'Alan Sugar would like the Homeless World Cup'
Posted by Scotland - 15/06/2007
Sharon McAllister sprang to fame as the no-nonsense Scot on last year’s Apprentice. But, as she tells Laura Kelly she has learned more helping out Scotland’s team for the Homeless World Cup than she ever did from Sir Alan...
‘I guess I’m just normal. I never really understood homelessness, so I just blocked it off,” admits former Apprentice contestant Sharon McAllister, over a veggie burger in a Stirling pub. “But meeting these guys, it’s a crying shame. More should be done to help them.”
Over the last couple of months the 32-year-old Aberdonian has gone from being the kind of cut-throat über-capitalist that Sir Alan Sugar likes to have around to an evangelist for homelessness issues. And it’s all thanks to getting involved in the Homeless World Cup. Sucked in by the infectious enthusiasm of the tournament’s founder Mel Young, she’s following this year’s action for her new Scottish internet television channel sit1.tv, which officially launches this week. Among the first programmes will be an account of Sharon’s day on Glasgow’s streets trying to sell The Big Issue as well the story of Scotland’s 2007 World Cup campaign.
“Mel will tell you I’m a crazy woman now,” she laughs. “I’m hooked on the Homeless World Cup. I really want to do something in any way, shape or form I can help. I think more people would, if they understood it and had the experience I’ve had in meeting the team.” So far, McAllister’s efforts have secured Scotland’s eight players a makeover at swanky hairdresser’s Toni and Guy and made them “famous” (their words) by getting them in The Sun. She’s now in the process of trying to get them suited and booted so they can represent their country in style, and “sell themselves better” when they get back.
As part of her support for the tournament, she’s also put out a call to Sir Alan to get involved. There’s a suggestion he might get English Premiership side Tottenham Hotspur (which Sugar used to own and now has shares in) to help coach the English team. “Sir Alan’s got a really good heart and he’s into football so I think he would like the Homeless World Cup,” explains McAllister, hopefully.
Aside from Mel Young’s zeal, it was getting to know the Scotland hopefuls that stopped McAllister thinking of all homeless people as “druggies, alcoholics, or criminals”.
“You meet these guys and realise they’re not bad people. There’s still a misconception that homeless means druggies, alcoholics, or criminals – and yeah, some of them have done that, but you get a greater understanding of what drove them to that. For me it’s taken the stigma away from homelessness. With the guys now, I see them as people not as homeless people. Which for me has been a really big learning curve.”
One particular story hit McAllister hard. “One of the guys said to me, I used to do drugs, everything up to heroin and cocaine; I used to beat people up; I was a waste of space’,” she says.
“And then he went on to explain how he used to steal from hostels, but now he’s on the right track. He started out away down here and now he’s away up here [she holds her hand down below the table, then reaches towards the ceiling]. And it’s a direct result of the Homeless World Cup.
“Jesus Christ, where in the world can you get something that’s such a steep development of a character in such a short space of time?”
The makers of The Apprentice, which first brought McAllister to national attention last year as the no-nonsense Scot who was fired for not being “aggressive enough”, would have us believe their show is just such a character-building experience. Sharon pooh-poohs the suggestion. “It didn’t change my life,” she insists. “I wanted to go home in the second week because I got the measure of the thing.
“I realised it was a TV programme, rather than being about business. All Sir Alan’s looking for is characters to keep a TV show going.”
Since she was lacking a “crazy back story”, McAllister thinks she wasn’t edgy enough to sustain interest. It’s this she blames for hearing the immortal “you’re fired” in her eighth week. With a strong family group, a degree and a successful business behind her, McAllister’s story does seem fairly settled – but the truth’s a bit more complicated.
McAllister started her own business, Scottish Baby Gifts, in 2000 as a reaction to the total lack of help she received from the job centre when she was pregnant with her son Reece. As a single mum-to-be, she had approached them looking for help finding work to support her family to be. She was told she was over-qualified and should just take £80 a fortnight and apply for a council house.
“I said to the woman, ‘do you really think I’m going to settle for that?’” fumes McAllister, still shocked. “‘Take a good look at this face’, I said, ‘because it’s the last time you’ll see it’.” When she arrived back at her mum’s house – in tears – the strident stance seemed a little less wise but McAllister was determined. With just £100 in savings, she immediately set about establishing a baby gifts business, using sale or return samples to get started. The last ditch option went from strength to strength – “desperation brings the best ideas out of everyone” – and by the end, she’d designed the world’s very first baby tartan. She hit headlines when she provided some of her products for the christening of Madonna’s son Rocco.
McAllister’s background left her well qualified for The Apprentice. Fans of the show will know that Sir Alan always loves telling the story of how he set up his first business with only a few quid. But even she was shocked at how “psychologically intense” the programme was. She says she learnt nothing from the experience except that you should talk about money up front and that there are a lot of nasty people in the world.
The Apprentice did give McAllister a “kick up the arse” to get out of her comfort zone, though. Within a week of her firing she’d applied for redundancy from her job as a business lecturer at Forth Valley College, left her boyfriend and sold her house. Without much of a plan, she was again thrown back on her wits. And again her entreprenurial spirit flourished. The idea for sit1.tv, the YouTube/STV hybrid that is Scotland’s first internet TV station, came during conversations at the school gates with ex-Newsnight Scotland producer Jacqueline Smith – their kids are in the same class at school.
Meanwhile, McAllister’s still been able to turn a buck from her Apprentice experience, penning a weekly column for The Sun about this year’s show. She’s about as impressed with this year’s crop of contestants as she was with her own fellow Apprentices. She remembers one colleague in particular – Paul Tulip – who called Big Issue vendors “lazy”. She reckons the BBC should make up for this throwaway comment by sending the contestants out on the street to see if they could do better at selling the magazine. “It was really shit what he said and I wish the BBC would do something. Because I don’t think [Apprentice contestants] could sell The Big Issue,” she says. “I think a lot of the vendors are better salespeople than them.”
Though she hasn’t much faith in their sales ability, McAllister’s still looking forward to heading down to London to see who triumphs in this year’s Apprentice final on June 13. Her money’s on 27-year-old former investment banker Simon Ambrose, but for inspirational value she’s clear that not one of the Apprentices have a patch on Scotland’s Homeless World Cup team.
