In short
Alan Sugar’s “rags to riches” path from working-class East London to UK billionaire and TV personality, plus how his business style and public persona shaped perceptions of entrepreneurship.
Guests
None. Hosts are Zing Singh (journalist/author/podcaster) and Simon Jack (BBC business editor). They interview/quote Sugar and discuss listener questions.
Guest background (Alan Sugar)
Born 1947 to Jewish working-class parents on a bombed-out Hackney council estate; left school at 16; sold car aerials from a van; built Amstrad (consumer electronics, then home computers); later became Lord Sugar (life peer) and host of The Apprentice.
Key claims
He “undercut” competitors via cheap sourcing (e.g., hi-fi turntable covers), scaled mass-market electronics, and later diversified into satellite TV equipment and property. His blunt TV persona is both authentic hustle and sometimes perceived as arrogance/bullying.
Notable examples
Rolls-Royce number plate AMS1; Amstrad IPO (1980); acquisition of Sinclair Research (Spectrum); Sky dish manufacturing; Tottenham Hotspur chairmanship; “You’re fired” boardroom moments; tax dispute (Sunday Times/Bureau of Investigative Journalism); controversial tweets (2013, 2018) and 2008 comments on equality laws.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOAlan Sugar's Early Life
1:46 to 3:58
Exploring Alan Sugar's background and early entrepreneurial spirit.
“Every episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.”
From Small Sales to Big Dreams
3:58 to 7:58
Detailing Sugar's ventures in selling car aerials and starting his own company.
“becoming host of the UK version of the TV show The Apprentice.”
Taking Amstrad Public
7:58 to 11:47
Discussing the growth of Amstrad and the decision to go public.
“But probably a normal thing to do for someone who is, you know, someone like him to set up his own company.”
The Rise of Personal Computing
11:47 to 14:00
Alan Sugar's entry into the personal computer market and its impact.
“So let us go now from a million to a billion.”
The Rise of Alan Sugar and Amstrad
14:00 to 24:50
Discover how Alan Sugar built Amstrad into a billion-pound company and faced challenges.
“I mean, I can imagine why this would be better than a typewriter.”
The Rise of Alan Sugar and Amstrad
25:16 to 25:58
Discover how Alan Sugar built Amstrad into a billion-pound company and faced challenges.
“the risk of losing more than the amount originally deposited and any profit you might have made.”
Alan Sugar on The Apprentice
26:33 to 28:00
Explore Alan Sugar's transition to television with The Apprentice and its impact.
“What does a man do once he's conquered the business world?”
The Apprentice Format and Success
28:00 to 29:30
Explore the structure of The Apprentice and its impact on contestants.
“And at the end of the challenge, they all resemble in Sir Alan Sugar's boardroom and he berates them or praises them or more likely berates them for how badly they've done.”
Alan Sugar's Business Journey
29:30 to 32:16
Learn about Alan Sugar's rise in business and his milestones.
“I'm going to put you in the backseat of my bloody car.”
Political Involvement and Controversies
32:16 to 34:58
Discuss Alan Sugar's political roles and the controversies surrounding him.
“In 2024, 17 years after selling Amstrad to B Sky B, he bought back the rights to the Amstrad brand name because he wanted to give it down to the family.”
Show all 15 chapters
Controversies and Public Perception
34:58 to 36:58
Examine the controversies Alan Sugar faced and their effects on his image.
“And, you know, the media often focus on his ostentatious spending.”
Analysis of Alan Sugar's Influence
36:58 to 39:32
Analyze Alan Sugar's influence in business and media and his legacy.
“He potentially avoided a tax bill estimated at 186 million.”
Evaluating Alan Sugar's Impact and Legacy
42:04 to 45:00
Explore Alan Sugar's influence in the UK and his legacy as a cultural figure.
“So I think Alan Sugar's power is more in his...”
Listener Feedback and Insights
45:00 to 47:30
Hear listener reactions and insights on previous episodes and billionaires discussed.
“So, Pat, we hope you've enjoyed this first episode back again.”
Next Episode Preview: Sheryl Sandberg
47:30 to 48:21
Get a sneak peek into the next episode featuring Sheryl Sandberg and her unique journey.
“A very unusual billionaire in that it's not often that you become that rich working for someone else's company.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
0:30Simon Jack:up at Whole Foods Market.
1:00Simon Jack:to buy, sell or attain any specific investment or service.
1:12Simon Jack:A stocky man in his early 50s kneels on a red carpet. A metal blade sits on his shoulder. In front of him, holding the sword, is a little old lady. She's dressed all in yellow with pearls around her neck. It is, of course, the late Queen Elizabeth II. Second, we're in Buckingham Palace and we're at the dawn of a new millennium. The kneeling man closes his eyes and thinks of his mother and father no longer alive and he chuckles. Not bad for a working class Jewish boy from the East End. He's just been made a knight. In a few years he'll become a lord and a billionaire. Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service.
1:48Simon Jack:Every episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money. We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million on to a billion. My name is Zing Singh and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster. And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor. And our billionaire on this episode has been suggested by a lot of listeners. Alex Chapman from York in the UK put it very well. A rags to riches story. His career touches on class mobility, media influence and how fame reshapes public perception of business success. Does his blunt old school style represent authentic entrepreneurship or outdated arrogance?
2:24We're talking about Alan Sugar, Baron Sugar of Clapton in the London borough of Hackney or Lord Sugar to you and me.
