Sir Alan Sugar (21 page)

These are kind words about Sugar from Hewer, and, again, it seems Sugar reciprocates. On his own retirement,
Hewer received a wonderfully generous gesture from Sugar, who laid on a dinner at the Dorchester for Hewer and 100 invited guests. ‘Sir Alan is a very generous friend,’ he said. ‘The best thing about working for him was there was always something going on. He has vibrancy about him.’

A lesser – but still significant – cult star of the series is Sugar’s ‘secretary’, Frances. Sugar had a secretary called Frances Penn for many, many years, but the one you see on the screen is not, in fact, the real Frances, but an actress called Samantha Moon. Although the real Frances was not to appear in the series, as a mark of respect, her name was used for the role. Her phone calls have become a popular part of the show.

So who is the woman who plays the part of Frances? Once a receptionist at production company Talkback Thames, Moon has been playing the role since the beginning of the third series. ‘Sam has always been a bit of a drama queen,’ said her father Alan. ‘She loved acting at school and went down to London about eight years ago with a little sack on her back determined to make it. She has met the real Frances and they got on, but Miss Penn isn’t really front-of-house material. This is television and Sam fits the bill.’

Sam’s mother, Gwen, says that the family were initially told to keep the truth behind her daughter’s role a secret, but people began to recognise her voice and put two and two together.

Sam gets recognised on the street and feels she has to pretend that she is indeed Sir Alan’s real secretary, and has become a cult figure herself in the process. One viewer wrote on an
Apprentice
fansite, ‘I know the only lines she’s ever delivered are “Hello” and “Sir Alan will see you now” but somehow these smoothly delivered lines are always a highlight. I’m forever waiting for the day when she will say something else. Frances makes the show for me. She’s an
Apprentice
legend!’

Candidate Ghazal Asif is a fan, too, and says that he is far from alone in admiring her. ‘Sam ties in with the look of the show. She is a very attractive and polished girl. She comes across as very astute. All the boys fancied her. She was almost too good to be true.’

Indeed, in Series 4, when Essex satellite engineer Simon Smith was fired, he broke with tradition to speak to ‘Frances’ on his way out. When she told him, ‘The taxi is ready for you now,’ Smith became the first candidate to say, ‘Thank you, Frances.’ This was typical of his old-fashioned manner. ‘She’s really lovely,’ Smith explained afterwards. ‘You go in at your lowest ebb because you’ve just come off the task and she always looks and smells great.’

In her role as Frances, it is Sam’s job to wake up the contestants each morning for their task. ‘She will get a call from the production team at 5.30am and will then have to call the candidates at the home to tell them where and when to meet for filming,’ said her mother Gwen. ‘Then she will do a full day’s work at Talkback as a
production assistant and in the evenings she will go off to do her filming for
The Apprentice
, which can last until 10pm. She will even be filming at weekends.’

But she doesn’t actually meet the contestants face-
to-face
until they come into the boardroom to hear their fate. ‘She is the first person they see then and she says they are obviously very nervous,’ said her father. ‘Sam has to put on this air of being a right snob, although some of the candidates still try to chat her up and give her little gifts.’

During the last series, Sam had to use her own clothes while playing the role. But this year she has been given her own allowance for outfits. ‘She has to have a different outfit for each show and, as you can imagine, she has a large wardrobe now,’ said her mother. ‘But she doesn’t get paid anything extra for doing
The Apprentice
. Her only perk is the clothing allowance.’

With even the supporting figures achieving such a popular status,
The Apprentice
was confirmed as a British television institution. Meanwhile, the true star of the show – Sir Alan Sugar – was about to cash in brilliantly on his decades of hard work.

