This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Merry Christmas, Sugar Claus! If you were Father Christmas, which public figures would you put on your naughty list?<\/strong><\/p>\n I would have to say no comment on this whatsoever, my friend. As you will know, the BBC has guidelines. I have to keep my big mouth shut and not make personal or political comments like that.<\/p>\n In that case, can we assume the contestants in your Celebrity Apprentice<\/a> Christmas specials went straight on the nice list? <\/strong><\/p>\n Nah! That\u2019s the excitement of it. Most of the time, they\u2019re schmoozed by everybody, told how marvellous they are. Then they get a gig where I\u2019m telling them what a load of rubbish they are. They\u2019re masochists, really. Still, it\u2019s worth remembering they don\u2019t get paid anything at all. They do it for charity and that is very, very commendable.<\/p>\n What will you be making the brave contestants do in the two festive episodes?<\/strong><\/p>\n They\u2019re going up to Lapland and meeting Father Christmas. There was snow and ice, as you can imagine, reindeers and sledges. The contestants were split into two teams and each team had to create a special Christmas biscuit. Then they came back to London and presented their biscuits to big supermarkets and the best biscuit won. The interesting thing is, for the first time ever, the products created in the programme are actually going on sale in the supermarkets. All the money is going to Children in Need.<\/p>\n Thomas Skinner.\u00a0BBC\/Naked\/Matt Crossick<\/span><\/p>\n Does the show create its own celebrities now? Did you decide whether Thomas Skinner could come back as a \u201ccelebrity\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure over the 20 years how many people who have appeared on my show have actually made a name for themselves. I can think of maybe three: Saira Khan did quite well, then Katie Hopkins, who everybody loves to hate, and Thomas Skinner, who ended up on Strictly. But I don\u2019t have any input. I\u2019m presented with these celebrities; the BBC seek these people out and find them. And it\u2019s not easy, because you can imagine that some of them are working and can\u2019t take four or five days off. I can dream and say, \u201cOh, I\u2019d love Madonna, I\u2019d love Adele, I\u2019d love the ginger bloke with a guitar…\u201d What\u2019s his name? Ed Sheeran.<\/p>\n So, it\u2019s not a matter of you ringing up the Beeb and going, \u201cGet me Piers Morgan\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, funny you should say that. He was in the very first Celebrity Apprentice and I fired him. I keep reminding Piers that I gave him his TV debut, but he says, \u201cI was on TV before that.\u201d But you know what an arrogant bloke he is. He\u2019d never admit it.<\/p>\n Eddie Kadi, Tom Skinner, Sarah Hadland, Shazia Mirza, Charlie Hedges, Matt Morsia, Lord Alan Sugar, Rob Rinder, Angela Scanlon, Kadeena Cox, AJ Odudu, Jake Wood and JB Gill on The Celebrity Apprentice.\u00a0BBC\/Naked\/Matt Crossick\/Ray Burmiston<\/span><\/p>\n Did you enjoy Christmas when you were growing up in Hackney in the 1950s?<\/strong><\/p>\n Our family weren\u2019t very religious Jews, so we semi-celebrated Christmas, but more the happy side of things. We put Christmas decorations up and all that stuff. As a kid, I\u2019d look forward to getting a Christmas present. I remember when I was 10 or 11 getting a pair of metal roller skates with rubber wheels on them that you adjusted with a little spanner. Mum and Dad saved up and bought them for me and my sisters and brother.<\/p>\n As I grew older, I didn\u2019t dish out Christmas presents to people. We used to give the staff financial bonuses and things like that, not physical things.<\/p>\n Where will you be spending Christmas this year?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve had Christmas away from England the last 40 years. I spend five to six months of the year in America, so I\u2019ll be here in Florida. My family also have homes here, so we\u2019ll all be together. The grandkids as well, though they\u2019re not kids any more. We\u2019ll have a big traditional at-home British Christmas lunch with turkey and things like that.<\/p>\n Won\u2019t you miss cold, rainy old Hackney?<\/strong><\/p>\n No.<\/p>\n Will you be having any special Christmas treats?<\/strong><\/p>\n My wife went to the supermarket today and bought my favourite thing \u2013 chestnuts. It\u2019s the time for them, isn\u2019t it, Christmas? I remember the vendors on Oxford Street when I was a boy, those black ovens with coal underneath and the chestnuts sitting on the top. You\u2019d buy a white paper bag full of them off the bloke for sixpence.<\/p>\n The latest issue of Radio Times<\/strong> is out now \u2013 subscribe here<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n The Celebrity Apprentice is coming to BBC One and iPlayer this Christmas.<\/strong><\/p>\n Add The Celebrity Apprentice<\/strong> to your watchlist on the<\/strong> <\/strong>Radio Times: What to Watch app<\/a><\/strong> <\/strong>\u2013 download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.<\/strong><\/p>\n Check out more of our Entertainment<\/a> coverage or visit our TV Guide<\/a> and Streaming Guide<\/a> to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.radiotimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Merry Christmas, Sugar Claus! If you were Father Christmas, which public figures would you put on your naughty list? I would have to say no comment on this whatsoever, my friend. As you will know, the BBC has guidelines. I have to keep my big mouth shut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2218671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2218670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Lord-Alan-Sugar-dishes-on-Celebrity-Apprentice-and-Thomas-Skinner.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2218670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2218672,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218670\/revisions\/2218672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2218671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2218670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2218670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2218670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Thomas](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2025\/03\/Untitled-design-19-8804726.jpg?quality=90&fit=700,467\" "\\"thomas-skinner-celebrity-apprentice\\"")
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