2:32Simon Jack:Now, the 79 year old is one of the UK's most famous businessmen and he's currently worth one and a half billion dollars. Oh, yes. Have you had much dealings with Lord Sugar in the past? I did have to go and interview him in the, I think, mid 2000s at the launch of the, I'm sure we'll get onto this, on the show The Apprentice, which was basically borrowed from the current president of the United States about sort of taking some wannabes and trying to turn them into entrepreneurial geniuses. And the funny thing I remember about this, and maybe we'll get to this too, is that it was during this time, he came in in a massive Rolls Royce, which had the number plate AMS1, Alan Michael Sugar 1.
3:19And it was parked diagonally across two disabled parking bays, which are the closest parking bays to the front door of the old television centre. My eyebrows were raised by it. It was there for several hours. Was there anyone sitting in the car waiting for him to come out? Like, my memory doesn't relate.
3:36Simon Jack:Well, certainly a strong statement on the launch of your new television show. Yeah. So, yes, but Alan Sugars is a brilliant story. He's a working class boy from East London. He began his career in the 1960s selling car aerials out of the back of his van. And in the 80s, he became one of the richest people in Britain selling computers to the mass market. And in the 2000s, he followed in the footsteps of Donald Trump, as we've discussed, becoming host of the UK version of the TV show The Apprentice. And that's probably where most of our listeners encountered him because his no-nonsense, sometimes you would say downright rude, one-liners made him a household name in the UK.
4:14Simon Jack:But he's also come under fire for controversial comments he's made on social media. Yeah, but let's go and try and answer listener Alex's question. Let's travel back to post-war London to find out how he did it.
4:29Simon Jack:Alan Michael Sugar was born in 1947. His parents, as we alluded to in the opening, were Jewish and working class. Both of them were nearly in their 40s when he was born and he was the youngest of four children. Alan grew up on a council estate in Hackney in the east end of London. This area was nothing like it is today. Still incredibly poor and run down at the time. Much of the area had just been completely bombed to bits during the war. No, it's quite posh, up and coming and trendy these days. But back then, it was not. His father was a tailor and worked in a garment factory. The family was poor and money was always a worry at home.
5:04The electricity meter that kept the house warm would sometimes run out by Thursday afternoon before his dad was paid on Friday. So they'd need to borrow a shilling from their neighbor. And just so you know, in the old days, you had to literally put coins in a meter in the house to get the electricity to start flowing through. Alan said, life was all about not having any money, not having anything and working very, very hard. I didn't want to have to live that way, he said.
5:30Simon Jack:And Alan spent his childhood trying to make money. He worked at Greengrocer on the weekends. He took to hustling in the streets where he washed cars. He sold unused fabric trimmings to the rag and bone men. These are men who collect unwanted household items and sell them on to merchants. And when Alan was barely a teenager, he also noticed that when the roads in his area were being resurfaced, there were uncovered wooden roadblocks that were just discarded. And he took those, cut them up, sold them as cheap fire starting fuel. And, you know, this is just one of his money making schemes that many of which are too long to list here.
6:04A real hustler. So from a young age, he's entrepreneurial, resourceful. But at school, he said he wasn't one of the brainy ones. He was fascinated by electronics. So he got the school boffs, as he called them. I think that's short for boffins. Classic Alan Sugarism there. Yes, to help him make a simple radio receiver to pick up radio stations. Left school at 16. But by this time, he claims he was making more money than his dad. He said in his quote is, my dad always worried about putting food on the table. When I left school, I said that's never going to happen to me.
6:33Simon Jack:Initially, he applied to IBM. Now remember, this was the early 1960s and the computer industry was just getting started. But he actually ended up failing the aptitude test. So instead, he had a few clerical jobs, but he didn't enjoy them. As he said, I was never going to be a rabbi or a priest. Put it that way. I was a salesman and salesmen sail close to the wind. He started working as a salesman for an electrical goods wholesaler, where he earned£20 a week. Pretty good money in those days, actually. But at age 18, he started dating a hairdresser called Anne and then he proposed to her. He wanted to buy a house and ask for a raise at work.
7:09They said no, so he left.
7:11Simon Jack:But Alan hadn't stopped the side hustles and in some weeks they earned him more than his day job actually did. So he decided it was time to go it alone in business. He took£100 out from his savings. He spent£50 to buy a second-hand minivan,£8 on the insurance and said it was a good deal. Unfortunately, it was always breaking down, especially when I had to go on business rounds. It taught me you get what you pay for. The rest he spent buying cheap car aeros, which he started selling out of the back of the van. And he set a target to earn£60 profit per week and says, I achieved it by Wednesday. Now, £60 might not sound like a lot of money now, but it was at the time.
7:49Simon Jack:It was actually double the average weekly wage. So in 1968, aged 21, he incorporated his company, AMS, Alan Michael sugar trading limited amstrad for short and incorporating basically means you know rather than being a sole trader you have a company an entity which is a business which kind of operates as a legal thing separate from yourself and some advantages in that in that um you can you know you pay the money into it rather than paying income tax directly as a person the money goes into the business, if you take money out of the business, in the form of dividends, sometimes you can pay less tax.
8:30But probably a normal thing to do for someone who is, you know, someone like him to set up his own company.
8:36Simon Jack:That makes sense. And that was the year he also married Anne. A year on, they also had their first son with two more children coming soon after. And with a family of his own, he set about evolving the business. He opened an office in London. He hired, actually hired his dad as his first employee and paid him more than he earned in the garment factories, which is quite a flex I think to hire your own dad. Yeah I wonder how the dynamics of that work. I mean probably makes more sense if you can do something for a family member pay them for doing something useful, pay them more. Does it alter the sort of you know the power structures within the family dynamic?
