June 2, 2012, by Amy Stamper
Go Tom Go!
The University of Nottingham has yet another alumnus in the final of the hugely popular BBC programme The Apprentice.
Tom Gearing (History 2009) from South West London, will be battling it out in Sunday’s final and is tipped as one of the hot favourites to win the competition.
The programme, fronted by multi millionaire tycoon Lord Alan Sugar, features candidates who compete to go into business with him with those that fall by the wayside told unceremoniously “you’re fired!”.
On his website Tom says: “I graduated from University in 2009 during the recession when jobs especially for graduates were hard to come by. So I decided to explore my entrepreneurial spirit and became business partners with my older brother. Together we took Cult Wines Ltd to the next level and opened our first offices in October 2009.
“Since then, my father has joined the company and we have established Cult Wines as one of the leading fine wine investment companies in the UK, with over £10,000,000 of funds under management. Our company has extended globally with clients in over 27 different countries and all this has been achieved in the last two and half years.”
In the past the programme has been a hotbed for University of Nottingham alumni. In the first series in 2005 Saira Khan (Environmental Planning 1993) failed to reach the final but captured the nation’s hearts with her no-nonsense, motormouth approach and went on to forge a successful business career.
In series six of the show it was the turn of Chris Bates (Politics and American Studies 2008) who similarly garnered huge respect as a honest, hard-working and sincere candidate but he narrowly missed out to the impressive Stella English in the final of the process.
Then last year came the impressive Zoe Berresford (Mechanical Engineering 2007), former drinks manufacturer in Cheshire, who wowed Lord Sugar but left the programme in week nine of series seven.
So could Tom be our first winner?
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