Yahoo News Apprentice making interviews change after Alan Sugar admits to finding "hard to watch"
If you watched the most recent series of The Apprentice, you will have witnessed the savage final five interviews that many viewers struggled to watch.
Lord Alan Sugar, the infamous firer and hirer on the BBC series, has now revealed that he was shocked by how brutal his advisors were when grilling the finalists on their proposed business plans.
Tears were shed, questionable advice was given and snarky remarks were thrown, but instead of the usual entertainment value of pulling the over-confident entrepreneurs down, it seemed slightly too personal and offensive.
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In an interview with The Times, Sugar cleared the air about the controversy surrounding the penultimate episode to reveal his plans to change their approach for the next season.
When it was suggested that in real life an employee wouldn’t have been spoken to in such a manner, Sugar replied: "I agree. I think we need to tone that down a bit. I found it hard to watch."
He explained: "Unfortunately when that was recorded, I wasn’t there. Anyway, I’m not making any excuses. When I saw it in the end, I thought, 'This is too harsh', and we’re going to tone it down now."
He was also in agreement with the majority of viewers that the episode missed the mark and wasn’t enjoyable as it had no entertainment value.
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"I don’t think it’s entertaining. It used to be entertaining. All the previous boardroom [episode] 11s were entertaining. This one was very harsh. I agree with you," he added.
Since the 17th series aired, Sugar has spoken to his advisors about the changes for next time around. He said: "I’ve told them now. Believe me, it won’t be happening again."
The renowned businessman also said that some of the ruthless tone was down to the final edit eliminating the niceties to focus on the drama. In one scene, Karren Brady said: "My friends call me Karren, it’s Baroness Brady to you."
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"Well now, hold on, hold on. I said to Karren, 'You are very hard'. She said, 'No, it was the way I was edited. I was very nice, very polite and it was like give and take'.
"What went wrong here was the production company went bang, bang, bang – only wanted to deal with the bang, bang, bang moments."
However, Sugar said he didn’t regret telling former flight attendant Victoria to revert her sweet business to a hobby, even though it had been her full-time job for two years.
The Apprentice is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer
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