by Rebecca Burn-Callander - Thursday, 27th March 2008 - (1) comment - Business comment

It was edge-of-your seat television. Raef Bjayou faced the wrath of Alan Sugar, and the chop, on the first episode of the new series of The Apprentice last night.

“I’m always used to success,” says the founder of Infinitate. Alas, he was on the losing side this time. On the team’s first task, selling fish on Islington market, he mis-labelled three boxes and nearly caused all-out war with team leader Alex Wotherspoon.

Having lost to the girls’ team, he was summoned him into the boardroom to face the scorn of Sir Alan.

To avoid the fatal finger (“You’re fired”), master wordsmith “the spoken word is my tool” Bjayou really pulled it out of the hat. “They’re all fish,” he said. “It’s not like I took a shark and called it a hamster.”

A compelling argument.

Lawyer, Nicholas de Lacy-Brown took the fall on this occasion.

Slightly disappointing however, was Bjayou’s unwillingness to take on the role of project leader earlier that day. Disregarding the urgings of his team, he said he wasn’t up to the job, despite being an entrepreneur and running his own international company.

Poor show.

Graham Whitworth, chief exec of £3m-turnover firm FireAngel, was none too impressed by Bjayou’s first day on the job. “My view is very simple,” he explains. “Anyone who claims to be a ‘master of the spoken word’ means he is a politician, hence the reason he would not take on the project leader role. As a political animal he would be concerned of being exposed without the ability to talk his way out of it.”

Whitworth continues: “My take is that [Bjayou] has a highly over inflated view of himself, uses his good looks and posh accent to promote his own self image and his totally over-inflated self belief, but this will not get him through the forthcoming tasks. He WILL get caught out sooner rather than later. NO way should he win (of course this is my humble opinion!) A degree of savvy blended with humility goes a long way. Arrogance does not.”

Dan McGuire, MD of London-based Broadbean Technology, says, "I
think Alex will go far. As for Raef, he has absolutely no chance of winning.
He totally bottled it when they put him forward for team leader and behind
that facade appears to be a weak business man. He should have stepped up,
shown his leadership capabilities and set a marker for the rest of the
competition and by not doing so has already lost the respect of the others.
He claims to be an entrepreneur and quite clearly thinks he's better than
everyone else. If he's that accomplished already why is he on a TV show
looking for a job? "

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