9:08I'm betting it did. Alan worked hard, he was in the office at 6am, he didn't go home till 9pm. He was importing low-cost consumer electronics and reselling them wholesale to retailers And his focus was, in his words, the mass market. It's the truck driver and his wife end of the market.
9:25Simon Jack:Audio equipment was becoming especially popular at this time because more people could afford stereo systems at home. But Alan's profit margins were small. He had a big breakthrough, though, when he figured out how to undercut his competitors by sourcing cheap materials for hi-fi turntable covers. And he said, that was it, the start of the big time for me. Within weeks of starting production, I was making£6 ,000 a month at a profit margin of over 400 % per cover. £6 ,000, by the way, was equivalent to roughly$14 ,400 at the time. But back then, this was enough to buy a house. People used to get quite, and still do, get very particular about their hi-fi equipment.
10:06And so having a cover, so where you would put the disc, you put the cover for when it's not being used. And vinyl's made a comeback, hasn't it?
10:11Simon Jack:And it has, you know, so maybe a young Alan Sugar listening right now might go back into that business. So he was on to something here and he repeated this same trick, outsourcing, undercutting competitors with other electronic equipment. He imported goods cheaply from Asia, putting the Amstrad name on them and selling for a profit in the UK. He said, I was always going to be the pile them high, sell them cheap end of the market. He also acquired a factory and grew his workforce, manufacturing some of his items in the UK. And Alan made the point to sit on new production lines and assemble the first units.
10:43Simon Jack:and this helped him envision his next designs. He enjoyed being in the thick of the detail. And over the 70s, the business grew. And by 1979, his turnover was nearly£6 million, with profits approaching£1 million. So his success drew a little bit of attention. He turned down a bid from a competitor, Lasky, who offered£2 million to acquire 75 % of the company. Instead, it was time to take his company public. That means selling shares to the public in what we call an initial public offering or IPO. We've been down this road with some of our billionaires before. So in 1980, Amstrad started trading on the London Stock Exchange.
11:21Alan sold 25 % of his shares for£2 million, a much better deal than what Lasky's was offering.
11:27Simon Jack:He said it was a great deal for me. Up until then, I had no personal wealth. Everything was in the company. It was time for me to cash in, in part, on all my efforts from back when I'd started trading in my own name 14 years earlier. So he's come really far. And at the age of 33, Alan Sugar is now a millionaire. That milestone passed.
12:00So let us go now from a million to a billion. It's now 1980. It's the beginning of Thatcher's Britain, Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the UK. And in Alan's words, the 1980s gave anyone the opportunity to succeed. The establishment was smashed, definitely. The old school tie went out the window. Anybody can do anything now. And I remember this period, it was basically this kind of very public, you know, unashamed, money making, opportunistic era.
12:27Simon Jack:Well, this was the start of a transformative decade for British technology. Computers were still expensive because specialist machines were used mainly by businesses and enthusiasts. But, you know, we're also on the cusp of a revolution, the personal computer revolution. The cost of components was getting cheaper, so there were opportunities opening up for mass market electronics firms. Alan felt it wouldn't be rocket science for Amstrad to make a low-cost machine to compete with the other home computer makers, Commodore, Acorn, Sinclair were the familiar names those days. He felt the existing computers looked like pregnant calculators is the way he put it.
13:04his computer would be a slick all-in-one system. Did you have a home computer at this time? Well, there was two machines I had. One was called the Sinclair ZX81, which was one of the early machines. And then there was something called the Sinclair Spectrum. And then there were various iterations on this. There was the VIC-20, the Commodore 64. And as a young, you know, sort of 12-year-old boy, everyone was obsessed with them. You would get these brochures and look at them and lust after these computers, even if you didn't know how to use them.
13:34Simon Jack:Well, in 1984, Alan launched the first Amstrad computer. And that affordable PC really took off and sales dwarfed anything he'd ever seen before. And within a year, computers were 70 % of Amstrad sales. So he was really riding that wave. Yeah, his next product was the Amstrad PCW, essentially a glorified word processor that included a screen, a keyboard and a printer. And it was advertised as a replacement for the typewriter and was wildly popular. I mean, I can imagine why this would be better than a typewriter. I remember there was once a time when I collected vintage typewriters. I know, I just thought they were really cool.
14:12Simon Jack:Where are they now? Gathering dust in my mum's house. Really? Because you just, well, I couldn't figure out how to actually replace the real, is that what you call them? The ribbon, which allowed you to type. The uncool thing about them was that if you ever made a mistake on a typewriter, because you're physically, bam, you know, hitting the key onto the page, you would have to go back and put a little strip of something to try and erase it. Whereas a word processor, essentially, as we know, means that you didn't have to print it until it was all done. So you could make your changes along the way before you actually printed it out.
14:45Simon Jack:I mean, understandably, a lot of people bought these computers. And despite having only been in that market for a couple of years, Alan Sugar bought one of his competitors, Sinclair Research, for five million. Makers of the Spectrum then. Right. Well, there you go. And Sinclair apparently had been struggling. And that deal actually gave Sir Alan control of a very strong but underperforming product, the Spectrum, as we've talked about. And Amstrad successfully relaunched and sold these at scale. So they made profits well beyond the cost of acquisition. And in 1986, a big moment, because they made an IBM compatible computer, meaning that it was designed to run the same software, use the same hardware architecture as the IBM PC, which was becoming and had become the industry standard for business computing.
