The Apprentice (UK series three)

The Apprentice UK
 
 

Series Three

Series Three of The Apprentice (UK) was a British reality television which was broadcast in the UK during 2007 from 28 March to 13 June. The series was shown on BBC One in its same timeslot within Wednesday evenings, after moving from BBC Two.[1] This series attracted 10,000 applicants and promised "tougher tasks and better people" than before, with Lord Alan Sugar (then Sir Alan at time of broadcast) commenting that he believed that this would prevent the show morphing into a version of "Big Brother on wheels."[2] The series was won by Simon Ambrose.[3]

Two 90-minute specials were aired during the series run. The first programme was titled The Apprentice: Beyond the Boardroom and featured information about the personal lives of each of the semi-finalists.[4] The second, The Apprentice: Why I Fired Them, featured Sugar revealing why he chose to remove each candidate from the programme.[5]

Candidates

Candidate Background Original team Age Result
Simon Ambrose Internet Entrepreneur Eclipse 27 Hired by Sugar
Kristina Grimes Pharmaceutical Sales Manager Stealth 36 Runner-up
Katie Hopkins Global Brand Consultant Stealth 31 Quit in week 11
Tre Azam Marketing and Design Consultant Eclipse 27 Fired in week 11
Lohit Kalburgi Telecoms Manager Eclipse 25 Fired in week 11
Naomi Lay Advertising Sales Manager Stealth 26 Fired in week 10
Jadine Johnson Financial adviser Stealth 27 Fired in week 9
Ghazal Asif Business Development Manager Stealth 23 Fired in week 8
Adam Hosker Car Sales Manager Eclipse 27 Fired in week 7
Paul Callaghan Ex-British Army Lieutenant Eclipse 27 Fired in week 6
Natalie Wood Housewife Stealth 29 Fired in week 5
Sophie Kain Quantum Physicist Stealth 32 Fired in week 4
Gerri Blackwood Transport Development Manager Stealth 33 Fired in week 3
Rory Laing Bankrupt Entrepreneur Eclipse 28 Fired in week 2
Iftikhar "Ifti" Chaudhri Company Director Eclipse 33 Fired in week 2
Andy Jackson Car Sales Manager Eclipse 36 Fired in week 1

For this series, there were sixteen candidates instead of fourteen, as seen in the previous two series. The candidates were initially separated into two teams by gender. The women chose the name Stealth for their team, while the men named their team Eclipse. Three candidates - Ifti, Gerri and Sophie - never had the chance to be project manager.

Weekly results

Elimination chart
Candidate 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Simon IN IN IN IN IN IN WIN IN IN LOSE IN HIRED
Kristina IN IN IN IN WIN BR IN IN IN WIN IN RUNNER-UP
Katie IN WIN IN IN IN IN BR BR WIN IN LEFT
Tre IN BR WIN IN IN IN IN IN LOSE BR FIRED
Lohit IN IN IN IN BR WIN IN IN BR IN FIRED
Naomi IN IN LOSE IN IN IN IN BR IN FIRED
Jadine WIN IN BR IN IN IN IN WIN FIRED
Ghazal IN IN IN WIN IN IN BR FIRED
Adam IN IN IN LOSE BR BR FIRED
Paul IN IN IN IN IN FIRED
Natalie IN IN IN BR FIRED
Sophie BR IN IN FIRED
Gerri BR IN FIRED
Rory IN FIRED
Ifti IN FIRED
Andy FIRED
     The candidate was on the winning team; for Week 11, they passed the interview stage.
     The candidate was on the losing team.
     The candidate was hired and won The Apprentice.
     The candidate was the runner-up.
     The candidate won as project manager on his/her team.
     The candidate lost as project manager on his/her team.
     The candidate was brought to the final boardroom with the PM.
     The candidate was fired.
     The candidate lost as project manager and was fired.
     The candidate left the competition.

Episodes

Week 1: Coffee to Go

Week 2: Doggy Designs

Week 3: Start-up Service

Week 4: Sugar Rush

Week 5: Fish, Lips and Horses

Week 6: The Sausage Saga

Week 7: The 97 pence Victory

Week 8: Brand-a Trainer

Week 9: Feeling The Strain

Week 10: Selling On TV

Week 11: Interviews

Week 12: The Final

Criticism and controversy

This series was described as "the most controversial" out of all three series that had been made at the time.[40]

Candidates

Adam Hosker

On 8 August 2007, former candidate Adam Hosker who was fired by Sir Alan in May was questioned by police over allegations of him being involved in a fight with 21 year old Stuart Haworth who was a radio operator for the Territorial Army after a drink was spilled. He was alleged to have pushed Haworth before being dragged away by friends. Haworth did not need hospital treatment for his injuries but made a formal complaint.[41]

There was also controversy surrounding his exit from the show implying a North-South rift between other candidates particularly his previous project manager Paul Callaghan and fellow contestant Katie Hopkins who he said felt offended that he was working class, Northern and had a background in the motor industry. However, his exit also won him support from the North-West and the support of Series 2 runner-up Ruth Badger.[42][43]

