Claude Littner thinks he’d get fired "immediately" if he was a candidate on ‘The Apprentice’.
The 69-year-old business executive may have worked his way up through the ranks to become Lord Sugar’s trusty aide on the BBC One show, but he has admitted he’d be one of the first to get the axe if he were to compete on the programme because he’s too "aggressive."
Speaking to the Independent newspaper, he said: "I’d get fired immediately. My nature is impossible. I’m much too assertive and aggressive. I would not fare well."
However, the same can’t be said for him being Lord Sugar’s sidekick as he’d love to continue working on the programme alongside him and Baroness Karren Brady for as long as possible.
He explained: "I’d like to say I’d carry on for as long as Alan Sugar carries on, but I take life very pragmatically so if the BBC turn around and say, ‘Claude, thank you very much indeed, we don’t want you any more,’ I wouldn’t be offended because I’ve had a fantastic ride.
"But I love it. What they produce is fantastic. The candidates are great and every year it throws up a different kind of challenge. Every now and then, people say, ‘I watched the first few series but I don’t watch it anymore.’ Well, they’re missing out."
Claude first joined the show as one of the tough interviewers – who pulls apart the candidates’ business plans – in the final round of the competition but since he’s become involved in the whole process, he believes he’s become a bit more sympathetic towards the contestants.
He said: "First of all, I never speak to them. I don’t want to show any favouritism. But when you see what they actually have to go through, the amount of time they’ve got to do it to then get up at an ungodly hour – as indeed Karren and I do – you realise it is pressure.
"They also constantly have a television camera in their face. By the time it’s week three, they’re exhausted! You can’t underestimate the difficulty. I try not to be in any way sympathetic to what they’re going through because, actually, they’ve chosen to do it – and it’s a life-changing opportunity. But you can’t help but feel some kind of attachment there whereas before I’d never met them until that interview episode so I was completely unsympathetic."
Claude Littner would get fired ‘immediately’ on The Apprentice
