BOARDROOM bust-ups, secret hook-ups, and Lord Sugar at his most ruthless – The Apprentice is even more cut-throat than it looks on TV.
With millions of people tuning in to watch this year’s hopefuls battle it out for a life-changing £250,000 investment, what really happens behind the scenes is even more explosive.
Joseph Valente was on The Apprentice in 2015 and won the show’s £250,000 prize[/caption]
He is now a multi-millionaire and mentors thousands of people[/caption]
The show is now in its 19th season and features a much more glam cast[/caption]
In a chat with The Sun, plumber turned multi-millionaire Joseph Valente spills the beans on the show’s biggest secrets – from intense business plan grillings to task ‘sabotage’.
Joseph won season 11 in 2015 and has mentored thousands of small business owners, builders, electricians and plumbers under the umbrella of his £10million Trade Mastermind empire.
In its 19th season this year, Joseph reckons times have changed since he was the ‘designated survivor’ under the stern gaze of Chairman Sugar.
He spoke out after The Sun revealed two of the latest contestants, Keir Shave and Amber-Rose Badrudin, were caught allegedly breaking a sex ban imposed by the show’s producers.
But Valente recalls: “Back in 2015 the production team made it crystal clear that there was to be no ‘goings on’ and everybody had to stay in their own beds away from the opposite sex.
“‘You’re here to do a serious business show’, they insisted.
“The ban remains, but I think it’s an open secret now that things happen. When I was on The Apprentice it was still a relatively serious business show.
“Now, it’s ‘Love Island In Suits. In 2015, we weren’t allowed to use social media either while involved with the show. Now it’s a self-promotion free-for-all all.
“The more drama and attention, the more eyeballs. We live in a clickbait world, so scandals boost the ratings.
“What hasn’t changed is the stresses and strains on the contestants, which are carefully orchestrated and are even worse than you assume from the TV footage.”
Business of love
We revealed that Amber-Rose Badrudin and Keir Shave were allegedly caught breaking the show’s hook-up ban[/caption]
Nothing happened in my series. But I have heard of things going down since then, despite the show’s ‘no sex, no relationships, stay away from each other’ ruling.
But The Apprentice is all about relentless pressure and putting nine guys and nine girls together in a house for three months is just another pressure point.
You’re bound to create some chemistry, and stuff will happen.
It all depends on how good people are at hiding it, but maybe they want to be found out, because they haven’t really gone to win the show as it was originally intended.
Their ‘winning’ is more about getting a media splash on them sleeping with or at least cosying up to somebody else.
But the producers and the contestants must love how the pseudo Love Island situation has developed, because The Apprentice is up against more ‘fly on the wall’ rivals and, as a business show, might otherwise struggle to be as sexy.
It’s a tried and tested format, but the producers must find ways to keep the buzz and get younger people watching in this world of Love Island, Big Brother and other reality TV shows.
What does Lord Sugar think about it? You can be sure he knows exactly what game is being played: the format needs to evolve.
He didn’t get where he is in business and a seat in the House of Lords by being blind to the winds of change and new opportunities.
House proud
Joseph says the house descends into mayhem when the phone rings at 4am[/caption]
He made sure never to let the cameras catch him in his pants[/caption]
The phone rings super early, usually 4am, and suddenly it’s mayhem, particularly at the start of the run, when there is the full set of candidates milling around and maybe 15 members of the TV crew getting under their feet as they film the chaos.
It’s usually an hour before everyone’s out the door – not 20 minutes.
Yes, the ladies take the most time, but even the guys can fuss about getting ready. Breakfast is about cramming food in before flying out the door.
Half of us managed to eat – the rest didn’t.
The battle for the showers could turn into a fight at times – particularly for the guys’ bathrooms – and those who wanted 20-minute showers got stick.
Sometimes, people didn’t even bother showering when time was tight.
My hack was to set an early alarm 30 minutes early, jump back into bed, and be ready and dressed in my suit before the crew arrived to try to catch tousled heads struggling out of bed, probably in their underwear.
I got stick from the production team for ‘spoiling the fun’ but my argument was ‘I’m here to do business, not be filmed running around in my pants’.
They did it the first morning – but after that I said to myself: never again.
After a tough day you were allowed a drink, but only one. I think they worried that things might get out of hand if people started celebrating or drowning their sorrows.
There were always house rows about who messed up and who said what. Two of the girls on my season absolutely hated each other and had to be kept apart by the production team because they constantly made each other cry.
Taken to task
The show’s bosses have deliberately made tasks difficult to complete, says Joseph[/caption]
The show’s ten-page rule book deliberately makes it tough to complete some tasks.
