Former Apprentice winner on 'brilliant' experience

Back when the then Reading restaurateur Yasmina Siadatan won The Apprentice in 2009, she won a job with the then Sir Alan Sugar after battling through the notoriously gruelling process.

Nearly 17 years on, she looks back at the "brilliant" experience with fondness but said her experience was "completely different" to the one shown on TV, with hundreds of hours of footage whittled down to just an hour for viewers.

The 20th series of The Apprentice starts on Thursday, with recruitment consultant Pascha Myhill from Reading following in Siadatan's footsteps.

"Alan Sugar, or Lord Sugar as I know him, is exactly the same in real life as he is on the telly. I was really surprised to find that out when I started working for him. I thought he would be completely different," Siadatan said.

"The only time you get to see him [on The Apprentice] is in filming, when the cameras are rolling. You don't have any time with him at all [otherwise]. I got to his office and he's exactly the same: witty, really sharp, really straight," she added.

"He is just one of those characters you wouldn't change."

A member of the show's "old generation", when Sugar's investment went into employing his new apprentice within his business empire rather than investing in a contestant's business, Siadatan now works in fintech.

"I won a job and I worked with him for a couple of years and then I stopped working with him and I don't have any contact with him now," she said of Sugar.

"I know if I reached out, he would absolutely respond. It was brilliant but we don't see each other for beers at the weekend."

Her experience of the show was that it was "not as finger-pointy as it looks" but said it had altered her life's direction.

"It's just been a whirlwind. Now I work in tech, I work in fintech. I had a restaurant before I went on The Apprentice so it completely changed the direction of my life," Siadatan added.

"I always said that I wanted a proper job and I much prefer being on the other side of the bar now when it comes to a restaurant," she added.