What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (98 page)

Finally, the BBC did commission the second series and Nick, Margaret and I signed up again. I was expecting to work with the same team, but a few months later, editorial director Daisy Goodwin left Talkback to set up her own company, Silver River Productions. What's more, Peter Moore and Tanya Shaw decided they didn't want to do
The Apprentice
again and also left.

There is a weird artistic snobbery which exists in this industry. You can understand why an actor (for example Ross Kemp who played the character Grant Mitchell in the popular BBC soap
EastEnders)
might feel he's been typecast and want to further his career by taking on other roles, but these production people take it a stage further - they don't want to be typecast as
producers.
They like to find new challenges to widen their portfolios. In Peter's case, he had been around for a long time and had made lots of films, so I can quite understand that he was working more for enjoyment than financial reward. He wanted to do things he was
interested
in and, as far as
The Apprentice
was concerned, he'd set the mould, done it, bought the T-shirt and it was over - time to move on. And for some reason, Tanya Shaw wanted to do the same.

Dan Adamson, one of the senior assistant producers of the first series,
took over the second series and seconded help from the BBC. The second series, which was aired on BBC2 in February 2006, went well as far as viewing figures were concerned, and there were some great characters. However, I personally felt that this series wasn't as professional and that we were getting too close to a
Big Brother-type
show which concentrates on people arguing. My involvement in
The Apprentice
was only on the basis of there being an underlying business message in every episode.

Meanwhile, the first series had been nominated for a BAFTA, the most prestigious of television awards. The ceremony was held on 7 May and I turned up that night at the Great Room at the Grosvenor House Hotel to find it jam-packed full of TV celebrities and stars. It was a massive event. I went with Ann and, not knowing anyone and feeling a bit shy, we tried to hang back in the reception area for a while until they called people to the tables. Eventually, Daisy Goodwin got hold of us, walked us through the main dining area and started introducing me to people. Gordon Ramsay came up and shook my hand, telling me how wonderful the show was. I met Bruce Forsyth, Jack Dee and loads of others. I didn't understand, in TV terms, what a breakthrough
The Apprentice
had been. Only now did I realise, walking through this grand hall and seeing people looking at me or coming to talk to me, that it was a massively popular show.

We won the BAFTA award for 'Best Feature' that night. Peter Moore dragged me up on to the stage in front of all these people and for once I was dumbstruck. I just hung behind him and let him do the talking. There was a press call for me to have my picture taken with the award and there, queuing up in the press room, was David Jason, the great actor from
Only Fools and Horses.
He shook my hand, telling me what a great programme it was and how he'd enjoyed watching it. I told him, never mind all that, it was an honour for
me
to meet
him
and said how he had entertained me over the years as Del Boy and Inspector Frost. Meeting him was a highlight of the evening.

Ricky Gervais was sitting on another table and waved at me. He was hot at the time with his show
The Office.
I went over to shake his hand and he said, 'I don't know why I waved at you because I don't know you. I guess it was just to say well done.'

You can imagine how a moment like this could
really
go to your head, how it could make you want more and more fame. But in a way, this was no different to having a smash-hit Amstrad product - it was great to be congratulated for my success but, like a hit product, I knew it wouldn't go on for ever. My feet were firmly on the ground and I had no delusions that I was some great TV celebrity.

There is no question that if I had my time over again and was asked to do
The Apprentice,
the answer would be absolutely yes. It's tremendously enjoyable and it signs on to my philosophy of assisting small businesses and young people in promoting enterprise. I have to be thankful to Peter Moore for choosing me as his preferred host.

Lots of people have asked whether
The Apprentice
has assisted me in business. The simple answer is no - not one bit. Why should it? I'm in electronics and real estate. Of course, people want to meet me and want me to come to their offices, sign photographs and things like that, but when we get down to serious business, there is either a good deal to be done or there isn't, irrespective of whether or not I'm on TV.