15:32The campaign slogan was, and this is pure Alan Sugar, compatible with you know who, priced as only we know how. So, you know, this is computing for the masses.
15:42Simon Jack:Well, Amstrad doubled its profit and market valuation every year in the 1980s and eventually peaked over a billion pounds. So by 1987, Alan was 41 years old. He had a 45 % stake in the company, making him worth more than$700 million. And he was described at the time in the New York Times as Europe's most successful entrepreneur of the 1980s. And people were getting to know him in the UK. He was becoming a bit of a public figure. He was described in the press as streetwise and bullish. He was pugnacious but effective. And there was a begrudging respect for his success. But there was also hostility from the city establishment, which Alan threw right back at them.
16:23He was now the 15th richest man in Britain. And he set about spending like it. He bought a fleet of expensive cars, Rolls Royces. I've seen one of those. Bentleys and big houses in Essex and Florida. He's living the dream.
16:37Simon Jack:Alan had been riding high on the spectacular rise of Amstrad, but it also wasn't going to last. The stock market crash of 1987 came and it slashed the value of his company, including a record one day fall of 400 million pounds. That is a lot and it wasn't going to be easy to bounce back. By the end of the 80s, PCs were becoming increasingly commoditized and Amstrad was losing its pricing advantage. They also had to record a series of PCs after thousands of customers reported problems with the hard disk. He was awarded compensation for the hard drive fault years later, but the damage reputationally had been done.
17:14And I remember this, I was a teenager at the time, and it was amazing how quickly Amstrad went from being like, oh, I've got an Amstrad, aren't I great, to like, what a load of rubbish, because people like Dell and IBM themselves were getting into the mass market as well. and Amstrad was seen as a kind of shabby, second best. Exactly. Annual profits plummeted from£160 million in 1988 to£44 million in 1990. And Alan Sugar said, we expanded too quickly, we screwed up, we didn't have enough engineering, enough understanding of the technology as it got more complex and I take total responsibility for that.
17:54Instead, he started to diversify Amstrad into the burgeoning satellite television market. Big moment.
18:01Simon Jack:Now it's time for one of our other billionaires we've covered on the show to enter the scene, a guy called Rupert Murdoch. Now, in the late 1980s, Murdoch wanted to launch satellite television in the UK and call it Sky. So he called up Alan and Murdoch said he can make large quantities at a reasonable price. He believed in simplicity and he believed in speed and delivery and low price. So it suited us all around. Well, Alan had originally been quoted £30 per satellite dish to manufacture. Too expensive at that time. So he went back to some of his first principles. He looked at the dish and he said, basically, and this is probably true, isn't it?
Read the full transcript
18:36It was just like a dustbin lid. So he suggested finding manufacturers who already stamped out metal products rather than treating it as a specialist, cool kind of technical aerospace style component. So Amstrad saw steel that cost about 70 pence per dish in raw materials, then found a metal pressing firm who were used to making things like car body panels to manufacture them. And Amstrad became the sole supplier of the receiving equipment, manufacturing both the satellite dishes and the receiver boxes at a crucial moment when satellite is taking off.
19:07Simon Jack:He was also diversifying his interests, firstly, into property. He created AmsProp, Alan Michael Sugar Property, you're sensing a theme here, a property portfolio that he grew substantially throughout the 90s. He invested in offices, industrial sites, commercial developments, across London. And in fact, an apprentice winner would later say that Alan had advised him, you make money from property and do business for fun. But at the same time, Alan started taking an interest in football. In 1991, he teamed up with manager Terry Venables to buy Tottenham Hotspur, Spurs Football Club, which was on the brink of bankruptcy.
19:43And he beat Robert Maxwell to the purchase, former newspaper owner, which seems to happen to a lot to Maxwell if you listen to our Rupert Murdoch episode. He bought 40 % of the shares in Tottenham Hotspur made initial investment of£8 million and at first he was hailed as a saviour.
19:58Simon Jack:But as chairman Alan made it clear he saw Spurs as a business proposition and not a labour of love which did not go down well with the fans. He even took pride in declaring he wasn't a fan of the team and he didn't even particularly like football. Now there's probably quite a lot of owners of sports teams who would fit into that catch group. Oh yeah they've definitely taken PR advice not to say things like that. Obviously none of this went down well with the fans they were even more unhappy when he sacked Terry Venables. Alan said, and this is quite funny, what I didn't realise was that in football terms, I had shot Bambi.
20:31Yeah, and having shot Bambi, he got protesters outside his home, he received death threats. Terry Venables even took him to court to appeal the sacking, but actually Alan won.
20:40Simon Jack:And Alan stuck it out. He spent the next decade at the club as chairman, putting them on a sound financial footing. He was also a key supporter of Sky's successful bid for Premier League television rights, which was then called Be Sky B, owned by Murdoch. And this deal actually helped make live football the foundation of Sky's subscription television model. It also transformed the finances of the game itself and turned it into a multi-million billion dollar industry. It was totally transformative for football. But Tottenham didn't have much success on the pitch during his tenure. When the Daily Mail wrote a headline accusing him of being cheap and not spending money on the team, he sued the newspaper for libel.
21:19At the start of the trial, he broke down in tears, which he said was because of absolute total frustration with the newspapers. But he won and he donated the£100 ,000 in damages to Great Ormond Street Hospital, which is a famous children's hospital.
