advisor. From the East End of London, Sugar had an estimated fortune of £700m in 2011,

and was ranked 89th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2011. In 2007, he sold his remaining

interest in the consumer electronics company Amstrad, his largest and best-known business

venture. Sugar was chairman of Tottenham Hotspur from

1991 to 2001. Sugar appears in the BBC TV series The Apprentice, which has been broadcast

annually since 2005 and is based upon the popular US television show of the same name,

featuring the American entrepreneur Donald Trump.

Early life Sugar was born in Hackney, east London, into

a Jewish family. He is the youngest of four children of Fay and Nathan Sugar. His father

was a tailor in the garment industry of the East End.

When Sugar was young, his family lived in a council flat. Because of his profuse, curly

hair, he was nicknamed "Mop head", a name that he still goes by in the present day.

He attended Northwold Primary School and then Brooke House Secondary School in Upper Clapton,

Hackney, and made extra money by working at a greengrocers. After leaving school at 16,

he worked briefly for the civil service as a statistician at the Ministry of Education.

He started selling car aerials and electrical goods out of a van which he had bought with

his savings of £50. Personal life

Sugar and his wife Ann married on 28 April 1968; they have two sons and a daughter. Sugar

and his wife live in Chigwell, Essex. They celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary

on 11 May 2008 with a party at their home, where Sir Bruce Forsyth was the compere, Jackie

Mason the comic and Sir Elton John played a set. His niece through marriage is actress

Rita Simons, best known for playing Roxy Mitchell on the popular UK soap opera EastEnders.

A collector of classic Rolls Royce and Bentley motor cars, Sugar owns a Rolls Royce Ghost

with the number plate AMS1, which appears during all episodes of The Apprentice. A qualified

pilot with 30 years' experience, Sugar owns a Cirrus SR22 four-seat aircraft, based at

Stapleford Airfield. During an attempted landing at City Airport Manchester on 5 July 2008,

Sugar suffered a crash in this aircraft because of wet and soft field conditions. No injuries

were sustained, although Sugar was said to be "very shaken". He is a fan of and the former

owner of Tottenham Hotspur. In February 2009, it was reported that Sugar

had initiated legal proceedings against The Sun newspaper following a report that he had

been named on a "hit list" of British Jews in response to Israel's ongoing military operation

in Gaza. The threats are alleged to have been made by Glen Jenvey, the source of the original

story in The Sun, who posted to a Muslim website under a false identity.

Sugar now has an estimated fortune of £900m. Political involvement

In February 2009, the Evening Standard journalist Andrew Gilligan claimed that Sugar had been

approached to be the Labour candidate for Mayor of London in 2012. Sugar subsequently

ridiculed the claim in an interview with The Guardian. But, during Prime Minister Gordon

Brown's cabinet reshuffle on 5 June 2009, the BBC reported that Sugar would become Lord

Sugar and had been offered a job as the government's "Enterprise Champion". On 7 June 2009 Sugar

sought to clarify the non-political nature of his appointment. He stated that he would

not be joining the government, that the appointment was politically neutral, and that all he wanted

to do was help businesses and entrepreneurs. In August 2014, Sugar was one of 200 public

figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence

in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.

Ventures Amstrad

Sugar founded Amstrad in 1968, the name being an acronym of his initials – Alan Michael

Sugar Trading. The company began as a general importer/exporter and wholesaler, but soon

specialised in consumer electronics. By 1970, the first manufacturing venture was underway.

He achieved lower production prices by using injection moulding plastics for hi-fi turntable

covers, severely undercutting competitors who used vacuum-forming processes. Manufacturing

capacity was soon expanded to include the production of audio amplifiers and tuners.

In 1980, Amstrad was listed on the London Stock Exchange and during the 1980s Amstrad

doubled its profit and market value every year. By 1984, recognising the opportunity

of the home computer era, Amstrad launched an 8-bit machine, the Amstrad CPC 464. Although

the CPC range were attractive machines, with CP/M-capability and a good BASIC interpreter,

it had to compete with its arch-rivals, the more graphically complex Commodore 64 and

the popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum, not to mention the highly sophisticated BBC Micro. Despite

this, three million units were sold worldwide with a long production life of eight years.