Natalie Wood

Contestant Natalie Wood complained about a situation with Adrian Chiles, host of The Apprentice spin-off programme, The Apprentice: You're Fired!. Chiles, who has a distinctive Birmingham accent, asked Wood on the spin-off programme whether her Essex accent had been a hindrance. "But how can you pick up on my accent when Sir Alan is sitting across the table," commented Wood. "How can he say that? Essex is fantastic and I'm proud to come from Essex. A lot of people from Essex are very successful. I find it hard to swallow."[44]

Gerri Blackwood and Tre Azam

Candidate Gerri Blackwood claimed that the allocation of showers in the house where the candidates stay appeared to have been manipulated in such a way as to force the female contestants to shower together. She told the Daily Star "One of the bathrooms was used by the film crew, but two of the others were closed off with 'Out of Order' signs on them. That left two bathrooms to share between 16 people. I am not sure whether it was deliberate or not but you can imagine they wanted us to share showers".[45] In her interview, she also claimed that Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford fed the candidates misleading information so that they would fail the tasks, and that Sir Alan Sugar's boardroom diatribes were re-filmed to make them look better.[46] Fellow candidate Tre Azam also criticised the editing of the programme, claiming he was worried that his portrayal "might have been dumbed down because I made some of the other characters look too weak".[47]

Results

Week Six and Paul Callaghan

After Paul Callaghan was fired in the sixth episode, wholesale chain Makro and manufacturer Wyke Farms criticised the programme due to the negative comments made about its cheese. In the episode, Sir Alan Sugar verbally blasted Paul for taking the inexpensive products to France to sell.[19] Makro and Wyke Farms claimed that the cheese is very popular in France. Richard Clothier, the Managing Director of Wyke Farms, said "Alan Sugar, you know a lot about electronics, but not that much about cheese, and for that reason, you're fired!".[48] Further controversy emerged after it was revealed that Paul started a romance with fellow candidate Katie Hopkins while competing on the programme, which received much coverage from the tabloid press.[49][50][51][52] This was cited as one of the reasons Paul was fired during the aforementioned episode, as other candidates complained about the situation, saying that the relationship affected the performance of the team during the tasks.[51]

Week Eleven

Several organisations, including the Trades Union Congress, the Liberal Democrats, The Equal Opportunities Commission and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, accused Alan Sugar of sexism and breaching the 1976 Sex Discrimination act after only questioning contestants Katie Hopkins and Kristina Grimes about their child-care arrangements, despite the fact that male contestant Tre Azam was also a parent (though Hopkins and Grimes were single parents at the time of the interviews, whereas Azam was married).[33][53][54] Sugar's questioning, during the eleventh episode, eventually made Hopkins resign from the programme and decline Sugar's initial offer of a chance to compete in the final episode.[55][56] Sugar defended his actions and told Fiona Phillips of GMTV that he was aware of all rules regarding sexual discrimination within the workplace.[57][58] The incident was well documented within the media.[59][60][61] In addition, internet conspiracists believed that Katie's exit from the show was fixed and that the segments were re-filmed and edited in later. Fellow candidate Simon Ambrose, however denied that this was the case and insisted that nothing was changed.[62]

Related programmes

The Apprentice: Beyond the Boardroom

This was a one-off special shown on BBC Two on 2 June 2007.[63] The programme featured interviews with the final five candidates from this series. Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford also gave their opinions on the final five, along with some of the previously fired candidates.[4] The programme spoke about the candidates' private lives, revealing that Kristina Grimes was sent to a convent at age 17 due to her pregnancy, Tre Azam once fell asleep whilst driving and nearly died, Simon Ambrose was bullied as a child and has an IQ of 174, Katie Hopkins once burgled a south London newsagents for a crate of Toilet Duck and that Lohit Kalburgi is a homosexual.[4][63] Friends of the candidates and members of their families, including parents, children and partners, aired their views.[4]

The Apprentice: Why I Fired Them

This one-off special was screened on BBC Two on 10 June 2007, three days before the revelation of the winner of this series of The Apprentice. In the programme Sir Alan Sugar looked back over the series so far, discussed the merits and demerits of the candidates, and explained in more detail why he fired each candidate when he did.[64] The episode featured the former participants' views of their time on the programme and what they had learnt from the experience.[5] Sugar's assistants Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford also spoke about the former contestants.[5] At the end of the programme, Sugar reviewed the performances of the two finalists, Kristina Grimes and Simon Ambrose, and said that deciding who to hire would be difficult.[5] Despite voluntarily leaving rather than being "fired", Katie Hopkins also featured on the programme and her time on The Apprentice was discussed.[5]

Ratings

Official episode viewing figures are from BARB.[65]

Episode
no.
Airdate Viewers
(millions)
BBC One
weekly ranking
1 28 March 2007 4.50 19
2 4 April 2007 4.98 16
3 11 April 2007 5.31 17
4 18 April 2007 5.68 10
5 25 April 2007 5.46 14
6 2 May 2007 5.68 11
7 9 May 2007 5.92 9
8 16 May 2007 6.05 11
9 23 May 2007 4.99 18
10 30 May 2007 5.23 12
11 6 June 2007 6.60 8
12 13 June 2007 7.09 5

Specials

Episode
no.
Airdate Viewers
(millions)
BBC Two
weekly ranking
Beyond the Boardroom
3 June 2007 1.62 22
Why I Fired Them
10 June 2007 2.46 8

References

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External links

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