21:33Simon Jack:By 2000, he was done with the club. He sold part of his state to the investment group Enoch for nearly£22 million, selling his remaining state seven years later for£25 million. Overall, he'd made over£30 million in profit on his initial investment and he donated proceeds to the restoration of the Hackney Empire. This was a historic theatre near where he grew up and it basically saved them from closure. His son-in-law, and this is again quite funny, later joked that when he asked to take Alan Sugar's daughter's hand in marriage, he hadn't seen Sugar so happy since the time he'd sold Tottenham. Hackney Empire is a wonderful building, so we're, you know, a massively focal point in that now groovy and quite expensive neighbourhood.
22:16Alan said, I wasted 10 years of my life in that nonsense, in brackets, Tottenham, football, and took my eye off the other ball at Amstrad. And worth taking a moment, I think, to look at what had been going on at Amstrad during the 1990s. They'd struggled to produce another blockbuster computer despite plenty of new lines, new attempts. Their game console flopped, losing out to the Sega Mega Drive. He also tried something called the PenPad, an early type of electronic personal organiser. He said there was an air of panic of wanting to come out with products that sold a million in the first week and a lack of patience on my behalf.
22:51Simon Jack:But the company had been kept profitable by that satellite business, and that was booming by 2000. And that year, Alan was officially recognised with a knighthood for services to the home computer and electronics industry. And he was now Sir Alan. In his words, I think I deserved it. So he's been knighted. But when does Alan Sugar become a billionaire? How does he become a billionaire? Well, every year, the Sunday Times newspaper releases a list of the richest Brits. He'd been on the list since its inception in 1989, when he was the 15th richest in the country worth£432 million. But by 2003, he'd fallen to 43rd.
23:30His stake in Amstrad was worth just£7 million at that point. But his holding company, Amshold, was worth£459 million. Add in£150 million in other assets, including still some stake in Tottenham Hotspur, plus Amshare, a private jet business run by his son, and the Viglen Computer Company. Together, his total wealth was£609 million.
23:53Simon Jack:Now, listening to all this, you might be saying to yourself, wait a second, this is nowhere near a billion. Let's explain. This is all in pound sterling, remember. And so for global continuity, our billionaires on the show are US dollar billionaires. And because of a very generous exchange rate in 2003, we consider Alan Sugar a US dollar billionaire at the ripe old age of 56.
24:51Simon Jack:We'll be right back.
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26:37So let us take him beyond a billion. What does a man do once he's conquered the business world? Well, possibly the thing many people will know him best for. In 2004, a celebrity businessman called Donald Trump...
26:51Simon Jack:You may know his name. ...launched a reality TV show in the US called The Apprentice. Now, it proved a big hit, and the production company decided to bring it across the pond, as they say, to the UK. Interestingly, Alan wasn't actually their first choice. Two of our other billionaires, Sir Philip Green and Michael O 'Leary, both turned the show down. but when Alan was approached he said yes he had a home in Florida and everyone there was raving about the US version. So he knew how popular it was in the US because of his home there. Part of his motivation he said was that he wanted to be a role model.
27:23He requested no payment for the show and when the BBC insisted to give him some money he gave that money to the Great Ormond Street Hospital. He has said I wish to avoid people saying what's he doing that for hasn't he got enough money I really hate that feeling so if I write an article for the newspapers or do an advert you will always see so alan's fee for this article has been donated to charity now if you
27:45Simon Jack:haven't watched the apprentice it's quite a simple format so a group of contestants who've put themselves forward they fancy themselves a bit of a mini alan sugar themselves uh they put themselves forward to compete in teams on different kinds of challenges yeah they've got to try and sort of basically make money out of some you know they'll say start a cake stall or something and make some money and they'll have to sort of try and bring entrepreneurial flair, nerve, negotiating skills, all these different qualities that it takes to make a hit in business. And at the end of the challenge, they all resemble in Sir Alan Sugar's boardroom and he berates them or praises them or more likely berates them for how badly they've done.
28:25Mainly berates them, I think, is the formula for the show. And of course, if they don't succeed, it's like there's the finger pointing, you're fired.
28:34Simon Jack:Exactly. An iconic part of the show. Another good pub quiz fact is that Alan Sugar's chairs actually placed on a few inches high square board to make him appear taller than all his advisors. He's got a group of advisors who sit at the table with him while he berates other people. well listen the show proved a massive success i must say i did watch the first few series um and it was always kind of fun the series actually won a bafta award although the production team took home the statuette so he had one made for himself he said why should the guy who has the lead role in the program get no credit for it at all there was no program without me and these other guys the so-called creative geniuses seem to get all the gongs well alan sugar basically made the show a hit he became a fan favorite because of that blunt no-nonsense style that finger pointing and saying you've been fired.
29:21Simon Jack:There are even, if you look online, articles dedicated to some of his best boardroom put downs. There's been some great ones here. Oh, okay. Let's go through the list. He once said, if you nod your head any longer, I'm going to put you in the backseat of my bloody car. You were devastated when you got a B in your GCSE French. You're going to be even more devastated now because you've got a big F. You're fired. I mean, we have to state as well that the you're fired catchphrase was actually popularised by Donald Trump. So that's not actually something Sir Alan came up with himself. No. For the first few seasons, the winner was actually employed in his company, in Alan Sugar's company.
29:56But this was changed to him investing£250 ,000 into the winner's business in exchange for half of their company. To date, there have been 20 series. Alan claims there are at least five winners of the show who are now millionaires. He said, I'm proud of the five. I don't feel guilty about the ones who failed. This is the real world. You've got to be tough to win.