CHAPTER NINE

INTO TOMORROW

I
n 2007, BSkyB bought Amstrad for
£
125 million. Having worked with Rupert Murdoch on the launch of Sky, and been praised warmly by the media mogul, Sir Alan Sugar was now selling his company to Murdoch. Sugar, who set up the company nearly 40 years previously and had been the leader and driving force behind its success, was pleased with the deal, which was worth
£
34 million to Sugar personally. (It was proving a profitable time for him. The previous month, he had sold his Tottenham Hotspur shares for
£
25 million.) He said, ‘I cannot imagine a better home for the Amstrad business and its talented people. Our companies share the entrepreneurial spirit of bringing innovation to the largest number of customers. Sky is a great British success story. I’m proud to have worked so closely with
it, and I look forward to continuing to play a part in this exciting business.’

James Murdoch of BSkyB was also delighted, saying, ‘Sky and Amstrad have had a long and positive relationship. The acquisition accelerates supply chain improvement and will help us to drive innovation and efficiency for the benefit of our customers.’

Amstrad and BSkyB had indeed enjoyed a close relationship for some time, and Sugar’s firm supplied around 30 per cent of the set-top boxes bought by Sky. However, he recognised that there was a vulnerability in the way Amstrad focused so much on this client. ‘I turned 60 this year; I’ve done 40 years of hustling in this business. I have to start thinking about my team of loyal staff, many of whom have been around me for a very long time. There’s a certain culture there that will exist. It’s not a case of letting it go, it’s a case of moving the company on to something more positive.’ He added, ‘The good news for my employees is that they’ve now got a secure future with great opportunities The bad news is that I’m still going to be around for a while, so nothing changes at Amstrad.’

That ‘while’ came to an emotional and powerful end when Sugar stepped down from Amstrad in 2008. ‘This is a move that has been planned for a while and it’s the right time for me to step down from my role at Amstrad. The past 40 years have seen Amstrad grow from a
start-up
business to the success story that it is today, which is
credit to the talented and loyal team here. I have decided that it is the right time to step back from my role at Amstrad.’

The reins were handed to Amstrad managing director Alun Webber, of whom Sugar thoroughly approved. He said, ‘Alun has worked closely with Amstrad over a number of years and is the right person to build on the success that we have seen to date. I step back knowing that the company’s future is in good hands.’

On stepping down, might Sugar have begun to consider his own mortality, as many do when they retire? If not, then perhaps an event the previous year might have made him realise how fragile life can be. In July 2007, there were sensational media reports that Sugar had ‘cheated death’ in a ‘plane-crash drama’. However, as Sugar was to reveal, the truth was somewhat less dramatic. The incident took place at the Barton Aerodrome near Manchester, on a rainy, thunderous day of weather as Sir Alan attempted to land his four-seat Cirrus SR20 private jet. This jet is noted for being the first production general-aviation aircraft equipped with a parachute for spin recovery, which can be deployed in an emergency to lower the entire aircraft to the ground safely.

‘We landed at Barton, a friendly and clublike airfield now named City Airport Manchester – a far grander name than it suggests with a grass runway about the same length as a football pitch,’ explained Sugar. ‘We landed and ran over the end of the slippery runway by
about 15 feet into some taller grass. In doing so the propeller of the plane picked up some minor damage and according to the rules this means the plane can’t fly unless checked out by a qualified engineer.’

The plane was then towed by a tractor back to a hangar. Meanwhile, Sugar and his travelling companion returned to the airport clubhouse, where they were able to laugh off the incident and tuck in to a snack. ‘As far as “life-threatening” is concerned, to put things in perspective my friend and I had as much chance of dying from the incident as we did in dying from food poisoning from the tuna sandwich that a very nice lady made us in the clubhouse while we waited for a mate to pick us up and take us home.’

One pilot, who was at the airfield, reportedly said, ‘He wasn’t shaken or hurt but he seemed quite annoyed with himself. It is only a small airport. There is not a great deal of room for pilot error. Had he been going much faster, it could have been a very different story.’

But a spokesman for Sugar tried to play the incident down. ‘The accident was due to the weather being particularly wet and heavy,’ the spokesman told the
Daily Mail
. ‘It is also a very short runway. For Sir Alan this was just a pleasure trip. He flies a great deal at the weekends.’

