The Albion Apprentice

The Apprentice returns to our screens this week as 16 new candidates do battle in a bid to win a £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar.

Each contestant has to have a business plan ready to go should they make the final five, where they have to present it to an interviewer who will then help Lord Sugar decided who advances to the final.

Now, we bloody love The Apprentice, not least because Wayne Henderson’s girlfriend once took part in it. With such strong links established between the programme and the Albion, this got us thinking – what would happen if Lord Sugar did an Albion Apprentice?

Here are the business plans put together by 16 Seagulls past and present in an attempt to win Britain’s second best reality television show after Strictly.

Mark McGhee’s Taxi Business

On the face of it, starting your own taxi business in this day and age doesn’t make great business sense. Uber offers a cheap and easy alternative and should driverless cars take off over the next 10 years, then that could be the end of taxis as we know them.

Mark McGhee is nothing but resourceful though, as we saw when he turned Adam Virgo from a decent third tier right back into a striker that Celtic paid £1.5m for. His business plan involves throwing football players off team coaches, leaving them stranded in places such as the New Forest (hello Leon Knight) and Burnley (hello Mark McCamoon). McGhee Cabs would then charge an extortionate fee to get them back to Brighton. Genius.
 

Paul Barber’s Sports Bar and Bottle Tops Rule

Given all the money making schemes that Paul Barber has come up with over the years to fleece Brighton fans, it’s hard to know just which one he’d take into the boardroom to impress Lord Sugar with.

It could be setting up a pretty average sports bar with a couple of pool tables and a few television, which customers have to pay £250 a year to enter on the 19 occasions it is actually open. He might go for outlawing bottle tops, based on the premise that a full bottle with a lid is as dangerous as nuclear weapon. This then means that people can’t carry a bottle around with them and so have to buy a new drink whenever they’re thirsty. And then hope they don’t spill it.

To put it simply, if there is a way to make money from an everyday situation, Barber will find it.
 

Barry Lloyd’s Fortune Teller Business

Lord Sugar might not believe in the supernatural at the moment, but a few weeks in the company of Barry Lloyd will turn him into a believer. After all, this is the man who said after Brighton had lost the Division Two playoff final to Notts County in 1991, “I guarantee we will get out of this division next season.”

And his prophecy was spot on – the Albion were relegated into the third tier a year later.
 

David Stockdale’s Pie Shop

Ever since he was a young boy, David Stockdale has dreamed of opening his own pie shop. Everybody loves pies, so Lord Sugar will no doubt be extremely impressed by this idea although he may have one concern – that the pies won’t make it from kitchen to shop front without Dave eating them. Oh, and that if another pie shop in the Birmingham area offers two pence more than Lord Sugar’s investment, Stockdale will go skipping off to join them.
 

Gus Poyet’s Construction Firm

Ah, our old friend Gus Poyet. His business plan is to create a construction firm which will take millions of pounds in investment to specialise in high rise buildings.

Despite that significant outlay spent on the buildings – much more than the majority of his rival construction firms have received – he insists on incorporating a glass ceiling before the building reaches the top, and then moans incessantly about not being given enough money to complete the job.
 

Chris Hughton’s Demolition Firm

The most successful entrepreneurs are those who spot a gap in the market and fill it, which is why Chris Hughton’s demolition firm is likely to impress Lord Sugar. Hughton comes along and smashes through Poyet’s glass ceiling, completing the most beautiful of high rise buildings while at the same time revealing the Uruguayan to be a whiny little twat.
 

Paul Barber’s Counter Terrorism Unit

We told you Barber would be good at this, didn’t we? In the unlikely event that Lord Sugar fails to be impressed by his idea to charge £250 to enter a bar, then he has a back up plan – a private counter terrorism unit that investigates elderly people bringing thermos flasks into sports stadiums, just in case they are part of an ISIS plot and they’re actually carrying a dangerous explosives device rather than a mug of tea.

