As Lord Sugar plans to choose between Leah and Luisa,
Katie Hopkins gives her verdict on glamorous
candidates
Brains and beauty ... Apprentice finalists Leah Totton and Luisa Zissman
PA
LORD SUGAR has a stark choice on tonight’s final of TV’s The Apprentice – putting his cash in Botox or baking.
Leah Totton, 24, from Derry, Northern Ireland, wants the mogul’s £250,000 investment to open non-surgical cosmetic clinics to banish the nation’s wrinkles.
Rival Luisa Zissman, 25, from St Albans, Herts, is after the cash to launch a range of baking supplies. Eagerly awaiting the showdown, on BBC1 at 8pm, is razor-tongued former Apprentice candidate KATIE HOPKINS.
Lord Sugar offered her a place in the final in 2007 but she turned her back on the chance of winning a £100,000-a-year job.
Here she gives her verdict on this year’s two finalists, while TV Editor COLIN ROBERTSON talks to the two women who have made this year’s finale the most glamorous ever.
'Barbie doll illusionist is exploiting the insecure'
THIS WAG-turned-doctor is a walking paradox. One minute she’s hanging off the arm of Celtic goalkeeper Fraser Forster. The next she’s an angel in a white coat saving lives in A&E.
And now she wants to make money out of one the most questionable business practices going — injecting Botox into insecure women’s faces.
Even Lord Sugar has said the ethics of what Leah wants to do with his money trouble him.
He’s torn between admiration for her super-smart brain and the morals behind cashing in on the female preoccupation with how we look.
Leah’s beautiful but she is just a bit too obsessed with that fact for my liking.
Neither girl can be said to be channelling Margaret Mountford, by any stretch.
But there’s always room for the kind of glamour they would bring to the table in any boardroom.
Catty ... Katie Hopkins
The problem with Leah is that she comes across as vain and self-obsessed. Even dressed up in a smart suit and heels, that look’s always going to be as ugly as hell.
And the irony is that that is precisely what this Barbie Doll is trying to sell.
Worryingly, her face seemed to get more plastic-looking as the series progressed. Isn’t there a danger if she wins that she’ll end up injecting the profits back into it as time goes on?
To me, Leah is an illusionist.
You hear doctor, you see beautiful — put them together with a white coat and you’ve got all the makings of someone you can trust.
Yet what she’s actually doing is advising women to pump poison into their faces, and all to boost company profits.
Meanwhile, she’s perpetuating the idea that you can only get ahead as a woman if you look impossibly good — that your capability is directly linked to how smooth your forehead is and how plump your lips are.
Leah talks a good fight, but for me she has no bruises to show from any real business experience.
If she’d had just one business venture fail, or been in a situation where she’d had no choice but to remortgage to keep an idea afloat — the stuff that real entrepreneurs go through — then I’d have more respect for her.
After all, how can you succeed when you’ve never actually failed?
If I was Lord Sugar, even without the moral dilemma, that would be my biggest worry where Leah is concerned.
Leah: I'll revolutionise Botox jabs
By COLIN ROBERTSON, TV Editor
BOTOX entrepreneur Leah Totton admits she is DULL – but reckons that just makes her a better businesswoman.
The Derry-born 24-year-old said: “I’m probably not the most exciting candidate on the show. I’m not really a partier to be honest, and I am very work-driven.
“I have never struggled to be taken seriously, I am so serious. I am Mrs Serious.
“But I’m a very credible business person. I am genuinely passionate about my industry, it’s an emerging industry and I think I can make some significant changes and also generate a profit which will keep Lord Sugar happy.”
Leah currently works as an A&E doctor in London, but hopes to land Lord Sugar’s cash to launch a chain of “non-surgical” cosmetic clinics with expert medical staff.
Entrepreneur ... Leah Totton on The Apprentice
She explained: “I’m not going into this as a beautician or hairdresser that wants to inject any Tom, Dick and Harry with Botox. I’m going into this as a doctor.
