Nick Hewer: ‘Business is now fun, acceptable and exciting’

And the Labour Party should wake up to that fact, the former ‘Apprentice’ stalwart tells Ian Burrell

Nick Hewer (Getty)

As one of Labour’s more prominent supporters in the world of business, Nick Hewer takes a pessimistic view of the party’s future under Jeremy Corbyn.

He has, he says, “gone dead wobbly” in his backing for Labour of late. After a decade at Sir Alan Sugar’s side on the BBC’s The Apprentice, he is widely regarded as a sound judge of leadership quality and business acumen.

It is not Mr Corbyn that he castigates but his Labour predecessor, Ed Miliband, on whom Mr Hewer’s verdict is as brutal as anything Sir Alan might deliver in dismissing one of his contestants. “When I first met Ed Miliband – immediately on his being appointed – on Andrew Neil’s show, I knew he was dead in the water. You can smell a leader and he didn’t smell like a leader. They should have canned him earlier, as you would in business. If somebody is driving the bloody thing into the ground I’m afraid you have to drag them to one side and give them the bad news.”

Mr Hewer’s assessment of Labour’s new leader is kinder, and reflects his background in building a public relations company before he went to work for Sir Alan’s Amstrad. “I think he speaks well and has the Tony Wedgwood Benn appeal – if you sat on a long train journey with Benn you’d go and kill for him…”

But it won’t be enough, he thinks. “I think that the policies will not chime with the British people, unless there’s some huge, seismic, unbelievable shift over the next few years and I don’t see it. I think if the economy – I know it has had a little blip – continues to grow and the debt is reduced, people by and large, setting aside those who have been horribly hurt by the welfare cuts, will say, ‘If it ain’t broke don’t try and fix it.’”

Labour has made a mistake in its hostility to business (“Miliband just wasn’t interested – when he was presented with a bunch of blokes from the City he stuck his nose in the air a bit”) and so has broadcasting, he says. “The country is running on business; why is business so poorly represented?” The media in general “don’t admire business people”, he complains.

He laments the passing of the BBC’s The Money Programme, which ran for 44 years until 2010. “That was a good show and the business community fought to be on that and recognised it was very influential.”

But he says reality TV shows such as The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den have transformed the public’s view of business. “They have spun business into a different way of people’s thinking. Business now is fun, acceptable, exciting.”

Mr Hewer notices this when he visits schools as an advocate for business on behalf of the Merchant Taylors’ Company or the National Literacy Trust. He finds children of eight years and older acting out versions of The Apprentice to raise funds for their schools.

He has long been passionate about business education and for four years at the start of the century ran a scheme for Amstrad and Lloyds Bank called You Can Do it Too, visiting schools and colleges.

The project was superseded when Sir Alan saw Donald Trump on the American version of The Apprentice and persuaded the BBC to let him host the UK version. “He said, ‘Then I don’t have to go ploughing around the country once a week at my own expense, I can talk about business on television,’” Mr Hewer recalls.

The Apprentice returns next week but, for the first time, Mr Hewer will not be there, having ceded his place to Viglen chairman Claude Littner who previously appeared as the most aggressive of Sir Alan’s interviewers.

Mr Hewer compares Littner’s interviewing style to using a “claymore” when others preferred a stiletto. “His ferocity in the interview programme, I would hope that he doesn’t carry that into the observer role. I’m sure he’s very smart and wouldn’t do that, because he’s got to stand back and report.”

Mr Hewer defends The Apprentice against claims of superficiality – “all the business lessons are submerged in the soup of entertainment and without the bloody entertainment you won’t get anybody to watch it” – and that sales people dominate the contestants. “You have got to have people with resilience and sales people do have that by and large.”

The demands of a show that shoots 130 hours of footage for each hour of television eventually became too much. He held a dinner for the show’s senior staff. “I actually apologised if I had been rude or had hurt anybody’s feelings because at the end it was becoming a bit too much physically.”

Mr Hewer, 71, hosts Channel 4’s staple show Countdown and is in discussions to form a television presenting team with the theatrical agent and producer Michael Whitehall (father of comedian Jack Whitehall).

He is also an ambassador for Bark.com, a website that allows users to “bark” out a job requirement and then anonymously assess the local traders who respond. The service reflects his “absolute passion for the small business market”, providing a new media alternative to the leaflet drop.

Despite quitting The Apprentice he remains close friends with Sir Alan – they are due to have dinner the evening after we meet – and praises him for never having surrendered control to its producers.

“He’s all over it like a big spider. It’s absolutely his show. TV people are not business people.”

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