30:15Simon Jack:But did Sir Alan, the TV star, still have time to do business? Well, he did. He sold Amstrad in 2007 to its biggest customer, B-Sky B, owned by Murdoch, for£125 million. And that's just 10 % of what the business was worth at its peak in the 80s. He stepped down as chairman. He walked away with£34 million from the sale. And he said it was emotional to finally be giving up the reins of my child, Amstrad. I can imagine that. In 2009, aged 62, he was given a life peerage. That is a non-hereditary title that gave him a seat in Britain's House of Lords. So basically a life peerage means you're called a lord.
30:52And that was by the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown. His official title became Baron Sugar of Clapton in the London Borough of Hackney, or more simply Lord Sugar. And that peerage gave him the ability to be involved to some extent in lawmaking, scrutinising policy, holding the government to account. You've got the House of Lords, which can basically look at the laws that the Commons, The House of Commons is trying to pass and they can suggest amendments and sometimes get batted back between the two. He sat in the House of Lords as a Labour peer.
31:21Simon Jack:As well as being a Lord, Gordon Brown had also made Sugar the enterprise czar, the road to advise the government on small business and enterprise. And he insisted, as far as I'm concerned, this is politically neutral. All I want to do is try and help businesses and enterprise. But in 2015, he actually quite dramatically quit the Labour Party after 18 years over what he perceived as their negative stance on business. And a year later, the then Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron reappointed him to the enterprise czar role. So a little bit of political flip-flopping. Yeah, I think it's quite interesting to note that Alan Sugar was a Labour peer because the period in which he made his money and the style in which he made his money, I think would have been very associated with sort of Thatcherite 1980s Britain.
32:09So I think it's quite interesting that he was a Labour Party. Maybe that's his working class roots coming through. But just an interesting observation.
32:16Simon Jack:In 2024, 17 years after selling Amstrad to B Sky B, he bought back the rights to the Amstrad brand name because he wanted to give it down to the family. Remember, he's got three children. And he said the people who had it before asked for two million pounds. I go, piss off. You don't even use it. His grandson now runs the digital marketing company Amstrad Digital. For Alan Sugar, family matters simple as that, in his words. Him and Anne have actually just celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary. Congratulations to them both. Today, age 79, his net worth is£1.1 billion, so around$1.5 billion.
32:53The majority of that wealth comes from his property portfolio run by his son. In recent years, he made£50 million from the sale of the Sugar Building and£30 million from selling just part of the freehold of the former Burberry HQ. He still heads to his office in Essex most days because, in his words, he hates all this work from home rubbish. Good for you, Alan. He said, I'm good at what I do. You can't teach it. You smell deals and I'll do it until I go senile.
33:19Simon Jack:It has been quite a remarkable story for Alan Sugar, that journey from zero to a billion. Yeah, it has. He's a billionaire and it's time now to score Lord Alan on our billionaire categories. This is kind of a fun bit of the programme, fun bit of the pod, where we basically score our billionaires from zero to 10 on a number of categories, including wealth, controversy, power and legacy. So let us start with wealth. Well, you know, at$1.5 billion, he's still relatively low down on the global rich list. Entry level. He's actually 146 in this year's rich list in the UK. But globally, as you say, really kind of, you know, bottom of the pile.
33:59But we do look at sometimes how far people have come in their life. Were they born with a silver spoon in their mouth? Or have they come up from, you know, from very trying circumstances? I think he scores quite highly.
34:10Simon Jack:Yeah, I think you could mount an argument that he's probably one of the greatest British rags to riches stories that we have. Growing up on a council estate in East London, bombed out Hackney post World War II, all the way to being a telly star and being a billionaire. That is quite the journey. and I think that's one of the reasons why he taps into things because people see him and say well you know that's he he's kind of a totemic figure for like being a bit of a hustler coming from poor background making a ton of money you know not having to doff his cap to the establishment saying you know two fingers up to you I'm going to do it my way that's why I think he has that kind of currency yes definitely I think that's why people even though they might find him rude or abrasive, there's a grudging respect and admiration.
34:58Yeah. And, you know, the media often focus on his ostentatious spending. He's got Rolls-Royce with personalised number plate, AMS1. As you've seen. I've seen the car park. Two aeroplanes, homes in Florida and Spain. He also used to own a 160-foot super yacht, but decided it wasn't cost effective. Duh.
35:16Simon Jack:The famously cost effective super yachts of the 21st century. He collects Rolex and Patek Philippe watches, but he said, they don't give me enough of them though they keep telling me i have to go to my dealer like everyone else bloody cheek i mean he is a real character in in some ways do you think this is a bit of a shtick for him you've met him i've yeah there's a little bit of a kind of working class hero i pull myself up on my own bootstraps you know don't give me any of your you know you know your sob stories just get out there and sort of hustle like i did i think that's quite an attractive kind of bundle of values and i think he plays very much up to it there's the part it started out true and has become caricature i mean i love this quote from him he goes am i still alan of course i am ask my friends of 60 years do i need to eat in a posh restaurant no give me a plate of fish and chips well okay so wealth i'm going to give him a for the rags to rich it would be a one usually because he's down the list but because of where he's come from and the way he wears it um in a slightly ostentatious caricature type way i'm going to give him a four oh i actually would score him higher really yeah i think i would give him a six out of ten okay well it's the spending and also that journey is pretty impressive okay four from me six from you um controversy controversy.
36:39Actually, there is a little bit of this. Yes.
36:42Simon Jack:Well, in 2023, he actually became embroiled in quite a high profile tax dispute. In investigations by the Sunday Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that he had attempted to be treated as a non-UK tax resident after receiving a dividend of about£390 million. He potentially avoided a tax bill estimated at 186 million. Yeah, they reported the plan had failed because members of the House of Lords are automatically treated as UK tax residents. And that Lord Sugar alleged he wasn't warned of his ineligibility by tax advisors. So what does it cost to be a Lord? Now we know. Yeah, exactly.
