What became clear [on The Apprentice] was how people would make the most irrational business decisions under pressure. Some of the simple basics of business were being ignored, such as paying attention to costings, working out how many items to buy so they didn’t get stuck with leftover stock and ensuring that what they were selling made a profit!

It was also quite amazing to see the naïvety of academics who had never been involved in business or, worse, those who claimed they were experienced in business. After all, one wasn’t asking them to create a complex business model – it was all simple stuff. It came as a great shock to me that some people completely ignored simple maths and hadn’t realised their early decisions had left them dead in the water before they’d even started. Even more fascinating was seeing how, having explained the errors of their ways throughout the course of the process, the same mistakes were repeated over and over again.

Eventually, in that first series, the very worthy winner was Tim Campbell, after a closely run final with Saira Khan. Tim came to work at Brentwood and got on very well with the staff. He was given a new project to head up, an electronic face-care system, and he worked with the engineers to develop both the product and a website to host the sales.