Sir Alan Sugar – Business Leaders
The multi millionaire started life in a council flat in Hackney, he attended Brook House School. Today he lives in a mansion in Chigwell, Essex, with his wife Ann. At 16 he landed a job as a statistician at the Education Ministry. He soon became bored and started selling car aerials from the back of a dilapidated van. He registered Alan Michael Sugar Trading as Amstrad when he was 21 and went on to make a fortune selling basic, low cost, computer technology to the masses.
In 1990 Sugar bought Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs) the premier league football club for a cool £7million. He is now one of the wealthiest people in Britain with a personal fortune that is estimated to be over £500m.
In 1999 he was knighted for services to British industry. He recently stepped down as Spurs chairman and sold the club netting him another small fortune.
He is a man who likes to share his good fortune and wealth with the community. Recently donated £1.3million to the rebuilding of the Hackney Empire.
In 2005, Sugar became the star of the BBC reality show The Apprentice, in which he had the job of the boss, as Donald Trump had previously done in the US version. This meant that he dealt with every “firing” of a certain candidate each week. Every week, just the same as Donald Trump, he would eliminate one contestant by telling them “You’re fired”, which became a popular catchphrase in both the US and the UK. He selected the tasks for the teams, using his leads in the business world to get them tasks in places such as Harrods and Sugar’s company, Amstrad. He also chose the rewards the winning team received each week, which included dinner with Sugar, a trip to Monaco and a trip on the Orient Express.
He decided to continue his role in the second series of the Apprentice, which was broadcast on BBC2 on Wednesdays at 9pm. The second series began in February 2006, and featured some new tasks. His second apprentice was chosen to be Michelle Dewberry – over Ruth Badger – after they competed in a final task which took place on London’s Tower Bridge. He is also scheduled to appear in a third series of The Apprentice in 2007, on the conditions that the programme be more business orientated, rather than entertaining, and that he be portrayed in a less harsh light.
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