Adamson, now with Daisy's new firm, attempted to make one which went down like a lead balloon. ITV also had a go, recruiting the services of Peter Jones, one of the dragons from
Dragons' Den,
making some bizarre replication of
The Apprentice
that also bombed.

The third series went so well, the BBC took the unprecedented step of commissioning
The Apprentice
for
two
new series. This was good news in that one could engage all the sub-contractors and ask them to pencil-in their services for this year and next year.

Moreover, the BBC wanted to do a one-off version for Comic Relief, to be shown on the evening of Red Nose Day 2007. They wanted to use a bunch of celebrities instead of ordinary candidates, and pit the men against the women. The idea of
The Celebrity Apprentice
sounded exciting and was a great accolade for the show, and I was told that participation in Comic Relief was a very prestigious thing.

Patrick Uden had been involved with
The Apprentice
since the very first series. His background was as a documentary-maker and he once owned his own production company. In the production of
The Apprentice,
he helped Peter Moore in dealing with the logistics of the tasks and co-ordinating the voiceover commentary. Without going into too much detail, a hell of a lot of work goes on behind the scenes, such as making sure permission has been obtained from local councils to allow the apprentices to be filmed selling stuff in markets; obtaining permission from companies to allow us to film in their premises; and scripting and co-ordinating the commentator's voiceover to reflect what's going on throughout the show. Patrick had a team of people allocated to him to sort this stuff out.

Without a doubt, Patrick was experienced in making TV documentaries. However, for some reason best known to her, Lorraine Heggessey put him in charge of
The Celebrity Apprentice,
which was clearly not a documentary. She reasoned that Michele and Kelly were too busy with the main series.

Patrick is a nice, polite man and we get on very well. However, we disagreed tremendously about how
The Celebrity Apprentice
should be run. A lot of professional arguing went on and he went into a mode of, 'I'm in charge and that's how it's going to be,' which, as far as I'm concerned, was a bad attitude to take. It was like a red rag to a bull. I recall complaining on several occasions to Lorraine that while Patrick was a very nice fellow, he was not hitting the right note, in my opinion. I saw his rough cuts of
The Celebrity Apprentice
and I felt they weren't good at all.