The demand for me to do more Q&As at schools, universities and charities obviously shot up as a result of the show. Whenever I could, I tried to accommodate them, but it's impossible for me to accept every single invitation - there aren't enough hours in the day or days in the week. However, I did do a Q&A session at Brunel University shortly after they awarded me my
second
honorary doctorate (again a Doctorate of Science) on 12 July 2005. By this time, I was an old hand at ceremonies, so there was no nervousness at all. I gave a small speech which was based on enterprise.

I was now a double doctor and a knight! Bloody hell!

After the second series, Dan Adamson joined Daisy Goodwin's newly formed company, which meant more change. I was surprised Dan had decided to leave, since the second series was very successful in his eyes, which was proved by the viewing figures. I still couldn't quite get my head around these people wanting to flip so quickly, but it was something I'd have to get used to. Lorraine Heggessey, a short and fiery character, had taken the role of CEO of Talkback Thames in May 2005. Lorraine had been a controller at the BBC and now she recruited the services of Michele Kurland, whom she'd worked with before, and Kelly Webb-Lamb, both from the BBC.

I'd agreed to do a third series but I was a little disappointed that, effectively, we had to reinvent the wheel. It's important in any working relationship that people get to know each other's ways and having worked with Dan for two years, each of us understood the other's thinking about the different aspects of the show. Now I was faced with a new team of bosses and I'm always concerned that new people will want to make their mark by changing things. It's no different in the business world. When a new person arrives to take over a senior position - perhaps because a company's in trouble or needs new direction - there's always a mass culling of ideas, people and systems to reshape things to the new person's liking.

Ego plays a big part in these things. What's the point of taking over an organisation if outwardly one can't see a distinctive change? But, most of the time, changes aren't necessary and can be counter-productive. When Lord Kalms (Stanley) decided it was time for him to retire and recruit a new chairman, I wrote an article for the
Evening Standard
along the lines of, 'When the new bloke comes in, he shouldn't change things for the sake of change. In other words - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Stanley sent me a nice note thanking me for this.

Even in Dan Adamson's days on the second series, suggestions were coming from the production people about changing the way we did things. I argued strongly against this on the same 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' basis. The public aren't stupid. Unless the change is really going to improve things, don't do it - because if it's gimmicky, the public will tune out. Fortunately, after much debate, Dan agreed with me. But here I was again, faced with these two new ladies. It's human nature that they would want to put their stamp on the programme and I would have to go through the whole thing again.

To be perfectly honest, I don't like changes of personnel; I like to deal with people I've built a rapport with. It takes me back to my days in business when the buyer of a company was suddenly changed and you'd have to build a whole new relationship again. Even when Amstrad employees left, it was hard for me to warm to the new people until I'd seen them in action for at least six to nine months. So Lorraine was somewhat nervous introducing Michele and Kelly to me - and I think they were nervous about meeting me. Michele was introduced as the senior producer; Kelly effectively being her number two.

As you might imagine, my opening speech to them was along the lines of, 'When you have something successful in business, you don't change it.' I also told them I'd been keeping my eye on the American market and the Trump programme was going down the pan rapidly, not least because they were overexposing it, running series back to back. In the course of eighteen months, they had run two series and the public were getting sick of it. Not only was it on too much, but they started tinkering with the format, doing stupid things like making the candidates live in the garden if they lost or allowing the winning team leader to be immune from being fired on the next task. It was over-complicated and becoming very tacky. I made it clear I didn't want to be associated with any of this stuff.

The thing about television people is, they're all very polite. Everything is wonderful, everything is marvellous, nothing is ever wrong, it's all fantastic,
darling. These two ladies had spent many years in the industry, so they kind of agreed with every single thing I said and I knew it was too good to be true. When that happens, I think, 'At least disagree with me about
something!'

