His company has no product, no name, no suppliers, no distributors and no retail outlets. However, the best-known graduate of The Apprentice, the business reality-television programme starring Sir Alan Sugar, has no shortage of self-confidence or ambition.

Tim Campbell, winner on the programme in 2005, hopes to have his new venture up and running by the summer, with the first goods in the shops by the end of the year.

It will be a consumer brand that will cover any number of essentials for the well-groomed, upwardly mobile male, a category into which Mr Campbel slots neatly. He is already in talks with potential suppliers of suits and shoes — Mr Campbell is big on shoes — from the Far East. He expects also to include in the brand shirts, ties and male grooming products, and hopes that these will be sold into aspirational retailers such as Abercrombie & Fitch or Selfridges.

For now, he is the sole employee and has put in £25,000 of his own money, saved out of the £100,000 salary that Sir Alan has paid him since he arrived at Amstrad in 2005.

Mr Campbell was brought in to Sir Alan’s business to help to launch Integra, an electronic face-care system designed to help to straighten out wrinkles. Yet while the product is on sale at Harrods and Argos, Integra has not, it is fair to say, become a household name.

Mr Campbell is still officially involved in distribution at Integra, but is effectively semidetached, with time enough to spend concentrating on the next project, the one with no name that he can reveal until it has cleared the trademarking process.

“I will be synonymous with the business at the beginning, then the company will have to stand on its own feet in terms of the quality of the products it brings to the market,” he says.

It is a little like other luxury brands such as Dunhill, where the name is used to sell a range of different products, or like Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin, attaching the brand to a number of different companies.

The business will be aimed at “the young dynamic male”, Mr Campbell says, adding: “I want to build up a business that has that high-end-performance feel. When we’ve built up that reputation, we can bring it to the middle market.” Retailers should be “quite young, funky and dynamic, but nonexclusive”, he says.

Mr Campbell remains in awe of the professional curmudgeon he found himself working for, who is noticeably “Sir Alan” throughout our conversation.

Will his mentor, as he calls him, put his money into the project? “We’ve had discussions around equity and value for equity, and these are ongoing,” he says. “The last thing you want to do is go around begging for money when all you have is a few presentations and no product.”

The Apprentice returns to the screens this month for its third series, and there is a special Red Nose Day edition on March 16, in which Mr Campbell will share the billing with the likes of Piers Morgan and Alastair Campbell.

This will be his last involvement with the show because he has other concerns these days. These include being the human face of the British Library on a DVD to be circulated to libraries nation-wide that will promote its facilities, not least the business and intellectual property centre that he himself used for his new venture.

A City analyst, running the slide rule over Mr Campbell, would not be issuing any “buy” notes, it is fair to say, but the entrepreneur would not allow that to dent his confidence. He will build the brand and, when it is established, he will distance himself.

“A lot of my generation don’t understand the difference between being rich and being wealthy,” he says. “Being rich is having money today, next week, next year. Being wealthy is the ability to stop working next week and still be rich.”

The contestants who could have been contenders

Where are they now? Some former hopefuls from The Apprentice.

Syed Ahmed: In the tabloids for his affair with his fellow contestant Michelle Dewberry, he has also had a couple of run-ins with the police and appeared on a celebrity TV show and is now concentrating on “various business interests”.

Michelle Dewberry: Has said she will not do any more TV “unless it’s something that has a purpose to it, either to further develop me or for a charity”. Concentrating on her telecoms consultancy. Her book, Anything is Possible is published this month.

Saira Khan: one of several Apprentices to go into the media, she made a daytime self-help show and writes a column for a tabloid. She has launched her own baby products business.

Paul Torrisi: Sold his property company and was given his own TV show. He has also hosted a celebrity game show.

James Max: This former investment banker also made his way into the media. A columnist, occasionally for this newspaper, he has also worked for the BBC and for TalkSPORT.

Adele Lock: After being fired from the show, she opined that “ The Apprentice has set women in business back ten years”. Last heard of running a barber’s shop in Manchester and planning a second, she has a business selling men’s grooming products online.

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