“I want to medicalise an industry that really at present has absolutely no regulation. My aim is to make sure these treatments are done in the environment they should be done, by people who are appropriately trained.”
Last week Lord Sugar and his aides voiced concerns that her drive to squeeze cash out of her clinics may see her give procedures to vulnerable people.
But Leah, who dated Celtic goalkeeper Fraser Forster for four years, insists she would uphold the highest ethics.
She said: “I don’t need to go touting for inappropriate business. I am a doctor and that is what my priority is. I am not willing to treat people who do not require or need these treatments.”
'Sexy, tough ... Luisa's Dita Von Teese of baking'
THERE are naked pictures of her all over the internet. She’s been described as manipulative, argumentative and a game player throughout this series.
And with her tiny waist and fake, pneumatic chest Luisa’s the kind of girl to put a woman’s teeth on edge as much as the most saccharine cupcake she sells.
She comes across as incredibly sexually adventurous yet her business is based on the most wholesome of concepts.
She is the Dita Von Teese of home baking.
But, love her or loathe her, slice Luisa in half and she’s like a stick of Blackpool rock — she’s got the word businesswoman written through every layer.
Like the nasty Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, no one can resist what she’s got to sell.
Ruthless and streetwise, she sure as heck knows how to get results.
And she doesn’t care who she steps on in the process.
She might be a brat — even bordering on being a bully.
Decision ... Lord Sugar
BBC
But of the two candidates, my money’s on Luisa making a sweet packet for herself and Lord Sugar as the next Apprentice winner.
I just wish she’d stop banging about how people think she’s a bimbo — she even mentioned that in her CV. She said she put it in to show she’s got a personality.
Why not just say, ‘People hate me because I’m so pretty’ and have done with it?
Stand Luisa next to her opponent, and beyond the colour of their hair there’s nothing to choose between the two girls.
One blonde, the other brunette, they’re like a pair of bookends. Both fiercely competitive, utterly ruthless and they have huge egos.
But where Leah simpers, Luisa growls and, frankly, I prefer the growling.
Like me, she gets in first with the barbed comments she knows other people will make about her.
Where I call myself Horse Face and joke that I’m sponsored by William Hill, she describes herself as Jessica Rabbit with fake boobs, hair and nails. As far as she’s concerned she’s just maximising her assets.
I respect Luisa as a businesswoman and that’s important.
She doesn’t need to prove herself — she’s already shown that she can turn a profit.
But, of course, in the end only Lord Sugar can decide who the winner will be. The question is: will he choose to invest his money in sugar... or poison?
Luisa: All women are as vain as I am
By COLIN ROBERTSON, TV Editor
CUPCAKE queen Luisa Zissman reckons her mouthiness is her greatest asset.
The 25-year-old said: “I know I have been called ruthless, aggressive and a bit of a bitch. I am ruthless, but the reason I have been successful is that I don’t take s***.
“I’m probably the most colourful candidate and perhaps the most interesting.”
Luisa boasted on the show that she had “the sex appeal of Jessica Rabbit and a brain like Einstein” and said people who criticised her were just jealous of her looks. But the cake shop owner, who is separated from husband Oliver and has a daughter, Dixie, three, insists that she is NOT vain.
She said: “Every single woman and every guy wants to look good.
“You have your hair cut because you are concerned about your appearance. You shaved because you are concerned about your appearance.
“Everyone wants to better their appearance, that’s why make-up is around.”
Bossy ... Luisa with Jason on The Apprentice
And she added she was fed up with the attention given to the glamorous looks she shares with rival Leah. She explained: “I don’t think we should be criticised or judged for the way we look. People should just recognise us for our abilities in business and go, ‘You know what girls, you’ve done bloody well’.”
Luisa, who wants Lord Sugar’s cash to start a baking supplies brand, also dismissed rumours that she had hooked up with fellow candidate Jordan Poulton, 26.
The hopeful from St Albans, Herts – who features in raunchy snaps online – said: “I was never with Jordan. Jordan and I were very close, but Leah and I were closer and no one is saying that we are lesbians!”
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