37:22Simon Jack:£186 million. Well, there's no suggestion that Sugar has broken the law in attempting to avoid or reduce the bill. But they did report it opened him to claims of hypocrisy because he has publicly rebuked others for not paying UK tax while repeatedly insisting his own approach is straightforward. Yeah. When the BBC's Amal Rajan asked him about this in an interview, he replied with a bunch of expletives. But he admits to the attempt but insists that he ultimately paid the tax. So, you know, a complicated tax situation. Yeah. And some controversial comments. Yeah. In 2013, he was investigated by police after they received a complaint about a racist tweet.
38:00Simon Jack:He posted a photograph of a crying Chinese child and joked, the kid in the middle is upset because he was told off for leaving the production line of the iPhone 5. Police did classify this as a hate incident, but that no crime had taken place. So he's got a habit of putting his foot in it. Yeah. In 2018, he was criticised for another tweet, this time comparing the Senegal football team to beach sellers in Marbella. He later deleted the post and apologised, saying, my attempt at humour has backfired, I'll say. He said he misjudged the tweet and it was not intended to cause offence. And he also faced criticism in 2008 because he insisted that equality laws actually make it more difficult for women to find jobs.
38:40Not surprising that a lot of people found those comments offensive. Exactly. He's also been accused of being a bully in his business style. The late businessman Sir John Harvey Jones, used to run ICI, a big UK company once upon a time, said of him, I never liked Alan. I always thought he was a bully. I watch his programme with horror. Still watches it though.
39:02Simon Jack:That's very true. Sugar has always denied charges that he's a bully though. He said people would have reported it if lots of people were taking me to tribunals. I've got people here who have worked for me for 35 to 40 years identifying a truth is not bullying. Well, you know, again, playing on that image of him being this straight talking, unvarnished, you're going to not like what I've got to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. And let's not forget that once you become a caricature in a certain way, it's a bit like someone said to me that, you know, once Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire at a concert, if you enter the concert when he didn't set his guitar on fire, you felt slightly short-changed.
39:45And, you know, so if you become a hostage to your own image, reputation, blah, blah, blah, persona.
39:53Simon Jack:Yeah, well, I feel like if Lord Sugar took someone inside and said, you're not doing very well, but it's okay. We can see you're under a lot of stress. We're going to put you on a performance plan. It's all going to work out. People would think he lost his marbles. Yeah, and it would actually make for quite a boring TV program, potentially. It's true, you know. So you do become a hostage to the mask that you put on. Okay, so controversy. I think quite high on this one. But I think some of it is quite willful and knowingly done. So I'm going to give him a... I'm going to give him seven. I'm going to give him a seven out of ten.
40:28Simon Jack:Willful is an interesting word. I think that's definitely something you could say about Lord Sugar. Yeah. Okay, seven from both of us on controversy. Controversy. power. Now he was involved in UK politics. He sits in the House of Lords. Now in theory that gives him the ability to be involved in lawmaking, scrutinising policy, sending amendments back to the House of Commons. In practice the House of Lords it can frustrate for some time the will of the elected representatives in the House of Commons but not for long. But in a way maybe his more influential in terms of government policy and influence is as sort of the enterprise czar trying to tell government how to treat business and encourage it.
41:13Simon Jack:But also crucially, if you want to exercise power in the House of Lords, you also have to sit in it. And actually, Sir Alan, Lord Sugar has not voted since 2017. So clearly not much interest there. And on a global stage, I mean, he's not really a figure, I don't think he did actually go down to Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's Florida estate, because he lives down the road. His place is down there. He went there apparently for dinner in 2025, although on that evening he said apparently he never actually spoke to Donald Trump. OK, so power, I'm going to say he's got some currency as a kind of business figure.
41:51There are a few people in the UK. I'm thinking of Richard Branson, James Dyson, people who've become influential, aspirational figures because they've, you know, made a lot of money and whatever. So I think Alan Sugar's power is more in his... There are lots of people who would love to be on The Apprentice. There are lots of people who think they could be a swashbuckling entrepreneur and have seen him as a role model for that. So I'm going to score him actually as a five, but probably on a UK basis only.
42:24Simon Jack:yeah i guess if you limit it purely to the uk he is much more well known here than he is on a global stage but at the same time i also feel like if alan sugar wanted to weigh in on the state of the national economy people would listen so i feel like i'd give him six out of ten okay um i not i'm not sure now that alan sugar you know if you if the prime minister's phone rings that you would say I must take that call. So I'm going to give him a four. Okay, four from you, six from me. What about Legacy? This is an interesting one. Well, he brought affordable technology to millions of people. The Apprentice is a much-loved show and people will know that and people will still say you're fired by the pointing, right?
43:09You know, it's become a thing, hasn't it? So will we still be talking about Alan Sugar in 50 years' time? I'm guessing no, but But I think that I am. So three for me.
43:22Simon Jack:Well, I think that, you know, I think that Lord Sugar's legacy is actually also as a cultural figure. Like you say, you know, he's become one of the business figures that you associate in British popular culture. It's interesting that he was actually the third choice for television producers after other people turned it down. I think he's really kind of made it his own. And I don't think you can say that for any other business figure in the UK. Yeah, fair enough. And I suppose when we're talking about legacy, we should reflect on our listener Alex's original question, because this kind of gets to it.
