Jackie Lavin, businesswoman, partner of Bill Cullen, star of The Apprentice on TV3, arrives at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, and walks smartly into the lounge, creating an almost domino effect of turning heads. When you tell people her age - 62 - the reaction is one of disbelief. Today, she's dressed smartly in spray-on black jeans, and a grey tee-shirt, and looks remarkably toned and healthy. Cracking jokes with the Sunday Tribune photographer, the Jackie Lavin here, sitting on a couch sipping water, seems far removed from the Jackie Lavin of The Apprentice, barking at to-be-fired boardroom contestants, and staring that look down her nose when they say something that offends her. A look that would make pit bulls cower.

Without TV make-up, she looks softer, less 'done up', and is remarkably down to earth. She's witty rather than funny, sharp, smart, savvy. She only has half an hour, I'm told beforehand. The interview lasts 29 minutes before she bounds off again (after offering to pay for our water) to another engagement. Lavin seems so normal, it's only afterwards, when I'm thinking about the Bentleys and helicopters, the 43-room mansion, the five-star hotel, and the rest of her trappings that I think of the powerful multi-millionaire, and not just the nice and lively lady with an edge.

There are, however, flashes of steel throughout the interview. Lavin does not suffer fools. She doesn't have time for negative influences. She hates 'attitude'. "Get the job done," she says, when I ask what her advice to young business people starting out is. "The loyalty thing in one sense is important. You have to think, 'I'm working for this company on this project and I'm really going to do my best', not just turn up, put in time, and then think about what you're doing tonight. It's about responsibility. Some people will have it and some people will never have it. You can train people and teach them, but the sense of responsibility is deeper than that." I feel like taking notes. "This dossing mentality, I can't stand that," she goes on, now on a role, ending with, "It's dishonest not to do your work properly. I have no time for that."

Does she give people serious bollockings if they screw up, I ask? "Well," she pauses, "not if someone screws up, but I have problems with people if they have an attitude. I don't want to work with people who shrug their shoulders, or don't care." Note to self, don't shrug shoulders in the company of JL. "How did I get to where I am today, hello? I didn't win the lotto."

No, Jackie Lavin didn't win the lotto. She moved to Dublin (from Ballyduff, Kerry) as a teenager, and like many young women, went to work in the civil service. She studied design at night and became a model. She married David Lavin, the publican (he ran two Orchard pubs in south Dublin) and had two sons – Troy and Gary. Hitting 30, she dropped modelling, and opened a boutique in Blackrock, bringing the Monsoon label to Ireland and creating an extremely successful store which she ran almost entirely by herself. Around that time, Cullen – who had spotted his future partner around town but never expected her to be interested – and Lavin became acquainted, and began a personal relationship that would soon turn into a business collaboration, which would see them become Ireland's most recognisable power couple. David Lavin has since retired, selling one of his Orchard pubs for €20m in 2005. The Lavin's children are successful in the own right, with Troy working as an oil broker married to the novelist Sinéad Moriarty, and Gary behind Vitz, a brand of vitamin drinks. Jackie has vowed never to marry Bill, saying she would only do so if they were to have children together, and since they already had families by the time they met, she didn't feel the need to tie the knot.

In 1991, she and Cullen bought the Muckross Park Hotel in Kerry and transformed it into a stunning five-star property complete with the award-winning Cloisters spa. In fact, we meet today to talk about her new product range, Cloisters Cosmetics, which she has introduced to the spa.

She chats about the products for a little bit, but doesn't push it, shying away from a PR-style bombardment in favour of talking about the Lisbon treaty, Nama, the economy, but first, The Apprentice. The TV3 format of the successful US and British versions has been an outright hit, and transformed Cullen and Lavin into TV stars, changing their lives ("well yes, it has got busier") and making them more recognisable ("people shout 'You're Fired!' when we're in the supermarket now.") They don't get any previews of the programme, so when we see it, they see it. Cullen isn't as involved as Lavin, filming mainly just the boardroom scenes, whereas Lavin and PR man Brian Purcell are there "all day, every day". Of course, the most interesting parts of The Apprentice are when things go wrong, which Lavin enjoys: "It's good fun. If they were all perfect we wouldn't have anything to criticise them about." Do herself and Purcell have a sneaky giggle when the contestants do something ridiculous? "We do of course, of course. We're not allowed interact with them at all, and you're dying to say 'oh for God's sake would you ever...' It takes them hours, especially because there are so many of them, they're all trying to get their bit in. Too many cooks," she says, raising an eyebrow.

