“My wife always asks: ‘When are you ever going to just stop, or think that you’ve made it?’” says The Apprentice aide and businessman Tim Campbell. “I don’t think I ever will. I think I’m always going to be the boy from east London who is waiting for someone to pull the mask away.”
Yet, he muses, perhaps that very feeling is precisely why he has achieved so much: because it has pushed him to keep striving. It is thanks to this, he believes, that the self-described “working-class lad done good” became the first in his family to go to university, then the first ever winner of The Apprentice, in 2005, before going on to launch and run multiple businesses, as well as his social enterprise, Bright Ideas Trust.
Campbell is about to release his first podcast, re:Working, which delves into what it takes to navigate the world of work today. Covering everything from job insecurity to negotiating for yourself and knowing when to quit, it is very much inspired by his own years in the workforce.
“Because I’m never quite sure why I’m in certain rooms, I’ve spent my life observing how power is utilised, how education is leveraged, how social mobility can be manipulated,” he says. “So I’ve always learned from people who know a bit more than me, or are in the places I want to get to, by politely stealing their information. And the podcast is essentially doing more of that, with the guests we have on.”
With the working world changing at breakneck speed, it feels like an apt time to launch the show. “For the first time, we have five generations in the workforce,” he says. “You’ve got very young people fresh out of university, having a big conversation about whether that education cost and time was worth it.And you’ve got older individuals who, because of the political scenarios we’re in, are having to work longer, get used to the rise in portfolio careers, and accept that there is no job for life any more.”
As a parent, he worries about it. “I’ve got a younger generation in my own house trying to make it in a world that is rapidly changing,” he says. “I definitely think they have bigger challenges than I ever had. The economic climate is rough; the cost of living is no joke; house prices are nearly 10 times salaries. It’s very, very hard for young people now.”
He dismisses the idea that this generation is lazy or entitled. “Do I think young people are work-shy? Not at all. I’ve never met such great people as some of the young people I’ve worked with. They are having to be smart and adaptable and use technology in all these different ways. So this fallacy that young people don’t want to work hard is usually coming from those who don’t understand that.”
When he looks back at his own early career, he is not sure where his path would have taken him if he hadn’t applied for a new show called The Apprentice. At the time, he was working as a senior planner for London Underground; taking part in the series meant walking into the unknown. “I had to give up my job, leave my two-year-old child and my then-girlfriend, to go into something I had no clue about what the outcome would be,” he says. “If I’m honest, it wasn’t a very calculated risk.”
But it was one that paid off. After he won, Campbell worked with Lord Sugar at his company Amstrad, as a project director in the health and beauty division of the electronics company, before eventually returning to the show in 2022 to replace Claude Littner as an aide, alongside Karren Brady.
Being on the other side of the boardroom table is, he admits, surreal. “I can definitely empathise with the candidates more, because I have been there,” he says. “But it also means I’m never going to take any nonsense.”
And plenty of that there is: big personalities, overconfidence and the more-than-occasional glaring misstep. Aside from general competence, what does he think is the secret to getting ahead on the show? “Kindness,” he says. “We talk about ‘kill or be killed’, but in the time that I have been on the show, the successful candidates have all had the unifying trait of emotional intelligence.
“They understand that if you take people with you, you’ll go further. It’s about knowing that if the team wins, they win, rather than looking at everything selfishly or individualistically. They are also very true to themselves, as opposed to being a caricature. Those are the ones who do well, and I think that’s good advice for people in the real world too.”
I wonder what he thinks makes The Apprentice – now 20 series in – endure. “It’s Lord Sugar,” he says simply. “And this isn’t me being sycophantic or saying it because I have to say it. I think people like people who are unambiguous and direct. You might not like his management style, but at least you know where you stand with him. In a world of geopolitically interesting figures, it’s very refreshing to get somebody who is honest and tells it how it is.”
There is also, he says, a side of Lord Sugar that viewers do not see. “He has been one of the best mentors I’ve ever had,” Campbell says. “You don’t see that on television, right? You see the pointing finger and the big Rolls-Royce, but this is a man who is very generous, incredibly bright and very, very giving with regard to what he has taught me.”
There are other ingredients to the show’s success, too. Part of it, he suggests, is how recognisable it feels – “We’ve all worked with people who can’t back up their chat” – but also because it remains aspirational. “It encapsulates the British dream,” he says. “We often talk about an American dream, but the UK has a very fertile environment for people who can start in one place and get to another.”
Campbell is proof of that – not that his path has been smooth. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes over my career,” he says. “There are also plenty of things I’ve had to overcome: losing money, losing businesses, losing friends.”
But all of it has shaped his view of success. “I’m much closer to success now than I ever was, because my definition of it has changed. What I see success as now is not about money, because I’ve had that. I’ve got lots of people in my life who have that. It’s not even just about family, because I know lots of people who have family, but behind closed doors, they don’t speak, they don’t get on, they sit at either end of the sofa.
“For me, happiness is the definition of success. Because whatever that means for you, that is the thing you should chase after.”
‘re:Working with Tim Campbell MBE’ launches on Monday, with a new episode every week. The podcast is available on the Rayo app or wherever you get your podcasts