Warning: spoilers ahead for The Apprentice 2024.
The first contestant eliminated from The Apprentice 2024 has revealed that he has already converted one of the show’s worst failures into his own business.
During the premiere of series 18, Lord Alan Sugar directed the new teams of men and women competing for his £250,000 investment to organise lucrative corporate away days in the Scottish Highlands.
While the women’s team generated a little profit, the men’s team lost, putting project manager Virdi Singh Mazaria, Steve Darken, and Oliver Medforth at risk of elimination.
Oliver, 27, was the first person informed ‘You’re fired’ by Lord Sugar after reviewing the task’s failure with his aides Baroness Karren Brady and Tim Campbell MBE.
Despite having no prior baking expertise, the alcohol sales professional was assigned the responsibility of creating brownies to serve to their visitors during their away day.
Sub-team leader Phil Turner was stunned when Oliver noticed he had entirely forgotten to add flour in the brownies before baking them, despite the fact that flour is an essential ingredient for their dish.
When attempting to follow the recipe instructions, the dismissed applicant made a mistake that required Phil to clarify the difference between a tablespoon and a teaspoon.
Nonetheless, Oliver has turned his flourless disaster into a profitable venture.
‘When we went into the kitchen, there were four of them, or five of them, they all concentrated on toad-in-the-hole, and they left me to do 50% of the cooking, which was obviously chocolate brownies,’ he recalled.
‘It’s the dessert and the dessert’s quite important. They were all helping one another and obviously, I did the brownies on myself. And then yeah, I forgot to put flour in the brownies, which is probably one of the biggest ingredients.’
However, upon trying the brownies without the flour component, they were ‘actually really, really tasty’, he said.
‘It’s actually inspired me to come up with a new brand called Ollternative. So it’s no flour, all flavour of the brownies.
‘So where I made a mess up, I tried to utilise it and I’ve learnt from that mistake, and they taste really, really good.’
Given that Oliver’s family owns a distillery, they have also released a salted caramel chocolate brownie vodka, and he claims that he now has ‘brownies running out of his ears’ with flavours such as Nutella, chocolate orange, and salted caramel.
The entrepreneur confessed that going out first was ‘gutting’, but he’really loved’ the experience.
He admitted that all of the other contenders ‘ought to be there’ to have a chance of securing Lord Sugar’s cash, but he hasn’t kept in touch with any of them.
When asked whether he has any regrets about his time on the BBC series or what he would have done differently, Oliver said that he ‘probably didn’t speak out enough’.
‘Virdi brought me and Steve back where he should probably have brought maybe somebody else that was a team leader on my team back. He probably brought me back because I didn’t quite speak up as much,’ he deliberated.
‘So it was quite a tactical move of him to do that. But yeah – that’s what happened, and I did my bit. I probably shouldn’t have been brought back in but let’s let the audience decide on that.
Oliver wishes he had had the opportunity to participate in a selling challenge, given that he considers himself as a’selling machine’.
Nonetheless, he found it ‘wonderful’ to attend the famed ‘losers’ cafe’ after the assignment results were released.
‘It really is a cafe. You just get the classic white mugs with readymade coffee. It’s brilliant. It’s not brilliant, because you don’t want to be going to the cafe, but it’s great. It’s surprisingly small, but it literally is exactly how you see it on the TV.’
The Apprentice returns next Thursday at 9pm on BBC One and is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
Source My Celebrity Life.