Trainee barrister Nick de Lacy-Brown claims to have met judges who are scarier than Sir Alan Sugar - but not many.


Last week, de Lacy-Brown appeared in the new series of the BBC's 'The Apprentice', the Big-Brother-meets-business TV show where contestants vie for a £100,000 job within Sir Alan's empire. Brown heard the dreaded words 'You're fired!' at the end of the first episode.



His (brief) appearance on the popular show earned him the epithets 'chav-hater' and 'snob'. De Lacy-Brown says: 'I was perhaps imprudent to describe the competition as the educated versus the gritty types.' Worse still, he confessed an indifference to soccer. And then there was the fish fiasco, when he and his team got out of their depth selling lobster and monkfish at bargain-basement prices. Bizarrely, they decided to go to a solicitors' ?practice to sell their stock - and were roundly out-negotiated.



The artistic de Lacy-Brown has shrugged off this minor setback, but not before sublimating the experience by painting a self-portrait, showing himself as the martyred St Sebastian. He says: 'The seven arrows symbolise the treachery of the seven guys in my team. I leave it to your imagination what the blood on the sugar cubes symbolises.'



He is confident that his appearance on the show won't compromise the pupillage he is soon to take up at Crown Office Chambers, Temple, London. 'The bar is very diverse,' de Lacy-Brown says. 'In fact, many barristers are quite eccentric and will be intrigued to have seen me on television.'