It inspired an East German version with Russian Z80 clone processors. In 1985, Sugar had another

major breakthrough with the launch of the Amstrad PCW 8256 word processor which, although

made of cheap components, retailed at over £300. In 1986 Amstrad bought the rights to

the Sinclair computer product line and produced two more ZX Spectrum models in a similar style

to their CPC machines. It also developed the PC1512, a PC compatible computer, which became

quite popular in Europe and was the first in a line of Amstrad PCs.

At its peak, Amstrad achieved a stock market value of £1.2 billion, but the 1990s proved

a difficult time for the company. The launch of a range of business PCs was marred by unreliable

hard disks, which occasioned a high level of customer dissatisfaction and damage to

Amstrad's reputation in the personal computer market, from which it never recovered. Subsequently,

Amstrad sued Seagate for $100 million in lost revenue. In the early 1990s, Amstrad began

to focus on portable computers rather than desktop computers. Also, in 1990, Amstrad

entered the gaming market with the Amstrad GX4000, but it was a commercial failure, largely

because there was only a poor selection of games available on it. Additionally, it was

immediately superseded by the Japanese consoles: Mega Drive and Super Nintendo, which both

had a much more comprehensive selection of games. In 1993, Amstrad released the PenPad,

a PDA, and bought into Betacom and Viglen, so as to focus more on telecommunications

rather than computers. Amstrad released the first of its combined telephony and e-mail

devices, called the e-m@iler, followed by the e-m@ilerplus in 2002, neither of which

sold in great volume. On 31 July 2007 it was announced that broadcaster

BSkyB had agreed to buy Amstrad for about £125m. At the time of the takeover, Sugar

commented that he wished to play a part in the business, saying: "I turn 60 this year

and I have had 40 years of hustling in the business, but now I have to start thinking

about my team of loyal staff, many of whom have been with me for many years." On 2 July

2008 it was announced that Sugar was standing down from Amstrad as chairman, to focus solely

on his other business interests. Tottenham Hotspur

After a take-over battle with Robert Maxwell, Sugar teamed up with Terry Venables and bought

Tottenham Hotspur football club in June 1991. Although Sugar's initial investment helped

ease the financial troubles the club was suffering at the time, his treatment of Tottenham as

a business venture and not a footballing one made him an unpopular figure among the Spurs

fans. In Sugar's nine years as chairman, Tottenham Hotspur did not finish in the top six in the

league and won just one trophy, the 1999 Football League Cup.

Sugar sacked Venables the night before the 1993 FA Cup Final, a decision which led to

Venables appealing to the high courts for reinstatement. A legal battle for the club

took place over the summer, which Sugar won. The decision to sack Venables angered many

of Tottenham fans, and Sugar later said, "I felt as though I'd killed Bambi."

In 1992 he was the only representative of the then big five who voted in favour of Sky's

bid for Premier League television rights. The other four voted in favour of ITV's bid,

as it had promised to show big fives games more often. At the time of the vote, Sugar's

company Amstrad was developing satellite dishes for Sky.

In 1994 Sugar financed the transfers of three stars of the 1994 World Cup: Ilie Dumitrescu,

Gica Popescu, and most notably Jürgen Klinsmann, who had an excellent first season in English

football, being named Footballer of the Year. Because Spurs had not qualified for the UEFA

Cup, Klinsmann decided to invoke an opt-out clause in his contract and left for Bayern

Munich in the summer of 1995. Sugar appeared on television holding the last shirt Klinsmann

wore for Spurs and said he wouldn't wash his car with it. He called foreigners coming into

the Premier League at high wages as "Carlos Kickaballs". Klinsmann retaliated by calling

Sugar "a man without honour", and said: "He only ever talks about money. He never

talks about the game. I would say there is a big question mark over whether Sugar's heart

is in the club and in football. The big question is what he likes more, the business or the

football?" Klinsmann re-signed for Tottenham on loan in December 1997.

In October 1998, former Tottenham striker Teddy Sheringham released his autobiography,

in which he attacked Sugar as the reason he left Tottenham in 1997. Sheringham said Sugar

had accused him of feigning injury during a long spell on the sidelines during the 1993/1994

season. He wrote that Sugar had refused to give him the five-year contract he wanted,

as he had not believed Sheringham would still get into the Tottenham team when he was 36.

Sheringham returned to Tottenham after his spell at Manchester United and continued to

start for the first team until he was released in the summer of 2003, at age 37. Sheringham

said that Sugar lacked ambition and was hypocritical. As an example, Sugar asked him for recommendations

of players; when Sheringham suggested England midfielder Paul Ince, Sugar refused because

he did not want to spend £4 million on a player who would soon be 30. After Sheringham

left Spurs, Sugar approved the signing of Les Ferdinand, aged 31, for a club record

£6 million, on higher wages than Sheringham had wanted.

