Fired Apprentice star spills boardroom secrets including way to tell which team has won

The Apprentice Star Sophie Wilding is the latest contestant to be fired from the boardroom following an electric pod vehicle task.

On the long road to victory, one team successfully drove themselves to the finishing line with their sustainability themed vehicle and made over £1 million in pod orders from buyers.

However, Sophie’s team failed to make the winner’s podium with their Party themed Pod.

Speaking to Daily Star and other press, Sophie has now spilled behind the scenes secrets from the boardroom – including a surprise way that viewers can spot who the winning team is, before Lord Sugar’s verdict.

After acting as Project Manager for the team, Sophie found herself in the bottom three along with contestants Nick Showering and Akshay Thakrar.

However it was ultimately Sophie that was at the end of Lord Sugar’s firing finger.

Yet while the agonising wait to find out who is fired might seem to last forever, Sophie revealed that the final scenes in the boardroom feel like minutes, saying: “It goes really fast. When you’re in the final three, it goes so quick.

“You’re trying to think of things in your head and it’s just exhausting as well, because you sit there and you feel like, if you don’t want me to stay, just let me go.

“You hope that your skills and what you put on the table speaks volumes also, but I honestly don’t know how long it is in the final three. It feels like a couple of minutes but I know it’s not.”

Fans had recently spotted that the time on Lord Sugar’s watch changes from scene to scene, sometimes stretching multiple hours, indicating the long length of time it takes to shoot the boardroom scenes.

Speaking about the long boardroom scenes, Sophie revealed the one thing that contestants always hoped for while filming: “One thing is that you always wanted to be sat down,” said Sophie.

“You’re more comfortable when you’re sat down rather than stood up in heels. A lot of the girls wore Christian Laboutins [shoes], so they all had them on.

“You’re wearing the same shoes that you’re wearing in your entrance pictures. We were always like, if we knew we were sat down, we were like, yes!”

Sophie also shared a top tip for viewers after spotting a unique way to tell which team had successfully won the task – and which team had failed, adding: “When Lord Sugar, Karen [Brady] and Tim [Campbell] are talking about the different teams, you’re always trying to think, oh – are they winning? Are they losing?

“Something which I picked up on – Lord Sugar always speaks to the winning team more than the losing team in the boardroom.

“I used to always try and like, remember how long he was speaking to each side before the actual verdict of the winner or the loser is mentioned – top tip there.”

The boardroom scenes saw Sophie’s team receive criticism for their Party Pod, which only gained £355,200 in pod sales from buyers.

Karen Brady described the logo of their product, called Star Pod, as looking like “a toaster that is exploding,” while tempers flared between the team over the product’s overall vision and marketing.

However, Sophie explained that she felt she had a strong argument overall for her vision of the team’s product, despite the criticism it received from the boardroom panel, saying: “I feel every single time I was in the boardroom, everything I said, I could back that up with actual facts. That was what I took to the boardroom.

“I do feel I had some strong arguments in regards to the marketing output, because ultimately I don’t think someone can just be fired from picking a topic, Party Pod, which was in the book, that was initially gave us to pick from.”

Talking about the product, she said: “The idea obviously had legs because it made sales. For me, I also found like I was restricted with the outcome of what the marketing team produced.

“After I had spoken to them on the phone, I was told pink, green, it’s called Star Pod. We were then there designing the inside and alarm bells are going in my head thinking, I can’t have the outside completely different to the inside.

Discussing the name of the product – Starpod – she also added: “I just think the name was really poor. A three year old could have come up with that. I don’t think there was much thought that went into it.

“When I was selling, I heard first hand buyers telling me, ‘I would purchase this, but the logo looks like a warning/danger sign’.

“They didn’t like Star Pod, so I know I could have made more sales, if those elements were changed. That would have had a knock on effect for the design inside.”

Despite this, Sophie did add that ultimately the choice made about the initial concept for the pod in the beginning led to the product’s downfall, adding: “I don’t think it was the vision so to speak – I made sales and people saw the vision – but I have said throughout that I think the choice of ‘Party Pod’ was doomed no matter who picked it, from the beginning.”

However despite tempers flaring in the boardroom about the marketing and vision for the product, Sophie explained that she has no hard feelings towards her fellow contestants and that everyone got along well in the house.

She also added that she would love to welcome her fellow contestants to her cocktail bar business, Imperial Haus, when the series is over.

“I’ve got no hard feelings about anyone. I’d love everyone to come down.

“There were talks actually when we were in the house that we had to have a party after. That would be really cool.”

The Apprentice continues on BBC on Thursday at 9pm

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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk