Apprentice teaches the PR world a thing or two

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

For a man more famous for his dazzling array of facial expressions than his advice, Nick Hewer had a lot to say at this morning’s packed Law Society breakfast meeting hosted, and may I say perfectly timed by recruiters VMA Search.

As one half of BBC 1 television show The Apprentice’s dynamic duo of retired but sage advisors along with the unflappable Margaret Mountford – a lawyer who has brokered many a major deal for the former Tottenham Hotspur tycoon’s portfolio of firms – Hewer has been one of Sir Alan Sugar’s most trusted advisors since 1983, at the top of the PR ladder for more than a quarter of a century and now one of the most recognisable faces on television. Not bad, he says, for a man who calls himself a fraud.

“The job [on The Apprentice] requires no special talent and it was only out of luck that I’m here. But I got the gig,” he laughed. “I bumped into Sir Clement Freud just before he passed away and he told me he loved the show. What a complement, I thought, but I’m a fraud I told him. No, he replied, I’m a complete Freud.”

His anecdotes and tales of the PR world are some of the most insightful and amusing I’ve heard and continued throughout the 90 minute ‘fireside chat’ as Oskar Yazar, managing director of VMA called it.

Little is known of Hewer’s early days in PR, however the Swindon born flack’s career took off when he started his own company representing a number of companies and individuals including the Aga Khan, the current Imam of the Ismaili Muslims and one of the world’s wealthiest men, someone he continues to work with. He ran this for a number of years eventually selling in 1998 because, in his own words, he “had to get out of this business”.

“I’ve been very lucky,” the 64 year-old said about his time in the industry. When I was 22 and I told my dad I was going into PR I may as well have said I was going to be a burglar! In those days advertising was at the top of the chain and used to get the marketing directors ear, nowadays the PR profession is vitally important and what I say to advertising is that I have the chairman’s ear,” he added.

Five series of The Apprentice, a sixth as well as a Young Apprentice for 16 year-olds commissioned aside, a house in France in which he spends half of the year and a life of travel and freedom aside (possibly the world’s happiest retiree) Hewer has achieved a huge amount. One of his greatest feats was one of his first with Sir Alan, who is now close to becoming a labour peer and business tsar for the troubled Gordon Brown-led Labour government. The grey haired, sharp suited and rather dashing (perhaps for a lady of a certain age) cited the launch of Amstrad as a major coup and highlight in his colourful career.

“Sir Alan was looking around at the computer market back in the 1980s and saw exactly what was needed. One day he looked at some of the computers in the shops and businesses around London and said, “those aren’t computers, those are pregnant calculators. What I’m going to do is give them [the public] pregnant calculators with a monitor”.

“One average the Olivetti’s and IBM’s of this world were £2,000 or more, we sold the first Amstrad for £399, our share price immediately doubled and we were in business. I was seeing thousands of men and women crowding around shops in Tottenham Court Road in London and coming out with huge boxes. It was marvellous.”

But times as Sir Alan’s sidekick haven’t always been rosy for Hewer. Go back 18 years and Sugar’s takeover of Tottenham Hotspur football club in 1991. “These were some of the toughest times I’ve ever had to deal with,” said Hewer. “My phone wouldn’t stop ringing from 6am until midnight for months on end.”

Sugar had teamed up with the very popular former England manager Terry Venables and to buy the club but despite his initial investment helping to ease Spurs’ financial troubles, the way he treated Tottenham as a business and not from a football perspective severely angered fans. The decade long relationship was fraught with one public relations nightmare and crisis comms situation after the other. Sugar sacked Venables the night before the FA Cup final, a decision that led to Venables appealing to the high courts to get himself reinstated, but a battle that Sugar eventually won later that summer.

“We didn’t know how to fight back at first,” said Hewer, who saw Sir Alan’s popularity dip to its lowest following a fan spitting at him at the High Court, his cars being scratched and his home burglarised. “But we did some digging on a number of the investors at the club and they all left, including one that was banned form being a director for seven years by the then DTI and another who was imprisoned.” Hewer’s dirty but necessary tricks campaign and strong and ruthless relationship with the tabloid press paid off. However, Sugar never recovered from his decision to sack Venables with the tycoon later saying that he “felt as though he’d killed Bambi”. Unfortunately, said Hewer, this wasn’t quite correct. It was Bambi’s mother that got shot. Not the perfect PR message but then again Hewer readily admits he has never been perfect. What he has got in return for hard work and the right connections has been fame and fortune, while Sir Alan's time at Spurs is a distant memory, he has a potential peerage in the works and 10.7 million viewers. “And I got the gig,” Hewer laughed. No one in the audience, this morning, would deny him that.