Sugar appointed seven managers in his time at Spurs. The first was Peter Shreeves, followed

by the dual management team of Doug Livermore and Ray Clemence, former Spurs midfielder

Osvaldo Ardiles, and up and coming young manager Gerry Francis. In 1997 Sugar stunned the footballing

world by appointing the relatively unknown Swiss manager Christian Gross. Gross lasted

9 months as Spurs finished in 14th place in 1998, and began the next season with just

3 points from their opening three games. Sugar next appointed George Graham, a former player

and manager of bitter rivals Arsenal. Despite his earning Tottenham's first trophy in 8

years, the Spurs fans never warmed to Graham, partly because of his Arsenal connections.

They disliked the negative, defensive style of football which he had Spurs playing; fans

claimed it was not the "Tottenham way". In February 2001, Sugar sold his majority

stake at Tottenham to leisure group ENIC, selling 27% of the club for £22 million.

In June 2007, Sugar sold his remaining shares to ENIC for £25 million, ending his 16-year

association with the club. He has described his time at Tottenham as "a waste of my life".

Sugar later donated £3 million from the proceeds of the sale of his interests in Tottenham

Hotspur to the refurbishment of the Hackney Empire in his native East End of London.

Amsair Amsair Executive Aviation was founded in 1993,

and is run by Sugar's son Daniel Patrick. As with Amstrad, the name Amsair is an acronym

taken from the initials of Sugar's name "Alan Michael Sugar Air." Amsair operates a large

Cessna fleet, and one Embraer Legacy 650 with the registration G-SUGA, offering business

and executive jet charters. Amsprop

Amsprop is an investment firm owned by Sugar and is now controlled by his son Daniel Patrick.

Simon Ambrose, winner of the 2007 series of The Apprentice, started working for Amsprop

Estates after the series finished. However, in April 2010, he was reported to be leaving

to start his own venture. Viglen Ltd

Sugar was the owner of Viglen Ltd, an IT services provider catering primarily to the education

and public sector. He resigned his position on 1 July 2009. Following the sale of Amstrad

PLC to BSkyB, Viglen is now Sugar's sole IT establishment.

Amscreen Sugar is Chairman of Amscreen, a company run

by his eldest son Simon Sugar, specialising in selling advertising space on digital signage

screens that it provides to retailers, medical centres and leisure venues.

Apprentice winner Yasmina Siadatan works there, selling into the NHS.

The screens use a Face detection system called OptimEyes to try to identify age and sex of

its viewers YouView

On 7 March 2011, Sugar replaced Kip Meek on the board of the BBC initiated IPTV project

known as YouView which is also backed by ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 and broadband providers

including BT and TalkTalk. Sugar was paid £500,000 for chairing YouView for the year

ending March 2012. Television appearances

The Apprentice

Sugar became the star of the BBC reality show The Apprentice which has had one series broadcast

each year from 2005, in the same role as Donald Trump in the US version. Sugar fires a candidate

each week until one candidate is left, who is then employed in his company or wins a

partnership with Sugar, including his investment of £250,000 to establish their own business.

As a condition for appearing in the third series, Sugar placed a requirement that the

show be more business-orientated rather than just entertainment and that he should be portrayed

in a less harsh light, to counter his somewhat belligerent reputation. He also expressed

a desire that the calibre of the candidates should be higher than those who had appeared

in the second series and that the motives of the candidates for participating are scrutinised

more carefully, given that certain of the candidates in previous series had used their

successful experience in the show as a springboard to advance their own careers.

Sugar has criticised the US version of The Apprentice because "they've made the fatal

error of trying to change things just for the sake of it and it backfired."

Young Apprentice

Young Apprentice is a British reality television programme in which a group of twelve young

people, aged 16 and 17, compete to win a £25,000 prize from the Lord Sugar. The six-part series

began on BBC One and BBC HD on Wednesday, 12 May 2010, concluding on Thursday, 10 June

of the same year, and also featured Nick Hewer and Karren Brady as Sugar's advisors. Karren

Brady made her debut on Junior Apprentice, because it aired before she appeared on the

adult version. The programme concluded with Sugar awarding the prize fund to 17-year-old

Arjun Rajyagor and Tim Ankers finished in second place.

The second series started in October 2011, and this time featured eight episodes and