Prize-winning Bognor Regis pie maker to star in season 18 of The Apprentice

For most business owners, a 50/50 contract with Lord Alan Sugar is a pipe dream. But, for Bognor Regis baker Phil Turner – whose family business, Turner’s Pies, dates back to 1933 – it’s not so pie in the sky.

That’s because Phil will star in this year’s season of The Apprentice: the hit BBC reality show in which business hopefuls duke it out for a £250,000 investment, a partnership with Lord Sugar, and the chance to hear those fateful words “you’re hired.”

Buying out his parent’s bakery aged 21, he’s spent the last few years building the West Sussex pie-maker into a profitable seven-figure business venture, complete with a range of national accolades – including the title of ‘Supreme Pie Champion’ in 2020 – and he’s hoping that experience will put him in the upper-crust of the competition.

Asked about his biggest failure, he told the BBC that building his business was a success forged by a series of smaller failures: “Almost everything I’ve done for the first time failed in one way or another. I live by the motto “we win or we learn.” There is no failure that I have encountered in business or life that has not been necessary for growth. Failure is necessary for success.”

"I have learnt how to run a business the hard way,” he later added, asked why he deserved Lord Sugar’s investment. “I already have a track record of successfully building and scaling a business. I have learnt how to run a business the hard way, and now I feel like it’s time to take my business to the next level.”

But Phil isn’t the only baker in this year’s series. Fellow crust-connoisseur Paul Bowen, from Lancashire, runs a business which has kept Manchester City Football Club in Pies for the last five years, and says “organisation and planning” are his two biggest weaknesses.

Airing on BBC One on February 1, at 9pm, this year’s series will kick off in the Scottish Highlands, where men and women’s teams will compete to stage a high-end away day for corporate clients.