Back to business

05/06/2009

The Apprentice's most famous winner & loser reveal what's at stake ahead of this year's final

Despite leaving only half way through her ‘prize’ one-year contract with Sir Alan, series two winner Michelle Dewbury believes winning the programme was a “fantastic” way to showcase her business acumen to the world. She has a no-nonsense view of the format, and one that most of series five’s viewers will struggle to swallow.

“I don’t regard the apprentice as an entertainment show. When I took part it was a BBC 2 business documentary. It was very much focussed on the business aspects and I was very much there to get a job. Personally, the entertainment factor didn’t enter my head at all.”

She says she was quiet on the programme, hardly a recipe for great television: “That was because I was in work mode. I had my head down and was just getting on with it. It was a fantastic experience, it was a lot of fun, and of course it opened doors in a business context, but you need to be able to do something once the doors are open.”

And once the doors were open for Dewbury the former check-out girl said thanks but no thanks, and walked out. While other Apprentice winners are still hard at work within one of Sugar’s companies, Dewbury claimed her job recycling computers wasn’t stimulating enough. Three years later, after a string of other ventures, she is now trying to establish website chiconomise.com, an online discount site for fashionistas.  Despite her Apprentice trophy, the process has been no bed of roses.

“The new site’s about how to get things for less, discount offers and all of that. That’s what I’m beavering away at just now; I’m trying to secure our funding which is interesting in the credit crunch. It’s lonely being an entrepreneur just now.”

So if winning the Apprentice is no guarantee of lifelong business success, what is? Losing perhaps? Certainly one woman who might subscribe to that view is Dewbury’s fellow finalist Ruth Badger, who despite losing out, has gone one to establish a chain of businesses and a high media profile. Although Badger says she was “absolutely gutted” she didn’t win, the big personality from Wolverhampton finds it easy to look on the bright side.

“Success is about what you do on the show. I walked off that show being the loser of the Apprentice. I left in the final. But by god did that not stop me. In three years to have three businesses that are trading and doing very well; to have one of the biggest talent agencies in the world representing you; and to have a good speaking career as well as media career is pretty good going for a girl who left school with three GCSEs.

"But I’m very humble and normal. I don’t think anyone that comes out The Apprentice is a real celebrity and the ones that do [think that] need a gun to their head.”

Badger now runs a consultancy firm, a lettings agent, and a training academy for sales staff. Aside from that she is represented by A-lister’s talent agency William Morris and one of her latest TV formats, Badger or Bust on Five has just been sold to a New Zealand broadcaster.

She’s already had one interview on the day we speak, and she’s interrupted halfway through our interview by a film crew desperate for her to put her make up on and get cracking. For Badger at least, there has been much more to the apprentice than simply winning.

“I believe everything happens for a reason. Sir Alan gave me a job working for him for six months while the show was going out, and I was very grateful. But I’m an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs don’t work for other people. I would never have gone on to do what I’ve done if I’d won.”