I reckon, as this was their first meeting with me, somebody must have warned them just to go along with whatever I was saying. People already had a skewed idea of what I was like based on my portrayal in the sports media when I was chairman of Tottenham. This was compounded ten times over by the fact that, on TV, I was shown as a real tough nut in the boardroom, banging my fist on the table and dishing out a load of stick. If this is the only vision you have of Alan Sugar, then you can quite understand how people believe that's exactly what I'm like.

I don't want to give away too many secrets here, but the truth of the matter is that the boardroom scenes are edited to create tension. The actual boardroom sessions can take a couple of hours and there's a lot of banter and jokes, as well as me getting a bit angry, of course. However, a lot of the light-hearted stuff gets cut and you end up seeing fifteen minutes of me banging the table. With that in mind, you can understand the ladies' nervousness about meeting me for the first time.

I spent at least ten minutes of that first meeting with Michele and Kelly trying to convince them, firstly, that I wasn't the person they'd seen on TV and, secondly, that I liked to get involved in all the details and even put my own suggestions forward. I said that I hoped we could end up with a similar relationship to the one I'd had with Dan Adamson. Once again, in TV luvvy terms, they agreed, telling me they knew exactly how TV works and how I'd obviously been portrayed in a certain way to create tension in the programme.

After watching the second series, my family was starting to get a bit concerned that I was coming across as a table-banging monster. They were even suggesting that I shouldn't do it any more, partly because they felt, as I did, that some of the candidates in the second series were getting close to those you'd expect to see on
Big Brother,
and also because they found themselves having to explain to their friends that I'm not really the brute they see on TV.

The thing is, I
do
fly off the handle in real life - in boardroom situations, or when I get angry with inefficiency, or when things go wrong. And I haven't got the greatest patience in the world. It's a bad trait, I know - it's just that sometimes I see things more clearly than others (though I
thought
I was getting better and more tolerant as I got older). When I look back on my business life and the nucleus of people that have worked for me, it must be some sort of testimony to say that a great many of them have stayed with me
for most of their working lives. The average length of service is around twenty years, indeed some of them have been with me for well over thirty years. If I'm such a horrible person, why are they all still there? The truth is, I'm very fair and straightforward. My famous expression is, 'What's on my lung is on my tongue.' Generally I think people like it that way - straight-talking.

Michele and Kelly agreed. 'Yes, that's exactly what
we
want when we do
The Apprentice
- straightforward speaking, right to the point.' Both of them were very excited at the prospect of doing
The Apprentice,
which had now become a hit programme. So much so that Jana Bennett, Director of BBC Vision, decided she would elevate it from BBC2 to BBC1, giving it the same nine o'clock slot on a Wednesday night. Talkback were very pleased about this but, naively, I couldn't understand what the big deal was. In my opinion, if somebody wants to watch a programme, the fact that it's on BBC2 or BBC1 makes no odds. For example, if I wanted to watch Spurs playing Arsenal on TV, it wouldn't bother me which channel it was on. They all went to great pains to explain to me that the general public tends to tune in to BBC1 and because of this, the viewing figures would be much larger. I couldn't get my head around this at all. If people were followers of
The Apprentice
and the fan base grew by word of mouth, as far as I was concerned, the channel made no difference. Lorraine and Michele were a little surprised at my lack of enthusiasm about the channel flip, but that was down to my lack of experience in these matters.

During preparations for the third series, Michele kept me in the loop, seeking my input, and we had many debates over the way forward. Michele asked me to have a word with people like Andy Devonshire and Mark Saben, two of the guys who had worked on the previous series and had accumulated a lot of experience. We were keen to keep them onboard. Andy is responsible for those fantastic pictures of London in the titles and all the general filming. He orchestrates the boardroom and arranges the close-ups on people's faces when they're talking. Mark went around with the teams and organised the crew when filming out in the field. Andy and Mark, like others in the industry, were also considering alternative opportunities and the idea of having to recruit someone new and start from scratch was unthinkable. I spoke to the two guys and luckily I managed to convince them to stay.