Tim Campbell, a Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) diploma holder and transport manager for London Underground, has won the TV showdown in BBC2’s The Apprentice, but the programme now faces a backlash from business.
Campbell won after Sir Alan Sugar picked him from 14 hopefuls to take a £100,000 job working for the multi-millionaire owner of the Amstrad electronics empire.
However, Sugar’s hard-nosed approach to the prospective candidates has angered the CBI.
Sir Digby Jones, director general of the CBI, said that most members of the employers’ body did not want to be associated with it.
“[The Apprentice] has nothing to do with modern business and it puts 99% of good businessmen and women in this country in a very unfair light,” he said.
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However, Sugar told a BBC radio programme that it was a business programme from which “a lot of people are going to learn some great business tips”.
He also pushed the diversity agenda. “Anyone who says women are not good in business is talking rubbish because some of them are brilliant,” he said.
