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Sir Alan Sugar has selected Simon Ambrose and Kristina Grimes as the finalists who will battle it out to be the winner of The Apprentice.

Katie Hopkins was also picked but dropped out when she asked for time to decide whether to move her family to London, provoking Sir Alan's ire.

BBC

APPRENTICE EXCLUSIVE
By Sir Alan Sugar

THE grilling which the Apprentices got from my three associates last night made facing me in the boardroom seem like coming to confession. They were three real tough cookies.

Yet again, I was amazed how some of the candidates hadn't done their homework and swotted up on me and my business interests.

Bearing in mind this is the third series, unless this lot have been living in Siberia for the past two years they should have known how this has caught out many candidates in the past.


The only one who knew anything about me was Simon. In fact he knew so much he could write my biography. He had done his research and was able to rattle it all off to Claude.

Katie and Kristina didn't have a clue who I was and what I do. Tre knew a bit but no real detail and was trying to blag it out of Simon in the morning.

Lohit couldn't even answer simple matters such as profit and loss account details in respect of my companies.

Lohit had to go. He's a nice fellow and all that but people have been saying to me the whole way through this series "When are we ever going to see something from him?" He's one of those guys you come across in companies who's liked by everyone and never offends. But when you ask what they do, no one has a clue.

He got into the habit of talking too much jargon. I don't think he knew what he was saying half the time. Mind you, he'd be a good contender for a newsreader - on a day when there was no news around but they still needed to fill the time.

Tre is very clever and shrewd. He has a way of cutting through things and saying what he thinks without any regard for anyone else's feelings. He is normally right but I think I would have had a mass walkout if I'd let him loose inside one of my firms.

I am sure he has learnt a lot about himself over the past 11 weeks and will think about trying to curb his temper and his tongue. If he does that then he will be very successful.

After speaking to my advisors it was clear that there were three contenders for that job with me.

It was going to be hard for me to choose the two finalists. But as things panned out that decision was made for me - although I do take the credit for forcing the issue by piling the pressure on Katie. She has one face in the boardroom and several others outside it.

I told her straight that if she comes to work for me it would not be like her old job where she went off to Manhattan, Hong Kong and LA. I said she would be lucky if she got to the Mile End Road.

I spelled out that we don't have offices in Exeter where she lives. I was worried about her two little babies and who would look after them.

Having dished all that out, she said she still wanted the job so I offered her a place in the final and went on to talk to Simon and Kristina.

What happened next was a classic example of the reality sinking in that you have said yes to something you don't really want. It's hard to say no to me when I am dishing out my speeches, it was all "Yes, yes, yes, Sir Alan" from Katie. But you could see from her face that what it actually meant suddenly hit home.

It meant that she had agreed to possibly work for me, with none of the glitz she had experienced in the past. That, together with the prospect of moving her whole life, made her concede in the end that she never really wanted my job.

It's clear she was there to win and show how clever she was but not for the actual job. I had doubts about her a few times in the past weeks and should really have stuck to my instinct and got rid of her earlier.

But, if someone keeps telling me, after me piling on all the obstacles, that everything is going to be OK, then what can I do? You have to have some faith in mankind.

I have two great finalists in Simon and Kristina and next week there is a bumper event where they go head-to-head to decide who this year's Apprentice will be.

Whatever happens it's going to be a hard decision - they've both got the fire and spirit I'm looking for.
Mirror

Apprentice fans accuse the BBC of rigging Katie's walkout

The BBC's reality show The Apprentice was embroiled in controversy today over allegations that the surprise resignation of one of the contestants was fixed.

Katie Hopkins, the power-dressing villainess in the series, was told she was through to next week's final, apparently only to quit a few moments later.

Today conspiracy theorists on the internet accused the BBC of rigging the programme and demanded that the full tapes be handed over under Freedom of Information laws.

ThisisLondon

STEPMUM FROM HELL
SAYS DAUGHTER OF HER EX-HUSBAND


APPRENTICE snob Katie Hopkins has been labelled a "fame-hungry gold-digger" by her teenage stepdaughter.

In an exclusive interview with the Mirror, pretty Charlie McKinney, whose dad Damian married Katie in 2004, claims The Apprentice man-eater was the "stepmum-from-hell".

And she's glad that viewers of the BBC1 show have been left in no doubt about how "bitchy" Katie can be.


"No one ever saw that side of her apart from us," says Charlie. "I think she went on the show to make herself a Simon Cowell 'Mr Nasty' figure but it has blown up in her face. She definitely has a cruel sense of humour."

