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22
Mar
‘I feel like it wasn’t my time to leave The Apprentice’ - Harrogate's fired candidate tells all
As someone who gives daily sales pitches – and whose livelihood is reliant on pitching skills – it came as a shock to Keir Shave when he was fired from The Apprentice for that very reason.
The 27-year-old former Harrogate Grammar School pupil entered the 19th series of the BBC One programme.
Keir, along with 17 other hopefuls, had his sights set on Lord Sugar’s £250,000 investment and mentorship. But, seven weeks in, his time was cut short.
Keir was on a high after episode six; he was made project manager during the corporate hospitality task in Turkey and led his team to success.
But, when the remaining candidates were tasked with creating a kids’ banking app and money box the following week, his luck ran out.
Keir and two teammates had to pitch their banking app, which was supposed to broaden children’s financial literacy, to industry giants including Monzo.
His team lost the task and Tim Campbell, Lord Sugar’s aide, gave Keir some hard-hitting feedback:
They said you were actually the weakest link of the three… Specifically on the answering of questions: elongated answers, not getting to the point directly.
Lord Sugar attributed the failure of the task to the pitch and fired Keir, who shook in his head in disappointment.
Months on, Keir still seems shocked by his firing:
I just don’t feel like it was my time to leave. For someone to say that they didn’t invest because of me doing a bad pitch doesn’t make sense. The other team’s pitch had to be worse. It did feel a bit shocking – I felt like I had more to give.
Amvoc employee
But Keir’s firing wasn’t the first time he has been let go at short notice.
He is a former employee of Amvoc - a telemarketing company in Harrogate which crashed into administration and left hundreds of employees without jobs in March 2023.
Keir was one of many staff members who received an email at 10pm to inform them the company’s offices in Harrogate, Leeds and Manchester had closed with immediate effect.
Keir said:
We got an email telling us they’d gone bust and not to come in. I remember I was up until about 5am the following morning setting everything up – I’d made my whole business. We’d registered with HMRC, I booked a viewing at our previous office – I just moved fast.
It was awful, I had people from my team crying to me. But I just had to move quickly.
Just days later, his Leeds-based telemarketing firm Parallel Partnerships was up and running.
Keir Shave on The Apprentice. Credit FremantleMedia Ltd via BBC Pictures
The audition process and programme myths
Keir told the Stray Ferret he was inspired by a former contestant to apply for the show.
Candidly, he tells us he “wasn’t a big fan” of The Apprentice before his appearance and hadn’t watched much of it.
I guess what I wanted to get out of it was eyes on me and my company. I wanted more people to know about me and the company. It wasn’t for the investment, really.
Keir said the audition process is broken down into around four stages. Candidates were asked to complete “fake tasks” on camera, including selling a damaged crisp packet.
He describes it as gruelling, and said producers “pick apart business plans and saw how we reacted to certain things”.
Of thousands of applicants, Keir was among the final 18. A seemingly self-assured character, the Stray Ferret asked Keir if he expected to be successful in the audition process:
I backed myself to get on it, yeah. I set up my business in a few days and now it’s super successful – it’s done decent turnover figures quicky. I was ticking boxes in terms of ability. I was pretty confident.
Keir also shared some behind-the-scenes secrets about the show: he told the Stray Ferret Lord Sugar’s famous boardroom, which has reduced people to tears, is, in fact, a set on an industrial estate.
“It’s in a big warehouse, not The Shard”, he says.
He also told us candidates really do have just 20 minutes to get ready in the morning – usually after a 2am wake-up call – and they only have around an hour to complete each element of each task, like creating a logo or a brand name.
Keir told the Stray Ferret he found the early mornings and time constraints the toughest parts of The Apprentice.
We also asked Keir what Lord Sugar, the 78-year-old businessman known for his ruthless feedback and no-nonsense attitude, is really like. Keir said:
You don’t really interact with him; you just speak to him whilst everything is being filmed in the boardroom.
You interact with Karren and Tim more because they come on the task with you. Tim is sound, he’d chill with us at lunch. Karren was really nice too, but she didn’t get too involved other than when she had to. They’re both friendly – I don’t think as scary as they try and make out to be.
Keir Shave on The Apprentice. Credit FremantleMedia Ltd via BBC Pictures
What’s next?
The Sun recently reported Keir’s sights were set on the sunny island of Majorca, home to ITV’s Love Island.
However, Keir told the Stray Ferret he feels he is “too old” for Love Island, but he didn’t rule out the idea of another go on television.
I wouldn’t mind anything that was fun but kept my professional image because that’s the real reason I went on The Apprentice. It wasn’t to sell teeth whitening products, it was to build my credibility as a businessperson.
Keir’s business plan included creating an online tool designed to help sales staff by providing snippets of support, including responses to sales objections.
But he told the Stray Ferret he has no plans build on the business plan anytime soon, and is instead focussed strengthening his team at Parallel.
We asked Keir what he would say to budding young entrepreneurs. He said:
Work really hard and don’t believe you deserve anything. Learn from people you want to be like and when the time is right, strike on it.
The Stray Ferret asked Keir who he would like to win The Apprentice.
Instead of telling us his frontrunner, Keir revealed he knows who the two finalists are already. However, even those two people don’t know who has won yet.
“So, the way it works is that the top two film both winning and losing. Then, a few weeks before the final, they find out who actually won. So, no one knows who has won yet”, Keir said.
The Apprentice airs on BBC One every Thursday at 9pm.
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