Peterborough The Apprentice winner Joseph Valente brands TV show as 'stale and urges Lord Sugar to go

Peterborough’s BBC The Apprentice winner Joseph Valente has branded the current season as stale and has urged its host Lord Sugar to stand down.

Entrepreneur Mr Valente (34), who won the reality TV show aged 25 in 2015, said The Apprentice, which is now in its 18th season, was purely chasing entertainment and had lost its business edge.

His comments come as the current series enters its last stages and with an appeal already being made for contestants to take part in the 19th series next year.

Mr Valente, who is expanding his trade mentoring businesses at the Brightfield Business Hub in Bakewell Road, Orton Southgate. said: “After 18 seasons the format has started to go quite stale.

"I think the producers and the TV company are really lowering the credibility of the candidates to drive the entertainment factor.

"It has really lost its serious business edge and Lord Sugar has been doing it for so long now that it is probably time for him to step down – they need a new host.

He said: "I’ve watched bits of the new show but I’m not overly impressed with the quality of the candidates.

"It’s based too much around the entertainment factor – they are playing on the characters rather than the business acumen.

“The Apprentice used to be a credible show and people watched it because they wanted to aspire to be an entrepreneur or to do great things in business.

"It has lost that business element to it.

"The show used to state it was about Britain’s brightest business brains but they have definitely not lived up to that billing.”

"I believe the credibility of the show went downhill after I won – because I wasn’t your typical Apprentice candidate – expelled from school, I came through a trade, was in the construction sector and I wasn’t your ‘city guy’ but I went in there and just dominated the format.

"I think that really changed the game.”

He added: “They should have finished it after my season.”

For winning the show, Mr Valente received a £250,000 investment in his plumbing business ImpraGas in Yaxley and a 50/50 partnership with the business tycoon.

Soon after it was announced that Mr Valente had split from Lord Sugar - a move Mr Valente later said he regretted.

Mr Valente sold ImpraGas, with 70 staff and a turnover of £10 million, to entrepreneur Andy Scott of REL Capital in January 2020. Mr Scott closed ImpraGas seven months later.

Later, Mr Valente launched Trade Mastermind to help sole traders in the construction industry build up their businesses.

Mr Valante said: “Because being on the show was such a special time for me it is weird watching it back and I don’t enjoy it so much. I used to be a massive fan.

"I think they need some fresh blood – for instance a Joseph Valente to step up and run the show.

"The advisers are not strong enough or intimidating.

“I don’t really know what it should change to at this moment.

"I have my own TV business show concept that I want to go to market with in the next two years.”