LORD Sugar's right hand man gave sixth form students in the Isle of Man an insight into making it in the business world yesterday (Wednesday).

Nick Hewer, who is a long time colleague of Lord Alan Sugar and one of his aides on the BBC TV programme The Apprentice, visited the Island as a guest of Junior Achievement.

Despite a race against time to make it to the event, thanks to fog in London, Nick delivered a witty and engaging account of his life in business as well as how he got involved in "all this Apprentice stuff".

Nick began working for Lord Sugar in 1983 when his PR company was hired to represent Amstrad. He believed his working relationship with him had come to an end when he sold the business in 1997 - until he was summoned to help him once again in 2004.

"You never stop working for him even if he doesn't pay you!" he joked.  

Lord Sugar had approached Nick to help him persuade the BBC, which had just won the rights to the USA TV programme The Apprentice, to give him a job.

Nick explained: "He said if I can get this job with the BBC I can talk to young people about business on the television.

"Truth of the matter was he wasn't the man to do the job because although a great businessman his heyday had been 10 years before. He'd wasted his time with football, taken his eye off the ball and his own company had sort of slumped off a bit. There were new people on the block."

Nick told the students that the initial meeting about the show didn't go particularly well so he persuaded Lord Sugar to arrange to send the BBC producers, via private jet, to Lord Sugar's Marbella mansion for the weekend.

He explained: "The thing about Sugar is that he is super intelligent, very focussed and very enthusiastic. Certainly by the end of the weekend he had absolutely captivated them and they knew they'd got absolutely the best person in the world to do the job."

Nick has taken part in each of the seven series of The Apprentice as an aide and is responsible for shadowing the contestants as they undertake business challenges. He then reports his findings back to Lord Sugar before he chooses a candidate to fire. 

"There is no mystery to it. It's very easy, you follow people round and take notes!" he laughed. 

Looking back at the success of the show Nick said the one question he is asked the most is if the show is fun to work on.

He said: "I'm going to tell you something - for the elderly it's a nightmare, it's exhausting!

"But there are times when it is fun and there are times when you run into people that one would not normally meet in the course of one's everyday life.

"It's fulfilled everything that he (Lord Sugar) wanted it to do – which is to teach young people about business in an interesting fashion. We believe The Apprentice does a great job for young people. We're very very proud of it."

He continued: "The second question I get asked the most is – are you seriously telling me that these are Britain's brightest business hopefuls?

"Candidly – no. I think it's fair to say they are probably not necessarily. What we want to do is tell lots of people about business but it has to be packaged in an entertaining way.

"We want people to think 'I could do better than that' – that is the great joy of the programme the fact that people can say 'Why didn't they do that?'

"It doesn't mean to say the candidates are stupid because I tell you what at that age I couldn't have done what they do, and I doubt whether many people could, because the pressure under which they labour is so intense. Of course they make mistakes but we all love the mistakes."

The BBC is currently airing a junior version of the show - Young Apprentice - and Nick says he has been impressed with the calibre of young people hoping to make it in the business world.

He said: "The young apprentices are just as good as the adults and the tasks are no easier. They're absolutely delightful because they're so young they haven't learnt to lie and they don't cheat!"

Offering some words of advice to the Isle of Man's young business people of the future Nick said: "A word to the youngsters - don't go for a dull job always go to where the excitement is.

"Sugar was very exciting and I had a great time. I took my eye, in a sense, off my main business because he was such fun.

"For Alan Sugar if you gel and you do a good job and you can withstand what is essentially a baptism of fire then you're in – and so it is after almost 30 years I'm still sort of with him. What a great fun career it's been."

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