Lord Sugar reveals The Apprentice future and why the UK won't get a hungry entrepreneurial culture: "Too late, mate"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

The Apprentice is currently well into its 20th series, fronted, as ever, by the self-made multimillionaire, life peer, author and sometime political adviser, Alan Sugar.

But after two decades of firing contestants who fail to meet his exacting standards, is the 78-year-old’s faith in young British entrepreneurs still intact? Or has he given up on a generation drawn by the lure of celebrity rather than his own ethos of hard work?

The Apprentice is now in its 20th series – would you like to reach a quarter century?

It’s not down to me but we have agreed another three years. I guess there’ll come a time when either I’m a bit knackered or viewers are phoning in and complaining that I’m like Joe Biden and losing the plot. The BBC will spend a few grand on some market research people and ask, “Should we get rid of Lord Sugar or what?” But, at the moment, I love doing it because it’s really about starting a business from scratch with young people.

Have business practices changed since The Apprentice began in 2005?

Yes, because of technology and because of the internet. When people create businesses now, rather than having a bricks-and- mortar shop or warehouse, they are created on the web. I like to have a physical product. Let’s make something!

So why does The Apprentice remain relevant?

Because of our audience. Every single year I get a new generation of youngsters, 13- or 15-year-olds, tuning in. The 15-year-old of 20 years ago is now 35. If you said to him, “Do you watch The Apprentice any more?” you’ll get, “No, it’s s**t. He [Sugar] talks a lot of b******s. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” But the new 15-year-olds are so in awe of it. And the show has created an awareness for business that’s done a great service for young people.

You opened the latest series with boardroom scenes in Hong Kong – why?

It was a surprise for the candidates. They’ve been sent abroad before, but this is the first time that I turned up. Our friends in China are fantastic. The entrepreneurs there are brilliant; people there, and India, have got a tremendous flair. And here in England you find that some of the great entrepreneurs are from second-generation Indian and Chinese families. They are great innovators, clever and smart people.

Are you known in Hong Kong the way you’re known over here?

It’s my old hunting ground. I used to go to Hong Kong three or four times a year, so I would have been known in the electronics industry 30 to 40 years ago, but not by the average person in the street like I am in England. That’s one of the reasons I like being in America, because no one knows who I am.

Why do you not enjoy being recognised?

It goes back to my days in football. Being recognised as the chairman of a football club wasn’t nice at all [Sugar was chairman of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club between 1991 and 2001]. Being recognised nowadays for The Apprentice is very nice. And people come up to me, they ask for selfies, they ask for autographs and all that stuff, and I don’t mind at all. In the football days, it was more like, “Get your f***ing chequebook out, you w****r.” That wasn’t very nice.

Why do you think the Chinese are so good at creating entrepreneurs?

It’s the hunger, actual physical hunger, that has created people who realise that they have to be self-sufficient to eat. Literally, to eat. They have to work hard in order to achieve things. No different from what it was like in England back in the 40s and 50s. People had to work really hard to get what they wanted. There were no free lunches and all that stuff. The Chinese and the Indians were very poor people for a long, long time. So, the necessity to eat and also to be prosperous and to be self-sufficient is within their culture.

Do you want that hungry entrepreneurial culture here?

Too late, mate. All the kids are interested in now is the latest Nike shoes, the iPhone 15 and TikTok. I sometimes think the parents are to blame. Get out and get a bloody job. Go and work in McDonald’s and scrape the hot plates and all that. But oh, no, “Not for me. I’m too busy on Saturday.” When I was a millionaire I sent my kids out to work on Saturday morning. And they made their own children do the same thing.

The new series started with 20 candidates instead of 18. Did that make much difference?

Well, it gave me a lot more scope to fire people. As you’ll have seen in some episodes already, if they really screw up, I can get rid of more than one of them at a time. And the candidates have changed, they’re very social-media and reality-TV-show aware, celebrity-aware. I spot some of them coming on the show for that. They normally don’t last too long.

Which contestants have you liked the most over 20 series?

I wouldn’t like to say. My wife sometimes says I didn’t get close to anybody, really. But business is business. I tell them that on the programme: we’re not here to make friends. I’m here to do business. Business is nine to five – and after five, that’s it.

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The Apprentice airs on Thursdays at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer.

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