43:59You know, does his blunt old school style represent authentic entrepreneurship or outdated arrogance? And I think the answer is a bit of both, isn't it?
44:09Simon Jack:Yeah, I mean, I think possibly in the 80s, he really embodied that swashbuckling decade of you can make your own money. You don't need to have gone to the right schools or know the right people. All you need is a little bit of hustle and grit. But, you know, is that kind of attitude really relevant in the 21st century? Who knows? I gave him a three. You gave him a three out of ten. I'm going to go slightly higher and give him a five out of ten. OK, all right. So the ultimate question is, is he good, bad or just another billionaire? What do you think? Email goodbadbillionaire, that's all one word, at bbc.com or drop us a text or WhatsApp to 001 917 686 1176.
44:51You can rewind that if you need to hear it again and tell us what you think.
44:55Simon Jack:And don't forget to include your name as we may read out your message on a future episode. So we've had some people email in with feedback and we've got one from Pat in Bristol who says she couldn't wait for the return of the podcast. So, Pat, we hope you've enjoyed this first episode back again. She says, Listening to your podcast is like having a bag of your favourite treats to hand. Impossible not to consume in one sitting. So I've listened to them all as they're released and am now having withdrawal symptoms. I love listening to everyone you tackle, so don't have any suggestions. Wow, Pat, that's quite a compliment.
45:24Thank you so much, Pat. Her judgment, by the way, on the Brazilian billionaire butcher brothers from our last episode is, I do believe that the Batista brothers are bad, but I don't eat meat.
45:33Simon Jack:Well, thanks for that, Pat. And we hope you enjoy the new series. We also had this email about Steven Spielberg from Philippine, Uganda, who says, I thought Simon's impression of E.T. was spot on. Wow. Yes. High praise. High praise. To me, Steven Spielberg is just another billionaire. Interesting. Aside from his incredibly unique movie and business deals, he seems to me as another man just trying to make the most out of his life, both creatively and financially. Thanks, Philip. Appreciate that. Well, Ananya from Mumbai also got in touch about Spielberg. And they say, Spielberg built a career making the world feel bigger.
46:08Simon Jack:Whether it was aliens, dinosaurs or distant adventures, his films created fictional universes that stayed with people. His cultural influences widespread across the globe, even here in Mumbai, India. He showed the world that fiction has economic value and that imagination can be monetised. He made money by making people care deeply about something that never existed. To me, that's what makes his story so unique. I must say, I agree with Ananya for that. He made the world seem bigger. Your imagination seemed bigger. I remember going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was 11 years old and the world seemed like a bigger place.
46:41Simon Jack:And he definitely made people care about aliens. Yeah, and not getting in the water. And we had this email from Dom about the Chinese chili oil billionaire Tao Huobi. Hi, Zing and Simon. I just listened to the Tao Huobi episode and really enjoyed it. Last year, my partner and I took a trip to Guiyang, China, my partner's hometown, to meet her mum for the first time. We arrived late at night, exhausted and took a cab. During the ride, I fell asleep but was awoken by a strong smell of chilli oil. It just so happened that we passed one of the Laoghan Ma's manufacturing plants on the way. Half awake, I remember thinking Tao's chilli oil is so ubiquitous and seen in almost every household, she has to be a billionaire.
47:18Simon Jack:What a surprise to see the title of this episode pop up. You're right. Thank you, Dom says, for sharing these interesting and unique episodes. It's so fascinating to get a glimpse into these billionaires' lives and their origins. And thank you, Dom, for confirming that, yes, indeed, the chilli oil is something you can smell from a distance.
47:40Simon Jack:So who do we have next week? A very unusual billionaire in that it's not often that you become that rich working for someone else's company. But this person became perhaps the most famous holder of the cheap operating officer title for a company called Meta, before that Facebook, and before that she worked at a little startup called Google. Yes, it is Sheryl Sandberg, the lean-in founder, the ultimate archetypal girlboss herself on the next episode of Good Bad Billionaire. Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Elena Bwarteng. The editor is Paul Smith and it's a BBC Studios production.
48:21Simon Jack:For the BBC World Service, the senior commissioning producer is Sarah Green, and the commissioning editor is John Manel.
48:51when you are, so dinner is simple and the grill stays busy. Go to GoodRanchers.com. That's GoodRanchers.com. And build your box today. Before summer's gone, make the last cookout count with Good Ranchers.
From the publisher
It's a classic British rags-to-riches story: Alan Michael Sugar went from selling car aerials from the back of his minivan to becoming one of the most recognisable faces of UK business. First with his consumer electrics company Amstrad, then as the frontman of the UK version of The Apprentice.
Journalist Zing Tseng and BBC Business Editor Simon Jack explore Lord Sugar's many entrepreneurial avenues: from consumer electronics to football; politics to property; and of course, TV fame. As one listener asks: “Does his blunt, old-school style represent authentic entrepreneurship or outdated arrogance?”
Good Bad Billionaire is the podcast that explores the lives of the super-rich and famous, tracking their wealth, philanthropy, business ethics, and success. There are leaders who made their money in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street and in high street fashion. From iconic celebrities and CEOs to titans of technology, the podcast unravels tales of fortune, power, economics, ambition and moral responsibility. Simon and Zing put their subjects to the test with a playful, totally unscientific scorecard — then hand the verdict over to you: are they good, bad, or simply billionaires? Here's how to contact the team: email goodbadbillionaire@bbc.com or send a text or WhatsApp to +1 (917) 686-1176. Find out more about the show and read our privacy notice at bbcworldservice.com/goodbadbillionaire.
