Harry Mahmood has become the first candidate to be fired from the 2022 series of 'The Apprentice' after Lord Sugar deemed him “disruptive”.
Harry Mahmood is fired from the Apprentice
The 35-year-old bath bomb businessman - who describes himself as the “Asian version of Lord Sugar” - became the first casualty of the boardroom on Thursday (06.01.22), as a new series of the entrepreneur reality show kicked off.
Lord Sugar told him: “You don’t get furloughed you get fired.”
The pharmacy manager - who was awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) by the Queen in last year’s New Year’s Honours list - failed to impress in the boardroom as he found himself in the firing line alongside Ashkay Thakrar and Akeem Bundu-Kamara.
The boys were tasked with marketing a campaign for a new luxury cruise liner, but rocked the boat in the first task as they found themselves facing Lord Sugar’s wrath.
Sugar said: “They say the worst things happen at sea, didn’t think things could be this bad. The bad news is there are no lifeboats for you.”
They had lost against the girls, who according to the business mogul won because there was a real synergy in their overall campaign, whereas the boys’ was disjointed.
Lord Sugar was far from impressed by their “turd” logo, which he dubbed “the worst logo I’ve seen in my life”.
Akeem - who was sub-team leader - was responsible for the logo that led to their defeat, while Harry, who challenged Akeem on the design multiple times, was labelled as “disruptive”.
Despite Akeem being held responsible for the poor logo design, it was Harry who Lord Sugar turned to and said: “I really don’t like disruption, you’re fired.”
When asked in an exclusive interview with BANG showbiz who should have gotten fired instead, Harry said: “100 percent upon reflection is should have been Akeem, he needs to take responsibility and accountability. He signed off that logo - this is the logo we are going for it looks like a turd, lets win the task. That’s essentially what he did.”
Harry also defended himself and said that the truth of the matter was he was not disruptive at all – and he was just challenging with passion.
He added: “This thing about being disruptive is threefold really, the whole media knows that Lord Sugar himself is disruptive and he’s been labelled disruptive across the spectrum.
“If Lord Sugar wants to label me as disruptive, I’ll take it in the positive tense as innovating and groundbreaking. Look at Mohamed Ali, Elon Musk, the creator of Bitcoin, Tesla, Uber … They in their own field were disruptors.”