For all the fun of The Apprentice, things are rather serious for the power couple at the moment. Cullen is heavily involved in the motor industry, a business that has all but fallen apart in terms of new sales.

"[The recession] has affected all business," Lavin says. "Everyone knows the motor business has been hit. That has a huge effect on us, and on staff. We've had to cut our cloth according to the level of business, and there's no other way to do it. Hang in there and wait for the turnaround. That's what everyone is doing in business today."

Lavin has plenty to talk about in terms of 'our current economic climate'. Her main gripe is with employees of the public sector whom she believes don't know how good they have it, "Moaning about pay cuts, I mean, hello? There are plenty of people out there without any pay, no jobs, who would love your job. There's no realism in that at all. The government has to tackle it. This business of jobs for life with no accountability, it's like the L'Oréal ad, 'because we're worth it'." And don't even mention the word 'strike'. "What's that going to do for the country?" she exclaims, "This is not a time for that, it's a time for everyone to be working together. They should actually work more hours for the amount of money they're getting paid."

Lavin, like many wealthy entrepreneurs, is 100% capitalist, 100% get the job done or shut up. At various points, she gives out about socialism, Joe Higgins and their ilk so 'nationalise' isn't really in her vocabulary.

All this talk of work makes me wonder about whether or not Cullen and Lavin ever stop grafting. The answer? Well, no. Although Lavin insists they have downtime, everything is coloured by working. "We sometimes go to Kerry for the weekend," she insists. "We kind of tend to combine work and time off, intertwine them rather than 'now we're off, now we're on'. We're nearly always working, or working in relation to something, but we enjoy it." Does she envisage a day when she won't be working? Lavin looks at me like I have 10 heads, "No! Definitely not!" she exclaims, "what? No, no, no, no!" Okay, I get it. "We are going to die on the job," she announces to the room and collapses into a fit of morbid laughter. "That said, I don't think I'm a workaholic. It doesn't mean that I don't like downtime, or travelling, but I'm constantly looking at ideas; when we're travelling, or in restaurants, or ideas for the hotel. It's ideas, ideas, ideas," she slaps her thigh, punctuating each word. "We're constantly learning. You're never finished learning, never." You tell 'em.

I mention a particular incident in The Apprentice where she nearly throttled a contestant for saying two people were "fighting like women". Is she a feminist? She sidesteps the label, "I just don't like boxing people in. I don't believe in that. You can't tag a load of people and say 'they do that, and they do that'. We're all individuals." That said, men seem to get shorter shrift than women do throughout our chat, "I think men are desperate gossips, more into gossip than women even are," she ventures at one point. And on another occasion: "I always say when the design of something is wrong, be it in a car or whatever – I go immediately 'that was designed by a man'. They have their own skill set, but they don't have the same understanding. Every woman knows that."

Her observations come back to the TV show, "The women to begin with have got the whole team thing going, they are far more cohesive. There is more time for individualism as the thing goes on, but in the beginning, the trick is to get the team to win and stay out of the boardroom. That can only be achieved by working together. The guys are all 'I'm better than you' and macho, and being more individualistic. They don't get that, they're all very 'me, me, me', jostling around," she scoffs.

Lavin is not keen to answer particularly personal questions, and although she's extremely warm and chatty, she can be coy when it comes to her partnership to Bill (she "leaves him at it" when he's with his friends talking about the motor industry. Their favourite place in the world is Kerry. There are advantages and disadvantages to working with someone you're in a relationship with, "you're constantly talking about work.") As we finish up, I ask her if there's any personal belief system she goes by. "Work hard, do your best, and don't take yourself too seriously," she says. "There's nothing I wouldn't do in the morning if things were difficult. I remember when I was in the fashion business, people would be astonished that I'd be cleaning my own windows in the morning. Why wouldn't I? I go down and polish the brass on the front door in the hotel. Why should somebody else do it? I'm responsible for everything, and if something is wrong it's my responsibility."

And with that, Lavin is off, breezing out of the hotel as more heads turn.