‘My Apprentice was untrusting and suspicious’

Stella English, who took first place in series six of the BBC1 programme in 2010, is suing Lord Sugar, claiming constructive dismissal.

She says the £100,000-a-year job she landed with the millionaire businessman’s Viglen IT division after winning the show was that of an “overpaid lackey”.

Ms English, 34, also claims she was given no choice but to resign when Lord Sugar later told her he would not be renewing her contract.

But, reading out his own statement at the East London Employment Tribunal Service hearing yesterday, Lord Sugar said he was surprised when she told him she was not enjoying the role with him that she had won.

“I began to think that perhaps the reality of work rather than 
the glamour of showbusiness was beginning to bite with her,” he said.

“Her time in the limelight was beginning to fade.”

Lord Sugar went on: “In hindsight, I can now see that she was a very untrusting and suspicious person. It was clear to me now that she thought that everyone was out to trick her.

“She thought during the whole process that she was being lied to.”

Lord Sugar added: “She always came across as quite reserved and detached and, some might argue, cold.

“At other times she would come to me with some very odd conspiracy theories.”

He said she believed the PR agency he himself used had leaked information about her family to the press.

Lord Sugar said Ms English attracted a lot of stories in the media as soon as the series was aired in the autumn of 2010, including one that her fiance was connected to the Stephen Lawrence murder case.

He denied her claims that Viglen chief executive Bordan Tkachuk replied: “Nice girl. Don’t do a lot” when he asked what he thought of her during a meeting between them.

“This is typical of her struggling to deal with the truth or facts,” he said.

Lord Sugar said he thought Ms English had been doing well at Viglen although she still had a lot to learn.

He gave her another role at internet set-top box company YouView after she resigned from Viglen in May 2011.

Earlier Ms English told the tribunal she had felt pressurised by Lord Sugar to take the second job, which she started in June 2011.

“I wasn’t in a relaxed, comfortable position,” she said. “I would say that’s a fairly pressurised situation. It was a completely new idea.”

Ms English, of Whitstable, Kent, said that Lord Sugar informed her he would not be renewing her contract during an unscheduled meeting on September 28, 2011.

She says he told her: “I’ve met my obligations to you. I did it for the BBC and the integrity of the show and a bit of my own PR and a bit of yours too.”

Ms English said she could not believe that Lord Sugar was not taking her life and future seriously.

“At this point I thought we were living in the real world, not in a game show,” she said.

Ms English has told the tribunal that despite being paid £100,000 she had no defined role and only had basic administrative tasks to do at Viglen while she was “ostracised” by her colleagues who made it clear to her she had taken over another woman’s job.

She told the hearing that, on her first day at Viglen, Mr Tkachuk said to her: “There is no job.” Questioned about her relationship with Mr Tkachuk, she told the tribunal: “It was clear that he didn’t think much of The Apprentice.

“He didn’t have any real interest in me. He didn’t really particularly want to speak to me. He did not acknowledge my existence at all and the fact of the matter is he didn’t want me there.”

The tribunal continues.