He said: “It’s small things, like interaction with your more mature colleagues, that will tell you how to do this, how to do that.

“That is lacking in this work-from-home, zoom culture.”

Lord Sugar’s made the comments after his fellow peer Lord Stuart Rose, the former boss of Marks & Spencer and Asda, said earlier this month that working from home was “not proper work”.

Lord Sugar said he would make an exception for software writers who “get up at three o’clock in the morning with some kind of brainstorm” and for the physically disabled.

But he said being present in the office is advantageous for people starting out.

Lord Sugar, known for his sharply sceptical tone, also described Brexit as “the biggest disaster in [his] lifetime”.

“It is now [that] the full ramifications of us not being in the European Union is starting to really take its toll,” he said.

“If I was prime minister, I would be coming along on my bended knees and asking to be allowed back in,” he said.

Lord Sugar, speaking to BBC Breakfast to mark the launch of series 19 of The Apprentice, also said he viewed using artificial intelligence (AI) as “a bit cheating”.

He said the show was trying to choose tasks that keep up with modern technology, despite contestants having no access to the internet or their mobile phones or calculators.

But while in the real world AI is increasingly being used by both applicants and recruiters, he doesn’t approve.

“If you’re going to use it to write your CV and big yourself up, then that’s wrong, isn’t it?”