A MOTHER-OF-TWO has been picked to compete for a £20,000 prize in a prestigious Apprentice-style business contest.

Kirsty Taylor, 34, will be up against 12 other budding property investors from all over the country taking part in The Eviction.

The contestants, aged 21 to 56, will live together at Caverswall Castle in the Staffordshire Moorlands, one of the last remaining moated castles in the UK.

Mrs Taylor, of Spennymoor, County Durham, is a former pupil of Tudhoe Grange Comprehensive School and helps runs Contego, a successful, national bird and pest control company with her husband Michael. Her role is to oversee the finance and digital marketing sides of the business.

As a sideline, she also helps breed and train birds of preys to win races and beauty contests overseas.

The Eviction, inspired by The Apprentice TV show, will be held throughout this month. The contestants will be set a series of demanding challenges, details of which are being kept secret. However, Mrs Taylor and the other participants will be required to unearth and pitch ‘live’ deals to expert investors from the property and financial worlds.

The ‘Lord Sugar’ of Caverswall Castle will be 27-year-old Samuel Leeds, chairman of Property Investors, based near Wolverhampton. In true Sugar-tradition, he will be regularly showing the door to contestants who do not meet his exacting standards.

“Like me, none of them were born with a silver spoon in their mouth. We train thousands of people each year and these individuals stood out," he said. “They will enjoy the facilities of the castle and our hospitality, but I’ll be evicting 12 people along the way. The last person standing will be handed £20,000 to invest in property.”

The self-made multi-millionaire was featured on BBC TV in November when he embarked on an undercover operation in Sheffield to prove that even people with no means can become financially free in a remarkably short time. A YouTube documentary on his mission has since attracted more than a million views.

Mrs Taylor says she was so nervous about the competition that she was physically shaking during the initial meetings.

“I’ve never done anything in front of camera before. It would be an absolute dream to win this contest as it is comfort zone pushing and would give me the ultimate confidence boost to work on bigger boy projects," she said.

  • An in-depth documentary on The Eviction is due to be available on YouTube next month.