Celebrity Apprentices

2012-02-07 12:01 PMComment

Everybody loves a piece of the rich and famous. So, in honour of National Apprenticeship Week, we are rolling out famous and celebrity ex-apprentices. Drake and Jay-Z might not feature, but you might be pleasantly surprised when you find out who started out as an apprentice. Drum roll please as we count down our top ten celebrity apprentices…

“I iz down wid da kidz”

10. Ruth Badger

Ruthlessly efficient, Ruth left school with three GCSEs. One business apprenticeship later and ‘the Badger’ was rising fast up the business ranks. A few years on and she was at it again, crushing competition in the fight to become Sir Alan Sugar’s Apprentice. Ok, so she didn’t win, but she did go on to present Badger or Bust on Sky One. She also started her own consultancy and academy, or, as she puts it: “built her empire.” She did all this by the time she was 30. We doff our caps.

9. Ross Brawn

Ok, Ross Brawn hasn’t had a boob job and he’s never appeared in Heat, but his place is fully deserved on this list. Why? Because he went from being a humble apprentice engineer to a big cheese in the world of Formula 1. And we mean a BIG cheese! He has directed the Benetton, Ferrari, Brawn and Mercedes teams, and he’s one of the most respected men in F1. So you might go ‘huh?’ at his name, but this guy has had a truly amazing career.

8. Michael Caine

Film star Michael “You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” Caine trained as a plumber’s apprentice before he hit the big screen. Top actors Bob Hoskins and Gabriel Byrne were also trainee plumbers. There must be something thespian in the water…

7. Ozzy Osbourne

Forget Michael Caine! If you’ve got a plumbing emergency, call round the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne. Sure, he might try to remedy your problem with a beheaded bat, but the godfather of heavy metal actually started out as a trainee plumber. Admittedly, his plumbing career was cut short by a stint in prison. Oh dear. Plumbing’s loss, music’s (sort of) gain.

6. John Frieda

John Frieda started out as an apprentice in a hair salon, doing all the nasty bits like sweeping up hair cuttings. Fast-forward a couple of years and he’s a celebrity hairstylist, tending to the tresses of the rich and famous, and flogging his hair products on the TV. Yup, that’s an ex-apprentice’s products keeping your hair smooth, shiny and beautifully coloured.  

5. Alexander McQueen

One of the most famous designers in fashion, this council estate lad learnt his craft through an apprenticeship with a Savile Row tailors. What can you thank him for? Low rise jeans (or muffin tops), skull print scarves, mad catwalks, extreme and staggeringly beautiful clothes, and Lady Gaga’s lobster claw shoes. Not bad for an apprentice, eh?

High street fave Karen Millen was a fashion apprentice too. She started her business with just £100 and sold it for a cool £120 million 20 years later. 

4. Eric Clapton

He might be more likely to feature on your parents’ iPod playlists, but this former stained glass design apprentice is now widely regarded to be one of the most important guitarists of all time. His close friend George Harrison, a.k.a. one quarter of The Beatles (oh you know, probably the most famous band of all time), started out as an apprentice electrician.

3. Jamie Oliver

You might know him more for that thing about school dinners, but did you know ‘the naked chef’ actually started out as a culinary apprentice? Several cookbooks, restaurants and TV shows later (and some pretty darn weird names for his kids: Poppy Honey, Daisy Boo, Petal Blossom and Buddy Bear anybody?), he’s worth £106 million. Bish bash bosh. The mockney boy came good.

He isn’t the only famous culinary apprentice to make it. Foul-mouthed millionaire chef Gordon Ramsay and cack-handed Strictly Come Dancing chef Gary Rhodes were both apprentices.

2. Sir Alex Ferguson

As a wee laddie, Alex Ferguson was an apprentice tool worker in a shipyard, playing football part-time. Now, he’s the manager of one of the most famous football clubs in the world. He’s so passionate about the value of apprenticeships, that he started his own apprenticeship programme at Manchester United.

Who did they sign up? Only Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and David Beckham (although something tells us they didn’t have to do NVQs in football). In fact, you could argue that Manchester United’s glorious treble-winning year (winning the Premier League, FA Cup and the Champions League in 1999) was down to the humble apprenticeship.

1.  Elvis Presley

The King of Rock and Roll, sex god, lip curler and hip shaker, started out as an apprentice electrician. Perhaps his formative experience was the driving force behind his hit ‘All Shook Up’? Ok, probably not, but this former apprentice is the biggest selling solo artist of all time, racking up over a billion record sales worldwide. Beat that Lady Gaga.

Incidentally, Gaga was an apprentice steelwork fabricator and Rihanna was an apprentice pig technician. We might be stretching the truth a tad there. 

Images courtesy of Damian Cugley, Jane Smith, Focka, Stephen Kloo, and Ubberdave