Exposing The TRUTH: Mike Soutar on The Apprentice

0:00Mike Soutar:And I got a call from two researchers for a BBC business programme that they were researching tasks for Series 7 of The Apprentice. This is an amazing opportunity. And I've watched every episode of The Apprentice up until then. Massive, super fan. And then two days later, I got a call from the series editor saying, Alan would like to meet you. Are you free tomorrow? I said, yes, of course I'm free tomorrow. and he spent 40 minutes basically grilling me on my background on the business he said look this is the first season season seven where the prize for the winner changes from being a job with a salary with me to an investment i'm going to invest 250 000 pounds in it so i'm looking for some people with an entrepreneurial background to refresh my interview panel have you watched the interview episode i'm like yeah of course i have yeah um so he said well if i asked you would you do it yeah sure so anyway so i got it and i thought oh this is an amazing thing i'll do this you know this will be a year what you know it's a great thing to tell the grandkids and then about a week before the second series they called me again well you are free next sunday aren't you to come and do the interviews i got the second year and i thought right i've got to get the third year because otherwise I'm always going to think that I did the first year wasn't that great because I mean you can't be, you walk into something like that it's a very alien environment you're not going to be great straight off the bat, so I thought after year two I have to get year three so I kind of can satisfy myself that I was good enough, so anyway I've been doing it now for 13 years and yeah it's an amazing privilege, I still think it's an incredible show it inspires so many people you know so many entrepreneurs what what has changed in that period from behind the scenes and what actually goes into it you would think that it was a kind of an artificial thing but it's not really I mean you've got you know we're there on a floor plate of some enormous building you know in the middle of the city of London and there's my table and there's my chair and there's the chair for the candidate and I'm sitting there and they will walk in and there will be many people in the room because you've got cameramen and sound technicians and runners and everything else.

2:26Mike Soutar:But as soon as the candidate sits down, I'm completely unaware of any of that. Not aware of cameras. I'm not aware of anything or anybody else apart from that person. And what I'm there to do is to try and get to the bottom of it. And my motivation as I'm doing it is Alan invests his money in the right person and it's my job to stop the wrong person getting through