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You're fired Uzma Yakoob! Farm shop shake up turns sour for The Apprentices 2013

 

Katie Archer
Thursday 23 May 2013 11:22 BST
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Apprentice reject Uzma Yakoob has said it was tougher being on the women's team than working with the men.

Yakoob became the fourth candidate of the series to be fired by Lord Sugar and explained she did not crave the limelight like the other business wannabes.

For the latest task - running a profitable farm shop - the teams were given a shake-up and no longer divided along gender lines as she and Natalie Panayi joined the previously all-male team Endeavour.

Click here or on "View Images" for a galley of the remaining contestants

Yakoob said: "The girls were far more stressful because in (the boys') team I couldn't get a word in edgeways - but at least you didn't lose your voice over it. Whereas with the women everyone was really opinionated - we're all strong-minded women and I'm used to working in a female-dominated industry with conflict, but they all wanted to shine."

Yakoob, who said she was "relieved to be out of the bickering and arguments" of the girls' team for the task, joined the growing number of candidates citing Luisa Zissman as the most difficult person to work with.

She said: "She wasn't a great team player, put it that way. Her style and the way she's playing the show is that she is quite difficult to work with and she lets people know that she's difficult to work with.

"Because the process is so intense, I think some people will not even be bothered to take her to the boardroom. It takes a lot out of you and to go into the boardroom and argue with someone and fight your corner, it's not a fun process and I think Luisa would find it quite fun."

Yakoob also revealed her belief that she was able to predict the way things would go with a "gut feeling".

The make-up entrepreneur who was dragged into the boardroom for a third time in four weeks by project manager Neil Clough, along with Kurt Wilson.

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She said: "The first two times in the boardroom I knew I wasn't going to go because I've got a very good intuition and gut feeling. The third time I knew I was."

Clough said he had brought Yakoob into the boardroom because of her lack of contribution to the task and in one scene where she has been sent to sell vegetables in the street she is seen complaining of feeling "embarrassed" and saying the situation was "not cool".

She said: "It was more embarrassing standing next to Alex (Mills) shouting in the middle of the street and Natalie who was singing in the middle of the street. It made me realise that I'm actually quite reserved. I don't feel that I need to be in the limelight.

"A lot of these people like to play up to the cameras and Natalie has done performing arts but I haven't. I'm quite a shy person, people don't see that side of me. I'm quite opinionated but if you put me in the middle of the street with a bag of potatoes it probably won't go down too well - I need to warm up."

She also put her prediction that Leah Totton would go far in the contest down to the same intuition.

Take our Apprentice poll: Are you bored of the boardroom?

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