Officialdom soon gave its own verdict. A report by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch into the crash on 5 July stated, ‘As the aircraft turned on to the final approach, the visibility deteriorated, and the wind shifted,
becoming a slight tail wind. The pilot lost sight of the far end of the runway in the poor visibility, and touched down in the middle third of runway. Conscious of the risk of skidding on the “very wet” runway, he applied light braking. The aircraft ran off the end of the runway into a rough area of long grass. Both occupants vacated the aircraft without difficulty.’ The report concluded of Sugar, ‘The pilot reported that, with the benefit of hindsight, he considers that a go-around would have been a safer course of action.’

Earlier that year, former newspaper editor Piers Morgan had written humorously of an in-air encounter he had with Alan Sugar. He jokingly headlined the article ‘How Alan Sugar tried to kill me’. Sugar had greeted Morgan at their rendezvous at the airfield at Brentwood, Essex, with a raucous ‘Oi, Morgan, you ready to die, then?’ The journalist described his friend as appearing like ‘Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf in a big brown Biggles jacket and black shades’. As they belted into the plane, Sugar jokingly asked his guest whether he had made a will. All the same, Morgan had to admire pilot Sugar’s flying ability, and Sugar’s love of the air was palpable. ‘I love it up here,’ he said. ‘Nobody can bother you, there are no phones or faxes or bloody emails.’

There then followed some confusion over whether another plane was in the vicinity, causing some nervous moments for the pair. As they landed, Sugar told Morgan ‘I’ve failed … you’re still alive!’ 

In the same column where he outlined his hair-raising flight with Sugar, Morgan also gave a great insight into Sir Alan and Ann’s 40th wedding anniversary celebrations at their home in 2008. On arrival there, Morgan found ‘a long tarpaulin tunnel patrolled by a small army of security men, leading through to an absolutely enormous marquee teeming with more than 250 people in smart black tie, standing around several large bars and gleefully guzzling vintage champagne’. The former showbiz journalist must have been to thousands of glitzy parties in his career, but this one really blew him away. ‘It was spectacularly lavish, like a scene from a Corleone family wedding in
The Godfather
. The centrepiece was two giant digitally enhanced photos of the happy couple on their wedding day.’

It was a glorious evening, thoroughly enjoyed by all in attendance. The compere for the entertainment was show-business royalty Bruce Forsyth, who took to the stage with appreciative applause erupting all round. He promised ‘a few surprises’, and then was joined by Maureen Lipman for a foxtrot dance on the stage. ‘Is that really you, Maureen?’ he said, shocked when she returned to her seat. ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry!’ Next on to the stage was one of Sir Alan’s young grandsons, who sang the Elton John classic ‘Daniel’, which provoked some wry grins due to a lyric that contained the words ‘Woah oh, oh, Daniel and papa, you’re both as old as can
be, you moan about aches and pains, now it’s rubbed off on me.’ And it earned the crooning youngster a deserved standing ovation. Forsyth returned to the fray, quipping, ‘Sixty years in show business, and I end up being the warm-up for a seven-year-old!’

Then it was time for legendary Jewish American comedian Jackie Mason. ‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ he joked, ‘or who for, other than he’s a billionaire with a big head and short legs.’ By now, the guests were rolling in the aisles. But he wasn’t finished. ‘Sushi’, he mused, ‘must have been created by two Jews thinking, “How can we open a restaurant without a kitchen?”’ On and on he went, with distinctly Jewish humour coming to the fore. His final quip brought the house down, and was entirely appropriate for the occasion. ‘Gentiles look at Bill Gates making $100 billion and think, “Well done!” Jews think, “Is that all he makes?”’

Then the host, Sir Alan Sugar, took to the stage to a standing ovation and almost joyous respect. Speaking of his wife, he was full of love and praise. ‘I can honestly say I have never ever heard anyone say a bad word about Ann,’ he said. ‘As you know you can’t say the same about me. Talk about chalk and cheese. She always says the day she met me she knew she had met Mr Right; what she didn’t know was that my first name was Always.’

