The Apprentice’s Amy Amzel has said she was “blindsided” at not being invited to be part of the BBC final spin-off You’re Hired.
The 48-year-old was fired by Lord Alan Sugar in the sixth week of the BBC show, a decision which she has since chalked up to 'ageism ' as the oldest contestant to appear on The Apprentice.
When finalist Kathryn Burn’s team lost in week six, she brought Aaron Willis and Amy back into the boardroom, where Amy was ultimately fired by Lord Sugar for failing to step into the position of Project Manager for the sixth week running.
In the wake of Amy’s firing, Lord Sugar took to Twitter, writing: “Amy didn’t sell she was so slow. Slower than broadband Wi-Fi in Cornwall.”
Amy told the Mirror she found the mogul's comments “insulting”, noting that it caused her anxiety to have “thousands of tweets” subsequently directed at her from Lord Sugar’s followers.
Amy described writing an email to the production detailing how the tweets made her feel, suggesting this could have been the cause of her exclusion from the You’re Hired final spin-off of the show.
Amy said of the decision: “All was going so well and I thought, they've never told me anything negative or warranty about anything, so I assumed I was going to be there.
“I remember messaging them saying, what time is the taping because I've got to arrange childcare and they just never came back to me and then I kind of pushed it a bit.
“Then they basically said they reserve the right not to have me there. That was it.”
She continued: “I was just very upset, very confused, very surprised. I was blindsided because I thought everything was going so well. It's very disappointing.”
An Apprentice source said at the time: “Invitations to You’re Hired are always discretionary and never guaranteed.”
However, Amy is one of the contestants returning for the show’s final this evening, as the remaining two Harpreet Kaur and Kathryn Burn are tasked with launching a new business and pitching it to Lord Sugar for the chance to win a £250,000 investment.
Of her involvement in the final, Amy said she saw it as helping the finalists as opposed to engaging in her relationship with Lord Sugar, which she described as “non-existent”.
She said: “When I got there and saw that it was Kathryn and Harpreet, I could not be any more excited for them.”
Amy comes back to direct an advert for Kathryn, who she said she got to know really well during The Apprentice process.
She said: “I was honoured to be there to help. It was great. I was able to differentiate between my relationship with Lord Sugar and me supporting a candidate that I've met so early on that I really want to support and I love to support fellow entrepreneurs.”
The Apprentice final airs at 9pm on March 24 on BBC One and the You're Hired! spin-off follows at 10pm on BBC Two.
