Apprentice reject Laura Hogg reveals her secret heartbreak

Apprentice reject Laura Hogg reveals her secret heartbreak

Blonde Laura, 28 â€" fired on Wednesday’s programme â€" said it was “the worst moment of my life” when TV aides broke the news that her former boyfriend Chris Lindsay had been savagely battered on the Costa del Sol.

Chris, 34, father of her four-year-old boy Reece, died in hospital five days after the attack without regaining consciousness. Laura, speaking for the first time about the nightmare, said: “I was in an absolute state of shock. I just wanted someone to pinch me. I couldn’t speak. It was like something from a film.

“When you hear that someone you cared for deeply â€" and who did something as amazing as giving you a child â€" has gone through that ordeal it hurts like mad. It was really disturbing.”

Laura was with her Apprentice team making vats of chutney for a task on Lord Sugar’s BBC1 show when producers pulled her aside during the recording last October.

But she had an agonising wait of nearly an hour before they could find a quiet hotel room to tell her what had happened.

Laura said: “The Apprentice house nanny Claire was waiting for me with my bag and said, ‘I need to speak to you’. The producers told me to just go with her.

“I was so confused. I was like ‘Oh my God, what’s happened? Is my little boy OK? Is my dad ill?’

“Automatically you think something terrible has happened but they wouldn’t say. They just told me we needed to have a little chat.

“That was possibly the worst moment of my life. We were in the middle of nowhere in Essex and the nearest hotel was a 15-minute drive. On the way I was saying to Claire, ‘Just tell me what’s going on?’ I was begging her.

“But she didn’t want to say it in front of the taxi driver. Eventually she said, ‘It’s Reece’s dad. He’s been murdered’. I was so upset.

“Before Chris and I split there was a point when I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him.”

Details of the horror remain a mystery. Chris, a sales worker on a break with his company, had become separated from colleagues.

Laura said: “He was found at the side of the road badly beaten up and unconscious. No one knew how long he’d been there. He died of liver failure five days later.” Distraught Laura had to decide whether to abandon the show and head to her home near Glasgow to be with Reece.

She wondered whether she should go to Chris’s funeral even though she was not on speaking terms with his family.

Bridal shop owner Laura said: “If Chris had been involved in Reece’s life I’d have been home in a flash. But I thought me going back wasn’t going to influence the situation.”

Laura reasoned that she and Chris had not been close since their split â€" and Reece was happy being looked after by her parents. She said it was “so hard” when she later told him of his father’s death.

The devoted mum said: “Chris and I were together for two years but our relationship had been breaking down during the pregnancy. If I hadn’t been pregnant I would have walked away sooner.

“I wanted my little boy to have a dad but it became apparent after Reece was born that we were never going to have a happy family.

“It was the hardest decision of my life to walk away with such a young child. But I had no choice. Chris wasn’t blocked from seeing Reece but he didn’t visit him. We weren’t talking by then. I didn’t think it was my job to find him and ask him to be a dad.”

Laura reckoned that staying on The Apprentice and making a bid for the prize of £250,000 investment cash could transform her life. She said: “I am both mum and dad and have to provide. The Apprentice was too good an opportunity to give up. I didn’t want to interfere with the funeral. I did not want Chris’s parents to wonder why Laura was in the back row.”

Laura, who has been with new boyfriend Ali for four years, kept her anguish secret from the other Apprentice hopefuls.

She said: “I went back to the house after the task. No one knew what had happened. I don’t even know if Lord Sugar knows. I was acting as normally as I could but deep down I was upset as hell. My mental state was all over the place. In those situations you usually want to have a glass of wine with your pals and get it out. I shared a room with my fellow contestant Jade and it eventually came out.”

Laura said: “The next day we were full-pelt continuing with the task but by lunchtime it hit me and I just felt sick.

“I got through the afternoon but as soon as the cameras stopped at 5pm I burst into tears.

“I started to get paranoid and thought I wasn’t performing as well as everyone else. I wondered, ‘Is everyone looking at me, thinking she’s on the edge? Will people notice on screen that something was up?’”

Brave Laura fought back her doubts and put herself up for project manager on the next task.

She said: “It was the last thing I should have done. I should have just gone under the radar and tried to get through the next couple of tasks. My head was not with it. I was fighting all the time to get back on course. One day I locked myself in the bathroom and had a massive cry.”

The boardroom scenes were particularly tough for Laura as Lord Sugar tore strips off her for not pulling her weight.

On Wednesday viewers saw the tycoon attack her for her poor sales â€" which particularly hurt as she is proud of her sales record.

Laura said: “I will never know if what had happened affected my performance. I was never going to play that card. But I was devastated when I was fired. I was in the show to go all the way.”

Laura said she did “loads” on the last task but it was edited out.

She said: “If they had showed me more in that episode you would have seen that I was more enthusiastic. But who am I to start rearranging the show?”

Laura is happy to be back with her family. Looking back on her decision to stick it out on The Apprentice, she said: “It was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done but I’d do it again in a flash.”

c.robertson@the-sun.co.uk