23 January 2024 , 00:01
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Tim Campbell MBE has revealed how he handles his nerves in Lord Alan Sugar's boardroom on The Apprentice.
The BBC show returns to screens next Thursday with Lord Sugar, Tim and Karren Brady back in the boardroom as the hunt for the worthy recipient of the businessman's investment begins. Speaking to Mirror Online, Tim revealed he struggles to hide his emotions when tensions flare in the boardroom between the contestants.
He said: "A terrible thing for me is that I'd be the worst poker player in the world, because I'm very visual. Coming from a Caribbean household, we speak a lot with our facial expressions.
"I have to learn probably [to be] a bit more to be a bit stony-faced if I'm ever going to go and play poker because you see some of these mistakes these kids make and you think, 'are you mad? What is happening here? What world were you on where you thought that you were going to make a cheesecake that look like that and was going to sell a lot of money? You are delusional.'"
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He continued: "But then I suppose for all of us in the process, but particularly Lord Sugar, he doesn't pull any punches when it comes to those things in the boardroom because let's be clear, he's investing a quarter of a million pounds. This isn't a small amount of money here. This is a lot of cash that we're talking about."
Ahead of the return of The Apprentice, Lord Sugar praised Tim and Karren for being his eyes and ears during the process. When asked how important his aides are, he said: "Karren is brilliant. Tim is brilliant. They've got it. They're the ones that tell me what's going on when they're out in the field with the candidates.
"I get emails, maybe 10 emails a day, as they're going on. 'Fred's just fallen over. Fred's just dropped all the ice cream. Harry's just screwed up in front of the buyer.' I get it all. That's how I get my information to actually question the candidates in the boardroom. They're brilliant because they've done it for so long, right?
"They're experts. They know what to look for and they know what to tell me and they know when to shut the candidates up and to steer them in the right direction. They are very important to me when it comes to deciding who I’m going to fire and hire. I mean, you could say the show is all Lord Sugar, it's not. It's Lord Sugar, Karren and Tim. It’s definitely down to them also as much as me. I can't get all my questions out to the candidates without them telling me what went on in the task."