The Apprentice’s Elle Stevenson: I would have fired myself given half a chance
The exiting candidate admits Lord Sugar didn't really have much choice but to give her the boot, and says she was keen to get home for the X Factor that night anyway
Apprentice candidate Elle Stevenson admits she would have fired herself "given half a chance" after that dismal performance in this week's show.
Elle, who was Team Versatile’s Project Manager, was dismissed by Lord Sugar during the episode before she’d even had a chance to decide who she’d be bringing back into the boardroom.
“Mistake on that, mistake on this, six times the loser…you know, not looking great," Lord Sugar said. "In fact, there’s no point carrying on Elle. In your day job you organise the construction of basements, well in this particular task, you’ve dug yourself a very, very big hole…you’re fired."
It followed what Elle herself described as an “almighty clear_post_images.sh up” on this week’s handy man task, which resulted in their team losing by more than £500 as they tried to drum up local and commercial jobs. Mergim and April eventually followed her out of the door in a bumper triple firing.
“I wasn’t going to bring anyone back in [to the boardroom] if I’d been given that chance anyway," she told RadioTimes.com. "I think Lord Sugar kind of knew that. I wouldn’t have been like a martyr and said ‘Fire me, I’ll take one for the team... I wouldn’t have done that. But I definitely was going to say I wasn’t bringing anyone back in.”
Elle knows Lord Sugar wouldn’t have stood for that however.
“100% not. He would have said ‘Go now then’. He kind of did. He just did it a bit prematurely.”
However, she did manage to find an upside to her early departure from the programme.
“There was a TV show that I wanted to watch that was on afterwards, so I got to see that and I didn’t have to hang around and wait for them to battle it out,” She later admitted it was X Factor she'd been so keen to see. “So swings and roundabouts.”
“I knew I was going anyway, believe me. I was fully aware I was going home. I was just thinking, ‘Have I got everything in my suitcase that I need?’ When Lord Sugar gave Joseph that immunity [Mr Valente earning high praise for basically running the task] I was like, OK here we go, something dramatic is going to happen here. I was cool with it. It was all my fault. Lord Sugar just put me out of my misery a bit earlier.”
As for the process itself, Elle said it was “genuinely a good experience” even if she wanted to “cry” and tried to avoid tasks by hiding under her duvet each morning.
“It’s one of those things, you know when you go on a really sh** holiday and you hate it and you’re like, ‘I can’t wait to go back to the UK, I can’t wait to go back to the UK’, then two weeks back in the UK you’re like, 'We had a really good time, must go back to that place again.' That’s what I liken it to.”
The Apprentice continues Wednesdays at 9:00pm on BBC1