Millions of viewers last night saw Katie, 31, selected for the final two in Sir Alan Sugar's hunt for a £100,000-a-year apprentice... only for her to change her mind and sensationally quit.

She'd already enraged fans of the show by having trysts with a fellow contestant, damning northerners and slagging off finalist Kristina Grimes for wearing a short skirt.

The mum-of-two also admitted last week: "When I found out I was pregnant I was in shock. I thought I'd do the New York marathon and said to myself, 'If I'm meant to be pregnant I will be after this'.

"I'm very different in my life as a mother to my life in business or my life as a partner."

Charlie, 18, reveals that Katie has been desperate for fame for years - ever since she auditioned for the first series of Big Brother.

"She went for BB and was a stand-by," says Charlie, who was bridesmaid at Damian and Katie's wedding. "She's very into the idea of celebrity. I wouldn't be surprised to see her on the next Celebrity Big Brother."

Charlie, who lives in Exmouth, Devon, with her mum Tina, brother Alex, 17, and 10-year-old sister Flora, met Katie in September 2003.

Tina had discovered wealthy Damian, her husband of 19 years, was having an affair with the blonde businesswoman after finding their London flat full of Katie's clothes.

Damian, 46, is the MD of a business consultancy firm in Devon - and Katie was one of his employees.

Not long after her parents' split, Charlie developed an eating disorder.

SHE dropped three stone to 6st 7lbs in just two months - and she believes it was caused by the split and starting boarding school.

"It was a cry for help," says Charlie, who is currently taking A-levels in English, history and economics. "I suppose, looking back, I thought if I lost lots of weight they would see there was something wrong."

But Charlie claims Katie was far from sympathetic and, instead, made snide remarks about her not eating. Charlie says: "When I was really thin, I remember Dad and Katie having a takeaway and Katie said, 'Of course, Charlie won't eat any of it, she'll just sit outside.'

"She'd say, 'You really should do some sport, go and get muscles.' She thought she could just get me to snap out of it."

Katie was just as unkind to her stepson, Alex, calling him "lazy" and "a lump" if she saw him watching TV. And, according to Charlie, she had little maternal instinct when she gave birth to Damian's daughter, India, in 2004. Charlie claims: "She said to me, 'I know everyone is supposed to love their baby and think that they're the most beautiful in the world but I think babies are f***ing ugly."

Charlie claims that Katie left most of their upbringing to a full-time nanny. And she says she watched her strong father turn into a meek man during his relationship with Katie.

"He was a completely different person," says Charlie, who hopes to work in her dad's business. "He used to be the man of the house but, in their relationship, she wore the trousers. He became very meek.

"She used to try to make him really young and trendy."

And on one occasion, when Damian took his daughter shopping for new clothes, he told her to hide the packages from jealous Katie.

Charlie says: "All my clothes were falling off me so he picked me up from my school in Bristol so we could buy new clothes.

"When we got back, he said, 'Would you mind putting the bags under the rug?' He said that it would be much easier if Katie didn't see them."

Damian and Katie split last January - much to Charlie's delight. "They did row a lot. It never seemed like a happy relationship. I doubt very much if she was ever in love with him."

Since splitting from Damian and going on to make a name for herself in the show, Katie has been linked with two married men - as well as fellow Apprentice contestant Paul Callaghan.

The first was father-of-two Paul Collin, 41, a handsome ex-Marine she met while working in Damian's consultancy firm in Devon. His three-year marriage broke down when his wife Mel found saucy texts from Katie on his mobile.

Next up was ex-army lieutenant and fellow contestant Paul. The pair started a fling during filming of The Apprentice and when Sir Alan discovered it, he blew his top.

But Paul dumped bed-hopping Katie after he walked in on her getting down to business with her latest squeeze, 43-year-old Mark Cross.

And just last week, she was pictured in a topless al-fresco romp with Mark, who she met last year while working at the Met Office HQ in Devon.

Mark's devastated wife, Ruth, 50, is now reportedly trying to save their seven-year marriage.

"I really don't know what men see in her," says Charlie. "Maybe it's her confidence - that whole 'I know what I want and where I'm going' thing. Personally, I can't see it at all."

Katie was yesterday unavailable for comment, with her representatives saying: "Katie is likely to sell her story to someone and hence won't be commenting."

Kate.Jackson@Mirror.Co.Uk