Daisy Goodwin in Sunday Times on the Apprentice

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Daisy Goodwin in Sunday Times on the Apprentice

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Daisy Goodwin: Pushy dropouts, you’re hired
If we want to be a nation of successful start-ups, we need to start treating business people with the same respect as those with Oxbridge firsts
The Sunday Times
Published: 31 October 2010


When the prime minister went to see the Confederation of British Industry last week, he told them it was time that we became a nation of business start-ups.

“To build that new dynamism in our economy, to create the growth, jobs and opportunities Britain needs, we’ve got to back the big businesses of tomorrow, not just the big businesses of today.”

He said this in a week when 6.5m people tuned in to BBC1 to watch Lord Sugar fire Melissa Cohen, a food production manager, on The Apprentice.

Despite her claims to be a brilliant saleswoman, she had failed to sell eco shower-heads to one of Britain’s leading chains of plumbing suppliers.

Melissa did not take her firing like a man, or a business person; she flounced off and refused to shake hands with her team members, whom she accused of stitching her up. Lord Sugar, as he occasionally reminds us, started with nothing and built up a multi-million-pound business making cheap computers. David Cameron wants to foster a nation of young Sugars, so how fortunate that every year Sugar spends six months finding a Mini-Me via The Apprentice.

The last government was so impressed by Sugar’s ability to inspire would-be entrepreneurs that it made him its enterprise champion. (It would perhaps be uncharitable to mention at this point his Amstrad E-mailer, a landline telephone with email capability that failed to set even the geeks’ world on fire.) The Apprentice, now in its sixth series, has been a colossal success. Not many shows without Simon Cowell or sequins command such a loyal following. What is interesting is that although The Apprentice was originally a hit in the US and has been made in 23 countries, including Russia, South Africa, Brazil, Denmark and Estonia, most of those made one series and then dropped it for lack of interest. It is only in Britain that The Apprentice has become the sort of show that TV schedulers fantasise about.

Clearly part of its success is down to the Sid James face and lapidary wit of Sugar, although he may not be as rich as the billionaire who fronted Russia’s version, or as flamboyant as Donald Trump, who starred in the American show.

Sugar is a working-class boy made good who hasn’t lost touch with his roots, even if he has had his eyes done. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should say I was executive producer of the first series of The Apprentice and was involved in the decision to use Sugar. I have had nothing to do with the show since.)

But I think the real reason that the show flourishes in Britain as nowhere else is because the annual collection of cocky braggarts in their pinstripe suits and vertiginous heels, with their claims of “I am going to make you millions, Lord Sugar”, confirm every prejudice we have about business people.

Lord Sugar is a working-class boy made good who hasn’t lost touch with his roots, even if he has had his eyes done These would-be entrepreneurs are living cartoon characters: the pushy Asian; the posh twit; the working-class boy who can sell anything but knows the value of nothing; the tricky, manipulative girl who flirts her way to success; the bull-necked middle manager whose veins throb visibly when he is under pressure.

They are all happy to stare into the camera and say things like “I am a winner” and “Success is my middle name”. Most important, none of them has a shred of self-doubt, a hint of self-deprecation. The Apprentice is an irony-free zone. Even when Sugar announces that the winning team’s treat is a night dining in what looks like Croydon’s finest kebab house, complete with some superannuated belly dancers, the rictus grins of delight don’t falter.

Most TV talent shows such as The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing engage us because we’re rooting for a winner. The Apprentice is different: we tune in every week because we really want to see which egregious loudmouth will get their comeuppance. We don’t want to see the contestants succeed; we want to see the self-deluded nutters crash and burn. The Apprentice has filled the awkward, jargon-ridden space The Office’s David Brent left behind.

Other countries don’t get this. In places like South Africa and Russia the desire to get ahead and succeed, and the readiness to admit it, is considered a virtue, not risible self-delusion. American audiences got tired of the show because they didn’t enjoy the schadenfreude of watching soi-disant winners fail spectacularly as much as we do; after all, America is where socially awkward monomaniacs like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook become billionaires in their twenties. In America they know that failure can easily morph into success: just look at the ricocheting fortunes of Trump, or even Steve Jobs of Apple.

At home we like nothing better than to watch the mighty fall. We don’t watch The Apprentice and think: “If I have a good idea and work hard, I could live like Alan Sugar in a big house in Chigwell and drive about in a Roller with a personalised numberplate.” We think: “Look at all those uppity idiots who think they can escape the call centres where they clearly belong.”

Next year, Sugar is going to offer the winner a start-up investment of £250,000 and a partnership in the business of their choice instead of a job at Sugar Inc. This nicely chimes with Cameron’s aims, but it will prove a tricky casting job for the producers, as they will have to pick people who at least have a shot at running a successful business. One wonders whether the audience will tune in to the next Zuckerberg as avidly as they have watched Melissa Cohen and the 21-year-old one whose complexion is the exact colour and texture of Spam.

Cameron faces a tougher question: how will he convince people that starting the big business of tomorrow is not just the preserve of self-aggrandising Apprentice wannabes; that you can start a business without losing your sense of humour or your self-respect?

Obviously Cameron, like his mate George Osborne, can’t lead by example, because he is a public school and Oxbridge-educated chap who never even considered entering the grubby world of entrepreneurship. How many Oxford students drop out to become billionaires, as Zuckerberg and Bill Gates did from Harvard? Is it a coincidence that so many of our most successful entrepreneurs — Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, even Jamie Oliver — have dyslexia, which has locked them out of formal academic success?

If we want to be a nation of successful start-ups, we need to start treating people with the tenacity and self-belief to start businesses as worthy of the same respect as those with Oxbridge firsts. We should stop laughing at the Apprentice wannabes for wanting to succeed and start wondering why so many of us are so terrified to fail. In Britain, unlike America, pushy is a pejorative term, but while we sneer at the Apprentices we should remember that no successful entrepreneur ever got their start by sitting on their hands.
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Post by Flossie »

Do we really watch the Apprentice just to see the deluded crash and burn?

There is enormous fun in that, and perhaps it does bolster our own egos, because most of us think we can do better :p but I do find the tasks, the challenges, the problem solving, the social dynamics and the team leading issues fascinating and educational, so I think there is more than just schandefrude ( bloody Germans!!!!! )
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