Kristina & Simon: The Final Showdown

Congratulations on making it to the final of The Apprentice. First up, tell us separately why you deserve to be hired by Sir Alan.
Kristina: I'm very confident that I've done very well throughout all the tasks. I've stood up and stood out in the group, and performed well. If I got the job, Sir Alan would just need to give me a position within his organisation and say “Right, there's a section of my business, do what you can, come back to me in a year's time and show me the results. And if you don't show me the results, we'll part company.” Whereas with Simon, he isn't at that level yet; he needs to get a few more years under his belt before he could actually do that. But if Sir Alan wants to bring somebody on and take a little bit of a gamble but possibly get somebody incredible out of it, then it could be Simon.

Simon: Kristina's a polished diamond, I'm the rough diamond. If Sir Alan wants to hand over a lot of responsibility in one of his organisations, Kristina's certainly a fantastic candidate to take that on. If he wants to spend time with someone and nurture them, then he'll make me the winner. It's up to him and what he sees is going to be best for him in the long term.

 

Do you think he might hire whichever of you he considers the safe bet after what happened last year, when Michelle Dewberry left her job at Amstrad after just a few months?
Kristina: I think Sir Alan is absolutely positive that both of us are in it for the job and the job alone, so both of us are safe bets but in different ways. Neither of us is going to run off and do anything that is unprofessional. If I win it, then my commitment is with Sir Alan's organisation and I know Simon feels the same.

 

Speaking of doing things that are unprofessional, were you surprised when Katie turned down a spot in the final, or did you suspect all along that she didn't want the job?
Kristina: I always knew that she didn't want the job. It just never made sense – from the obvious element of already having a job that earns £90K a year, to the point where she hadn't made arrangements for her children. I would never enter this unless I knew that I had all that sorted and that leads to one assumption – that Katie never wanted the job. She did want to win, but she wanted to win because she thought that would put her on a higher platform to sell herself in the celebrity world.

Do you think Katie's after a career in television?
Kristina: Yes. Katie wants to be instantly recognisable. She wants to be the big, bad girl on TV. It's a shame because I take this programme very seriously and a lot of the viewers do too, and there is frustration and annoyance that she has behaved like this. But I take the long-term vision, and my long-term success will far outweigh anything that she does in her life.

 

Do you feel that it's cast a bit of a cloud over the whole competition?
Simon: I think the show has quickly and instantaneously recovered. But anybody that tries to make a mockery of it gets my anger and gets Sir Alan's anger and gets a lot of other people's anger too, because we take it very seriously.
Kristina: She's not on my Christmas card list this year.

 

Were you aware of Katie's bitchy comments during the series?
Kristina: You don't know that it's happening. But what I do know is from the day I met Katie I didn't trust her. I knew she had a game plan – I didn't know what that was, to what level she would take it or what derogatory she would become. But thankfully I was in the competition to stay focussed, to keep my eye on the ball and win the Apprentice and somebody as small as Katie isn't going to distract me from that.

 

If you two weren't in the final, who deserves to take your place?
Kristina: I have to give Jadine a mention because that girl changed as she went through the programme. She went in there thinking that the only way to gain people's respect was to argue the most and shout the loudest, and she grew out of that as the series progressed, but she became weary and missed her daughter. But Jadine is a bright girl and with a few more years under her belt I think she's going to be quite a formidable business person. I had a lot of respect and admiration for her.
Simon: I would have liked to have seen Tre in the final. He's got great character and a lot of gumption; he'd have made for great viewing. He's in the programme anyway (helping with a task) so he can't really complain that much.

Simon, when we spoke to Tre, he said he had considered you a good friend and that he'd carried you, but you'd let him down...
Simon: Yeah in a way I did. I did step on him a bit and I feel guilty about that. Tre did carry me at times when I was weak, and if there's one thing I do regret, I regret being shallow about how I judged him when he didn't take me into the boardroom in week nine. He did let me off the hook and I do owe him. Tre's a great guy, he's an ally and he's a friend, but business is business at the end of the day and he made a business decision not to take me in as much as a personal one.

 

Have you spoken to him since?
Simon: Yes, I spoke to him yesterday and we're cool. He told me, rightly, that I didn't need to say the things that I'd said about him. So I retract what I said about Tre being scared of me. Even if he was scared of me that wasn't the point, the point was that he was my friend first.

 

In our interview with Lohit, he said both of you were mediocre and that Tre and Katie were the most capable candidates.
Simon: Lohit has a remarkable skill of appearing to be charming and modest which belies an arrogant interior. Lohit is one of those people that are incredibly arrogant at heart but very cool and modest on the outside. In a way he's got a right to be arrogant because he's very competent – he's organised, he's diligent, he's thorough and he's creative. He's got a lot of skills but one thing he hasn't got is personality.
Kristina: Speaking for Sir Alan, he likes people who will stick up for themselves. I'm like that, Simon's like that; that's what he appreciates and admires. Lohit doesn't have that. If you give him something to do he'll do it competently, but it won't set the world on fire.

 

Kristina, is it fair to say that you seemed to relish going into the boardroom, while Simon, you seemed to get more nervous than anyone else?
Kristina: I did enjoy it. Sir Alan see little of the tasks so for me, the boardroom was my opportunity to show him what I'm about, what I've achieved in that task and to point out the areas where we went wrong and who was accountable. That what's business is about – if you're not willing to stand up and be accountable then you shouldn't be in it in the first place.
Simon: I was nervous, I had a bit of trepidation each time I faced the boardroom, but you've got to remember I was in it with a lot more at stake than some of the others. When it was me, Tre and Naomi in the boardroom I was up against two very able people, but I fought my corner with the wheelchair and Sir Alan respected that. My future depends on this show – what happens could affect the rest of my life. I've got every right to be nervous and on tenterhooks because I want to win more than anything else. And given that I could come second and that my whole career path could take a massive turn given the events of the next couple of days, I've got every right to be nervous.

What has proved the hardest thing about being in The Apprentice?
Simon: The hardest thing has been watching it back and watching myself on that trampoline! The actual process is relatively plain sailing. Watching it is the arduous bit.
Kristina: I think the hardest thing for me is the waiting game. I really want to know and I want to get the outcome that I want. But at the same time it's really hard because if I win I know there's somebody that will lose out. I care a lot about Simon and I know from my success, he would be upset, and vice versa. So that's really tough because at the end of the day there is only going to be one winner.

 

Do you think that Sir Alan should hire you both in different areas?
Kristina: I think that he recognises he's got, in his own words, the two best candidates he's ever had. So he probably won't want to lose either of us and I think it's going to be an incredibly hard decision for him to make.

 

If you don't win, what's next for both of you?
Simon: I'm going to wait until Thursday morning and review my position then. If I don't win, I'll have a conversation with Sir Alan anyway – maybe I can offer him something regardless, but that's a conversation we'll have to have then.
Kristina: I'm in agreement with Simon. I didn't start out on this with a focus that I was going to win, only to fall at the final hurdle and doubt myself 48 hours prior to the end. So it's just not the sort of question that's pertinent or realistic right now.

 

Finally, what has being in this competition taught you about yourself?
Kristina: I'm quite a feisty individual so therefore I thought I would probably kill a few people in the house and I didn't, so they should be very grateful!
Simon: I've learnt I should never construct gym equipment in public! I've also learnt that I can get on with people in a close-knit environment and that I'm liked, which is nice coming from someone who was bullied at school. I've really enjoyed it The Apprentice and I've made some wonderful friends that I'll have for the rest of my life.