The first ever winner of The Apprentice winner, Tim Campbell, who is now one of Lord Sugar’s aides, reveals why he’s not afraid of him, even when he declares: “You’re fired!”
Former Apprentice winner and entrepreneur Tim Campbell isn’t afraid of Alan Sugar.(Image: PA)
When Alan Sugar points his finger and bellows the words ‘you’re fired’ across the boardroom, contestants and viewers shake in their shoes.
But not Tim Campbell – winner of the first series of The Apprentice and with it a £100K job with Amstrad in 2005 – who is far more frightened of his mum.
He says:”My mother calls me Timothy. Not Tim. And when she says it with a Jamaican slant you know she means it. That’s why I am not afraid of anybody.
“My mum is so wise and she taught me that when you look in the mirror you can’t change who you are. If someone has a [negative] view of you then whose problem is that? Go and find another place.”
READ MORE: Legendary DJ’s weird confession, ‘I don’t like food – I’d love to just take a pill’
Being fearless and willing to take risks – something he says Lord Sugar likes – has meant Tim, 48, has earned a regular place on the show and will again be sitting beside his mentor and Karren Brady as The Apprentice launches its 20th series tomorrow night. Co-founder of the Bright Ideas Trust, Tim, who was awarded an MBE in 2012 for his services to enterprise culture, like Lord Sugar, is very straight talking. Asked if some contestants are clueless, he replies: “Some of them are, but some of them learn.
“Most of them learn along the way and what you see as we progress through the series is the cream usually rises. And people in pressurised scenarios will make mistakes. It is really easy to sit back and say ‘I would have done 10 times better than that.’ I guarantee you, when the adrenaline is pumping and the cameras are in your face, then mistakes are likely to happen”
Tim says it’s impossible to tell at the start of the show who will win. He says: “You can’t pick the winner at the beginning, as different tasks play to different skill sets. What makes a great candidate is someone who can work as part of a team. The winners understand they are 100 per cent in it to win, but they bring people with them.”
Tim Campbell and Jasmine Campbell attend The 2025 Powerlist Celebration of Black Excellence Awards.(Image: Hoda Davaine/Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Tim, who lives in London with his wife Jasmine, who he met at university and has two children, Kayla and Aaron with, wants viewers to be kinder to contestants. He says: “Most shows are about individualism and about killing everybody else, like The Traitors. I love The Traitors. But with the show [The Apprentice] as in business you have to empower other people to come with you.
“What you see on the show is that people make mistakes. I want people to make mistakes and learn and build up resilience. Don’t get me wrong, what you can see from my furrowed brow sometimes, the mistakes even baffle me. I am like ‘how did you do this? How did you mess up?’ But I would encourage people to have a level of empathy. It is easy to write people off.
“You have got to remember we are making a TV programme, but these are real human beings and I always have a level of empathy with somebody who is willing to take a risk because of the big reward at the end of it. If I told my children everything they did was a mistake then they would never have learned to walk. My first reaction was to help them up and encourage them to go again.”
Tim Campbell won The Apprentice in 2005.(Image: PA)
Yet, despite the doors that winning The Apprentice opened for him, Tim – who was speaking at the Oxford Union – says he wouldn’t apply if he was in the same position today. He says: “Doing the show was transformational for me, because I won. The good thing about the show, which has kept it alive for 18 years, is that is manifests the British dream.
“But if I had made wiser decisions earlier on in my career I probably would not have applied for The Apprentice. The format is different now. It was not an investment then [winners now get a £250K investment in their business and a 50/50 partnership with Lord Sugar], it was for a job. Coming from a working class background, somebody dangled a six figure salary in front of me. It was somebody I respected, as I had one of his Amstrad computers. So I thought ‘sod this I am applying. But the world of work has changed now. If I had made wiser decisions I would [already] have been on another trajectory.”
He also says contestants are now subject to intense scrutiny on social media. He continues: “I was in an inner city area and got a 2:1 in psychology. The cost of me applying to a television show was quite low. I did not have much to lose. Today they can catch your data, your social media profiles leave footprints. The cost of applying for something like that now is quite high.
Tim Campbell, Lord Alan Sugar and Baroness Karren Brady.(Image: PA)
“You can Google stuff and find out stupid things I did when I was on the show, but most of the stuff from my teenage years you are never going to know about. Thank goodness that is the case. I feel sorry for the generation now where the scrutiny is huge.”
Tim has been open about his own business setbacks – launching a fragrance business that was then abandoned and co-founding a digital marketing agency that was dissolved. He says: “When I failed I realised no-one gave a sh**. In my head it was massive and the worst thing in the world – it was disastrous. But I learned the world is going to keep turning regardless of what I do.”
As a Black man in business, he is also keen to advise people that using any difference they may have can be empowering. He says: “My honest advice is ‘be comfortable in who you are’. I have to be comfortable with who I am and that took time. I say use your difference as a powerful tool. If I am the only Black man in the space, I can’t disappear, but I don’t want to be forgotten.”
Taking his mum’s advice and accepting himself, warts and all, has certainly worked for Tim, who is now starting his fifth series as one of Lord Sugar’s Apprentice aides. He says: “I love my position of sitting back and wondering what I would do.”
- The Apprentice starts tomorrow night at 9pm on BBC1 and is available on iPlayer.