For example, if you were producing a wellness brand, you’d probably want to create a logo and packaging in green and yellow, but they’d only allow you to choose from black and brown – not very calming.
And it’s hard work, usually around 16 hours a day out in the field and up to four days per project.
You can’t talk to each other during the day either. When travelling by car, you must stay silent and a producer in every car polices that.
When you do see footage of talking in the car, it’s been allowed only for filming and you are then told to stop afterwards.
It’s all about building pressure so that you arrive onsite for filming, having had no real chance to work out what you’re all doing.
They’re just stitching you up and there’s a TV crew to record every little cock-up.
One team task had us setting up cereal bar production, but somehow the glucose to bind everything together was missed out.
So, when I went out for consumer testing it was like opening a bag of seeds and pouring them into people’s hands – it was horrendous.
Another time they sent us to France to return with a list of typically French items including champagne flutes and snails, but the only aid given to us was a Yellow Pages – in French.
Luckily, one guy on our team could speak French, otherwise, we would have been screwed.
Boardroom doom
Facing Lord Sugar in the boardroom is an intense experience, says Joseph[/caption]
Contestants must ask when they even want to use the toilet while in the boardroom[/caption]
The boardroom is a pressure cooker. You sit in silence, first stewing in reception for about four hours.
The heat is turned up by another five hours in the pre-boardroom area and, by then, you’re s**ting yourself about whether you’re going to make it or not. Brutal.
You must ask permission to use the toilet and only go one at a time, so there’s no talking. It’s like being back at school.
The projects are structured to ensure there’s a fall guy for the boardroom sequence and while the project manager selects who does what, people are going to find themselves operating way outside their comfort zone – as a tour guide or a clown at a kids’ party maybe.
It’s great TV though, and really tests your character and how adaptable you are to certain situations – that’s what business is like, after all.
And there’s the TV crew recording every wrong step you make, though that can work in your favour too.
When you’re doing sales in the street, people see the cameras, get curious and come over so I used to leverage that to make more sales.
But everybody feels uncomfortable and some people panic and make themselves look stupid. Others just try not to mess up too badly, and avoid being the one in the firing line.
The savage thing though is that everyone else loves it when someone really screws up, looks likely to crash their team’s chances and be the one fired that week.
The grillings
Candidates are tirelessly grilled about their business plans[/caption]
A defining moment for any contestant who reaches the semi-finals is being grilled on a business plan you submitted with your show application – nine months ago.
You get just half a day to refresh your memory. And then they pull it apart.
I’d had mine checked over professionally, so it was pretty robust, but one guy simply submitted a load of logos and they really piled into him.
As always on The Apprentice, they add pressure by long waits during what will be a 12-hour day. It’s at least two hours between every interview, sitting in silence just building the suspense.
And those interviewers are savage, trying to catch you out and make you look stupid. And they do a very good job.
They absolutely destroyed one guy, because he bullshitted so much in his plan, but it’s a fine balance.
You must make bold statements to get on the show and progress but eventually, you’ve got to be able to back it. Most contestants can’t, get found out and get destroyed.
The process continues after a task and before you are ushered in for a showdown with Lord Sugar.
You’ll have had your actions pulled apart and dissected and you don’t know how other teams are doing. You’re walking into the unknown – the chairman awaits.
I quite enjoyed being in front of Lord Sugar though, because you got more time to showcase your strengths. My ratio for winning team v. losing team was about 70 per cent against per cent.
Sugar and spice
Outside the boardroom, candidates never meet Lord Sugar[/caption]
Contestants never meet Lord Sugar outside the boardroom and the build-up is designed to terrify contestants in advance of their confrontation with him.
At that point, some contestants are in meltdown, sometimes shaking and bursting into tears – they just want to run out of the room.
And it doesn’t wear off fast. I remember one guy in my series laying on a sofa after an interview just hugging himself, because he got absolutely annihilated.
Having won the show and been his business partner for a while, I know how tough Sugar is in a real boardroom – he can be brutal.
I once sent him an email and he responded: ‘Joseph, I only read bullet points. Send me anything that long again, and it’s going straight in the bin.’
If anything, he’s even more fearsome. He just isn’t a people person. When I was pronounced the winner, there were no hugs or anything like that.
I was pictured with him, he spoke to me for about 30 seconds, and then he was gone. Karren was nicer. She spoke to me for maybe five minutes behind the scenes on the show.
When I worked with him, there were no hellos and goodbyes.
It’s ‘Don’t talk to me about anything other than business. I’m not your friend. I’m not going to communicate. I don’t care about what you’re doing outside of this company’.
The opportunity was phenomenal, but it wasn’t about me and Lord Sugar fighting side by side on the front line.
While working with Lord Sugar, Joseph never had casual conversations with him[/caption]