He then turned to a moment in their marriage that had gained legendary status. One year, he sent his wife a birthday card, and signed it with the unbelievably
inappropriately impersonal ‘From Sir Alan Sugar’. Attempting to explain this to the audience, he said, ‘It was a busy day in the office. Ann was not a happy bunny. So I apologised and then ran through loads of things I could buy her to make up for my mistake.’

‘Do you want a new dress?’ he asked.

‘No,’ replied his wife.

‘A new watch?’

‘No.’

‘A car?’

‘No.’

‘OK, well just tell me what I can get you. To which she angrily replied, “A bloody divorce.”’ As laughter filled the room, Sugar added the punchline: ‘I said, “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking of spending that much.”’

With the joking out of the way, it was time for Sir Alan to pay a more serious tribute. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, on to a more serious and genuine note,’ he said. ‘I feel a bit of a fraud standing up here. It is true that over the past 25 years or so, due to my various shenanigans, the focus of attention has been on me. Quite unfairly so, as behind me is Ann – someone who has always sat in the background and let it all happen. But she has been by my side through good and bad times – fortunately not too many bad times. Ann has been a great leveller for me, and kept me on the straight and level. She, of course, wanted me to succeed in whatever I have done, but I think most of you know that’s not where her priorities are.
Happy family life always came first, as well as the welfare of others.’

Sir Alan has always insisted that he not only puts his family before business, but also that this is the only way to succeed in business, by putting it second to your loved ones. It was a message he repeated on the night. ‘Now here is a message to those young aspiring men here tonight. I would remind you what it is to be a successful man, and what is one’s prize possession in life. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with money, academic achievement, or any material things. A real successful man puts the love of his wife and children first; a real successful man’s greatest position in life is to have a great family. I am lucky enough to have had a wife for forty years, who gave me three great children, who in turn have given us seven wonderful grandchildren. You see, everything I have today is because of the love of that lady and the respect my three children have for the both of us. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming, let’s have a great night.’

It was indeed a great night, and one that few of those present would ever forget. Least of all Alan Sugar and his wife, who remain as happy as ever.

Once more, Sugar had shown a remarkable ability at public speaking. Many politicians would have envied his delivery for both its wit and sincerity, not least of them, the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. When Brown replaced Tony Blair as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007,
it was a moment of excitement, fulfilment and nervousness for him. The man from Govan, Scotland, had for so long dreamed of entering Number 10 Downing Street. Having worked his way up the greasy pole of politics, he had seen his progress limited by the successful reign of Tony Blair. A rumoured ‘agreement’ between the pair that Brown would replace Blair was taking longer to be fulfilled than Brown wished, and relations between the pair were somewhat frosty by the time Blair finally stepped down, allowing his Chancellor to replace him as Prime Minister. The early days of Brown’s reign were challenging. There was a new outbreak of foot-
and-mouth
disease, terrorists attacked London and Glasgow, and then there was horrendous flooding across the country. Life at the top was proving tough for Brown, and rumours that members of his own party and cabinet were plotting to replace him would have done nothing to make him feel more secure.

Not that he was without support in the country, and one of his biggest supporters was Sugar. As news spread like wildfire that Labour politicians were conspiring to replace Brown, Sir Alan emerged to back the Prime Minister. He did so in typically ebullient manner: ‘You can’t run a government and you can’t run a company or anything like that unless everybody is on side,’ he said of the plotters. His support was not merely emotional: he also offered practical tips in dealing with the detractors in the ranks. ‘If they are not on side he should kick them
out and then what he should do is tell the rest of the world that he has been appointed to do a job for two years and let me get on with it and then at the end of that period of time – judge me then,’ said Sir Alan. He added that he felt that Brown was being unfairly scapegoated for issues that had a much more wide-ranging source. ‘It’s very easy for people to blame the top man when things are no good but what you have to look deeper at is what these problems are.’