Former Apprentice star Lucinda Ledgerwood set for toughest test yet

SHE was fired for being too zany and is best known for her berets.

Now, former Apprentice contestant Lucinda Ledgerwood is embarking on a new challenge. A year after returning from the boardroom to her freelance management consultancy in Edinburgh, she is preparing to stick her high-powered business career on the shelf and head off for two years in India with the charity VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas).

It means giving up her freelance earnings – said to be over £100,000 a year when she featured in last year's series of The Apprentice – in exchange for a salary the same as that of her Indian colleagues, and also putting her career on ice.

But Lucinda, 33, won't be leaving behind the boardroom completely. She will be helping revitalise the running of Pravah, a New Delhi-based youth organisation, and the job description issued by VSO is reassuringly corporate: "Developing strategic planning, reviewing organisational structures, strengthening HR processes and internal staff development."

She says, "I see this as a continuation of my business and professional skills and using the knowledge I've got in something that will enrich others' lives and build a more sustainable future for the youth in India.

"It's not altruistic by any means – I'm going to have the chance to embrace a new culture for a year and it's not something that you'd get to do just travelling through.

"When I come back to the UK I'll maybe take a new direction away from finance and more towards youth mentoring. It's really opening up business opportunities for me."

The charity stint will also give her the chance to escape the economic downturn. She admits: "The recession is a big factor – in this line of work there are very few freelance opportunities at the moment.

"And one of the reasons I did The Apprentice was that I'd got to the top of my field and felt I'd done what I wanted to do and I was after a change of direction."

It's a change she has already been making since leaving the boardroom, working with the Prince's Trust and mentoring young business people alongside her day job.

With her colourful outfits, she was also the programme's eccentric, so it is perhaps no surprise that she also has a rather more wild and wacky string to her professional bow – she is halfway through a part-time BSc in Herbal Medicine at Edinburgh Napier University.

Lucinda, who lives in Leith, says: "I've deferred the course for two years, and it's something I'd like to come back and complete. I was lucky, because I originally trained in neuroscience and psychology, so I've been able to do it on a part-time basis."

Before departing for the sub-continent, she will have the chance to enjoy the final of this year's

Apprentice proved I could be sweet as Sugar in business

series of The Apprentice on Sunday. She has been following it closely, and has plenty to say on the matter, not least on the merits of the finalists, Kate Walsh, who said she would hate to work with an all-woman team, and Yasmina Siadatan, who blundered by not understanding her own business accounts.

"It's fantastic that it's an all-female final," she says. "Kate seems to have the business acumen, but she's cut off 50 per cent of the population. In this age, who wants to work with someone who doesn't want to work with women? It is quite surprising to say the least. Maybe she's not as bright as originally anticipated.

"Yasmina maybe hasn't got the business sense, as we saw, but she's somebody who fits into a team and perhaps the business side will come – she's still quite young. However, I've found the series pretty bland to be honest.

"There's not really any advice that I can offer them. They're both intelligent enough and savvy enough to make their mark. It's been difficult to watch Lorraine, because she had the most intuition, she was straightforward, she had the most to offer, but she was picked on. Anyone who can juggle raising children and a career I have great respect for."

With an insider's insight, does she think the programme makers use the editors' craft to tell the story they want, regardless of the reality?

"I think you can only edit so much. They do make you caricatures of yourself, but they are actually true to the people."

With Susan Boyle being whisked straight from Britain's Got Talent to The Priory, the stresses and strains placed on reality TV contestants are big news. She says: "I feel that the media and the producers of the shows have a responsibility and a code of conduct, but I believe it's questionable whether those codes of conduct are carried through."

It shouldn't matter, she says, if reality show contestants like herself and Susan Boyle are quirky characters. "I don't know if that's why she's finding it so difficult. I think there's a place for people to be individual in everything they do – if we were all sheep and wore the same black suits life would be very boring – variety is the spice of life and I think there's nothing wrong in that. But mental health care is a big issue and there's that responsibility for the programme maker, to be sure they are referred to the appropriate psychologist.

"I think there should be an independent governing body, perhaps with its own psychologists, which supports the individual and has links back to the programme."

Her own fly-on-the-wall adventure ended when Sir Alan told her: "You're a little too zany for me, you're fired!"

On reflection, she says, it was a relief to step into the taxi and take her leave. "I realised that Sir Alan's corporation wasn't right for me.

"I just stuck out like a sore thumb and it's much more important to be happy and content in your life. It was in the interview stage I said I didn't want to be working for Sir Alan. I really do think that the quality of life we have in Scotland is second to none and I wouldn't have wanted to leave that.

"But I suppose the biggest benefit for myself from doing the programme is that I proved that you don't need to be a bitch to be in business and to succeed. I was the most qualified candidate and the highest paid, and I hope that I proved that you don't need to be amoral, you don't need to be backstabbing."