With his dry wit and legendary facial expressions, Nick Hewer has become one of the chief reasons to watch The Apprentice. The personable former PR impresario, 69, has been on the show since its inception in 2003, and remains a constant presence by Lord Alan Sugar's side; his valued and trusted aide.But who is the personable but reluctant TV star? Here's five things you should know about Nick Hewer.
1. He really didn't want to be on The Apprentice. But since Nick had previously handled his PR for 25 years, Lord Sugar was determined to get him onboard. "He was very shirty with me," Nick told the Telegraph. "But he's persuasive. He said, 'Look, I'll sort out the money'. I thought it was rather droll that's he'd organise a fee for me, when for 25 years I'd been fighting to get my fee out of him…"2. Nick and his partner Catherine, an entrepreneur, divide their time between a farmhouse in the south of France and Northamptonshire. He prefers France. "The French look after their country so well. Nothing infuriates me more than to drive around in England and find litter everywhere: people dumping tyres in ditches." His most beloved pastime is mowing the grass in his two "beautiful" tractors.
3. He occasionally feels sorry for the contestants. "I feel very sad sometimes at the very end, when they’ve got up to week ten or something and then they get fired, because you’ve got to know them. We’ve always kept our distance from them but inevitably, you begin to have your favourites," he told Time Out."Sometimes I’ll say to Alan, 'Listen, you’d better go out and see if they’re okay.' Or me or Karen will go out and they’re leaning against the taxi, sobbing."4. Despite being the show's host, he doesn't rate his chances on Countdown. Nick, who took over in January 2012, has said it will take him a little while to be any good at the game — particularly the numbers rounds. "I think I think like the rest of the show it would be terribly easy, if you didn't have the clock. That clock is a dreaded hammer blow on the head. It gets louder and louder and you look at it and think, 'Oh no'. You suddenly look down and realise that you've got a four-letter word like 'cake', while everyone else has got cataclysmic and antidisestablishmentarianism. I'm just sat there with a 'dog'."5. He has a passion for world travel. Nick has driven a 20 year-old Renault 4L solo from London to Mongolia for charity and has taken part in the Children in Need trek from Istanbul to Almaty in Kazakhstan