You'd be fired! Sir Alan Sugar blasts BBC bosses over new The Apprentice series

He has spent 20 years barking ‘You’re fired’ across the boardroom table as one of the BBC’s most recognisable figures.

Now Alan Sugar has turned his ire on the corporation itself, claiming it failed to adequately promote the launch date of the new series of The Apprentice.

Despite confirming he had renewed his deal with the BBC for another three years, the billionaire businessman criticised it for its vague trailers. 

Appearing via Zoom at a preview screening of the 20th series, he said: ‘If they [the BBC] were in my boardroom, they’d be fired.’

While he acknowledged the BBC had spent ‘quite a bit of money’ promoting the series, he said trailers repeatedly announced the show is ‘coming soon’.

He added: ‘It wouldn’t be harmful to actually say the 27th January.’

When the Q&A host suggested the ambiguity might be a ‘cunning plan’ to prevent rival channels from scheduling against the show, Lord Sugar said: ‘No, they’re not that clever.’

But the 78-year-old made clear his future with the BBC is secure, adding: ‘You’ve got me for another three years.’

Insiders have revealed BBC bosses are facing pressure to axe the show over fears recent scandals about some contestants have rendered it ‘untenable’.

The producers’ choice of contestants has, in recent years, been dogged by controversy.

In 2019, ahead of his appearance as a contestant on the 15th series, it emerged that market trader Thomas Skinner, then 34, had previously been convicted of handling £40,000 worth of stolen goods and possessing more than 2,000 diazepam pills in 2011.

Meanwhile, Dr Asif Munaf, who appeared on the 2024 series, was dropped from the spin-off show after being accused of posting anti-Semitic tweets denying the Holocaust.

The latest controversy erupted last week, when a contestant in the upcoming series was found to have posted a string of racist and sexist comments online more than a decade ago.

HGV driver Levi Hague, 33, shared now-deleted posts on X in 2012 and 2013 in which he referred to Muslims as ‘dirty,’ women as ‘s**gs’ and branded seven police officers who once arrested him ‘pigs’.

Mr Hague has since issued an apology, as he said: ‘They are not a reflection of the values I uphold today.’

The former RAF serviceman insisted that he is ‘now in a completely different headspace’ and added: ‘I deeply regret the harm and offence these words may cause’.

But the episode appears to have driven a wedge between the BBC and The Apprentice’s long-time production company, Naked.

When asked by the Daily Mail about how Hague’s X posts could have gone unnoticed, despite numerous previous vetting issues, the BBC pointed the finger at Naked, a subsidiary of Fremantle.

A spokesman for the Corporation said: ‘We were completely unaware that this contestant had made such abhorrent comments.

‘We have asked the independent production company to fully review the social media checks undertaken, given the process has clearly failed in this instance.

‘The views presented are totally unacceptable and we are taking this extremely seriously.’