This business plan is ingenious because it makes money in two ways. Not only will sports clubs pay Barber’s company to prevent supporters bringing in their own hot drinks under the cover of it being dangerous, but those same supporters will then have to fork out north of £2 if they want a very small cup of coffee to warm themselves up in the depths of winter.
 

Billy Paynter’s Donkey Rides

Donkey rides on the beach is an idea so simple and yet people continue to flock to Blackpool to take part in it all year round. It’s an activity that finally gives Billy Paynter’s footballing ability some purpose too – rather than look like a carthorse on the pitch after an 18 month chase to secure his signature, he can give children rides on his back up and down the beach.

Whether Lord Sugar will be impressed or not is up for debate, given that the likes of Leon Best, Chuba Akpom and Colin Hawkins already have a crowded market place pretty well covered.
 

Dean White’s Television Repair Business

Stick to what you know is a good mantra in business and that’s certainly something that Dean White has listened to with his idea of a television repair business. Before Micky Adams appointed him as first team coach in 2000, White famously used to work in a TV shop in Hastings, so this would be a return to his roots.
 

David Burke’s Money Making Scheme

David Burke has a slightly different plan to the other candidates, but one which might interest Lord Sugar nonetheless given that the potential returns are massive. His idea is to take over a successful business that already exists, sell off all the assets and then bring in vastly inferior replacements for a fraction of the cost.

So it’s goodbye to future Premier League winner Leonardo Ulloa and hello to lower league journeyman Chris O’Grady. See you later to first and second in the Player of the Season vote Matt Upson and Stephen Ward and good morning to Aaron Hughes and Vitālijs Maksimenko. Ciao to Italian stallion Andrea Orlandi and welcome to the party Gary Gardner.

The best thing about Burke’s scheme though is that when it predictably all goes tits up, he won’t even receive the brunt of the blame – that instead falls on the mate from Finland that he’s helped to hire to be the face of it.
 

The Gonzalo Jara School of Driving

Gonzalo Jara’s business plan is to set up the most advanced driving school in the world. Not only will it teach the basics as required by law, but it goes above and beyond by also offering lessons in how to drive when pissed, how to drive when disqualified after being banned for being pissed and what to do if you are arrested for driving while banned five hours before you’re meant to be starting against Burnley at home.
 

Dick Knight’s Competition Business

It’s another outside-the-box idea, this time from Dick Knight. The former Albion chairman wants to take the £250,000 investment and rather than plough it into a business, he will instead use it to enter as many different competitions as possible.

This will in turn increase his chances of picking up prizes such as, er, Colin Kazim-Richards, who he can then sell on for a profit at a later date.
 

Paul Kitson’s InjuryLawyers4U

If you’ve been injured and it wasn’t your fault, call Paul Kitson’s InjuryLawyers4U. We are Paul Kitson’s InjuryLawyers4U. 100% lawyers. 100% compensation.

Oh, and if you don’t actually have that bad an injury, we can advise you on how to spend nine months out anyway, picking up a hefty wage for doing nothing more than sitting around at home.
 

Liam Dickinson’s Knight in Shining Armour Service

The world is a dangerous place for women these days. Liam Dickinson’s plan is to make it a little safer by setting up a service which carries comatose females away from West Street’s clubs in the early hours of a Tuesday morning.

Now, we all know Lord Sugar loves a hard worker and so he will no doubt be impressed by Dickinson’s plans to maximise profits by combining this work with that of his day job as a professional footballer. Are they compatible? Dickinson certainly thinks so, providing he doesn’t get caught by a photographer from The Sun or anything.
 

Gully’s Funeral Services

Gully is another budding entrepreneur who has spotted a gap in the market with which he wants to impress Lord Sugar. After all, what final goodbye to a loved one isn’t made more poignant by a bloke paying his respects while dressed in a seven foot tall Seagull costume?
 

Bill Archer’s Estate Agents

Bill Archer’s business plan is pretty straightforward. He’ll sell your house for you before you’ve bought a new one and then pocket the profits for himself. The wanker.