Everyone seemed amused at Cameron’s cock-up. The Mirror wrote, ‘Novice David Cameron committed a schoolboy howler by getting into a slanging match with Sir Alan Sugar. When Mr Cameron comes out of hiding next week he must come up with answers to the vital questions. And Sir Alan will be there to shout: ‘You’re fired!’
The Sun echoed the sentiment, ‘Sugar and spite: Sir Alan exposes Tory Leader Cam as a sham’.
Sugar was very impressed with Gordon Brown for his handling of the banking crisis. ‘It seems the Prime Minister has been very smart, as yesterday the Americans announced an almost carbon copy of his plans,’ wrote Sir Alan. ‘However, with all that banking stuff sorted, we have to consider ongoing issues. We are not out of the woods yet.’ The main ongoing issue Sugar suggested we focus on was simple: buy British. ‘I would never have thought I would be dishing out compliments to the French, but there are some things I admire about them. Chief among them was that the French public made a patriotic effort to buy French.’
He urged, via the pages of the Sun, the British public to do likewise. Naturally, it was a campaign that truly captured the imagination of the Sun readers.
Even Dragons’ Den Dragon James Caan put aside seeming TV rivalries and backed the Sugar-led campaign. He wrote, ‘I want to back the Sun’s campaign to support small businesses but would argue a package for stimulation could go even further. We are a nation of shopkeepers and somehow Government support for our nation has dwindled and with it confidence that things will get better. At a time when small businesses need to be springing to life, instead so many obstacles are in their way.
‘During the last recession in 1992, after a year of hard work I was left with a profit of £1,500 for my recruitment business. The year before it had made £450,000, so I know a recession is very challenging. But this is different, because in my 25 years of business I have never had to question the survival of a bank. I have gone to the banks with a very credible business and they have said they have no money to lend.
‘So in a situation where banks are refusing to lend and a small business needs more money, my best advice is to cut costs. If your cost base is higher than your income, you are heading in the wrong direction. When you have gone through a buoyant economy most businesses have monthly expenditure commitments which are not nice to have. They should reduce them.’
It was not just the great and the good of business and television who echoed Sugar’s ‘buy British’ plea: so too did ordinary Sun readers. As one reader wrote, ‘Sir Alan Sugar couldn’t be more right. I found his article truthful, hard-hitting and very supportive towards the British public. The Government should take a leaf out of his book.’ Another added, ‘I agree with Sir Alan and support British industry. I own a small recruitment business built from my bedroom over ten years. In the past year I’ve lost six of 15 staff. It is very hard.’ Yet another suggested simply, ‘Sir Alan should run for Mayor of London.’
Soon, he was being put forward for an even greater job. In 2008, it was revealed that many Brits believe Sugar would make the ideal Prime Minister. The Apprentice tycoon topped a poll to find the ‘dream cabinet’. In the poll of 3,000, actor Stephen Fry was Deputy PM, while outgoing Countdown queen Carol Vorderman became Chancellor and U2’s Bono and explorer Michael Palin jointly led the Foreign Office. Terry Wogan was Home Secretary, Gordon Ramsay got Health and Jeremy Clarkson Transport. It sounds like quite a Cabinet!
Still, the fickle nature of fame was spelled out clearly when, soon after being ‘voted’ Prime Minister, Sugar failed to make the Jewish Chronicle’s Jewish Power 100. One judge, Ben Rich, explained how the list was compiled. ‘It’s not about famous Jews. Otherwise we would have Amy Winehouse. Sir Alan is a generous philanthropist, but does not pursue a specific agenda. However, his recent comments about kosher chicken may indicate he wants to.’ One would hope so: there are few more powerful Jews in Britain than Sir Alan Sugar, who was ranked 92nd in the Sunday Times Rich List in the same year the Jewish Chronicle chose to overlook his achievements.
But let us return to the boy who set out on this extraordinary business journey, back in the 1960s. He had watched his father slog hard for other people, too weighed down by family responsibility to strike out alone in business. Alan Sugar was not about to follow that example. Once he was up and running in business, he employed his father. After he had done so, the differences in their approach to life were highlighted as starkly as ever. ‘I wanted to stop him working for the old sweatshops,’ explains Sugar of his decision to employ his old man. ‘He was earning something like £20 a week in the garment business, and the way I was doing business, 20 quid a week was nothing. So he might as well come and work for me and answer my telephones and wrap a few parcels up. He was much happier doing that than being under the constant threat of having no work in the sweatshops.
‘When he had to tie up parcels, he would stroll around the nearby market looking for pieces of string that people had dropped, to save money on string. He would recycle postage stamps to save money when invoicing customers. “Dad, do me a favour – we can afford stamps.” After all, these invoices were for tens of thousands of pounds, so why worry about the pennies that a stamp would cost?’
As Sugar’s fortunes grew, he bought new homes and, as his parents visited him in his grand homes, their jaws would drop. ‘They were totally confused,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t take it in. They just hadn’t realised how big Alan had got.’
Sugar spent years persuading them to move out of their flat in Hackney, and into a nicer flat in Redbridge. He bought them holidays in Israel and America, but felt he had to pretend that the first-class tickets he had bought them had been given to him as a gift, so they wouldn’t feel he had been too extravagant.
His parents have both died now, but they must have been extraordinarily proud of their remarkable son. A loving family man and business genius, Sir Alan Sugar should make every Brit proud to come from the same shores as he has. Indeed, you really would need a heart of stone not to be moved and utterly awed by the success that Sugar has made both of his business and personal life. He was an outsider, but never let his lack of establishment acumen get in his way. Indeed, if anything, Sugar made a virtue of his background. This giant success story was the rebel of the financial world, and he also revolutionised the high street and the home with his electrical products.
The boy from Hackney who became a multimillionaire, television star and inspiration to budding entrepreneurs everywhere, Sir Alan Sugar is an example to us all for the way he has conducted his life. Dubbed ‘probably Britain’s greatest entrepreneur’ by none other than Rupert Murdoch, he is so much more than that. A national treasure and star in every sense of the word, the business giant might put on a grumpy front on The Apprentice, but do not let that fool you. For Sir Alan Sugar really is as sweet as they come.
Here ends the latest chapter of his story, but there is surely more to come from Alan Sugar. Not least because he believes that even a man as successful as he is never stops learning.
‘I’m not claiming to know it all, and don’t ever call me a business guru because I’m still learning,’ he said humbly. ‘It may sound like a cliché, but I learn something new every day.’
And his advice to anyone wishing to be the next Sir Alan Sugar? ‘Take stock of what you’re doing. Keep an eye on the profit, because people lose track of that. The costs can run away with themselves. There’s no point making cakes that people love, and selling loads of them at £5 a cake, if they’re costing you £7 to make.’
Sugar has an estimated fortune of £830 million, but he insists there are far more important things in his life. ‘It’s only money. What you have to worry about in life is that your loved ones and the people close to you are healthy and well. It’s just money. If I lost it all tomorrow I would go and make some more. So what? It is not my God.’
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sugar, Alan, The Apprentice – How To Get Hired, Not Fired (BBC Books, 2005).
Thom
as, David, Alan Sugar – The Amstrad Story (Century, 1990).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Stuart Robertson, John Blake and Lucian Randall.
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First published in hardback in 2009
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