What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (105 page)

I have visited Downing Street many times, but never take it for granted - it's a rather special place, particularly the Cabinet Room. On this occasion, I was directed up the staircase and past all the portraits of past prime ministers. Despite being a pilot and good at navigation, I still get lost in the maze of rooms in this building. We met in a rather grand, albeit quite small, anteroom which oozed history. Shriti and Gordon were sitting by a small table waiting for me. They both looked as though they'd been up all night. At the time, I didn't realise the PM was working on Cabinet reshuffle decisions - I now appreciate how these deliberations took their toll. I enquired as to their welfare, particularly Shriti's, and asked, Are you okay? You look shattered.'

'Yes, no problem, we've just had a lot to do,' said Shriti.

We got down to business. Gordon wanted to discuss the possibility of me formally joining the government to assist in matters dealing with enterprise and small businesses. He asked if I'd consider taking a role at the DBIS (Department of Business, Innovation and Skills), once known as the DTI and, before that, the Department of Trade.

'Gordon, I'd love to help, but I know that when people like Lord Sainsbury took up government roles, they had to distance themselves from their businesses, placing all their business interests in a blind trust. I would have the same problem. And on top of that, as you know, I'm involved in
The Apprentice,
which is actually on air now. It would be impossible for me, at such short notice, to arrange for my business and TV interests to be reorganised to avoid a conflict of interests.'

I continued, 'Frankly, Gordon, I'm not ready to give up business. I'm eager for my companies to remain profitable and take advice from me.
Therefore, with respect, I'd have to turn down any offer of a ministerial position. No matter how prestigious it might sound, it would be impractical.'

Like all good politicians, my words seemed to go straight over his head and he continued to talk about wanting me to be a Minister of Enterprise and enter the House of Lords. Had I accepted, it would have meant representing the government, answering questions on business and enterprise. The questions and answers side of things didn't bother me at all, but I reiterated that it really was impossible for me to accept.

'Gordon, I don't want you to think I'm letting you down in any way - I will do anything to help - but you have to recognise it would be impossible for me to accept a ministerial position.'

'Okay, Alan. Look, please go away and give it some further thought. Talk some more to Shriti tomorrow.'

The following week, on 4 June, I met with Shriti and Gordon again. It was the day Gordon was going to announce his new Cabinet. I'd received a call from Gordon's office saying I shouldn't enter Downing Street by the main gates because the press were around and it would cause speculation - instead, I should use the back entrance. I couldn't care less which entrance I used. In fact, I suggested I come by taxi and just walk in the normal way. However, they insisted I come in the back way. This was a little naive, I thought. They should have known by now that the press are very resourceful and would have people covering the back entrance. Whatever, I was pretty sure they'd find out quickly if anything was going on.

This time, the meeting was in the garden off the Cabinet Room. It was funny to see all the kids' toys there, but it's where the PM lives with his family during the week, so why should it be any different from any normal home with kids? Gordon kept going on about me being a minister and I reiterated that I couldn't do it. He finally settled on appointing me as a government adviser, an Enterprise Tsar or Enterprise Champion - and at the same time he wanted me to join the House of Lords and take the Labour whip. Appointment to the House of Lords would be no problem as far as conflict of interests was concerned and to be an adviser without any ministerial powers would certainly be acceptable, so I agreed to accept the position.

We discussed the finer details of the advisory role, but never any details on the ramifications of taking the whip or me being a Labour peer. We talked about the way the advisory role would be explained and I was told my appointment would be made public
the day after
the new Cabinet was announced, to avoid any confusion with the Cabinet reshuffle.

As I drove away from the rear of Number 10, I received a call from a
Financial Times
journalist asking me what I'd been doing there. The call came no more than two minutes after I had walked out the door! I was a bit short with the journalist and told him it was none of his business. He started firing questions at me such as, 'Are you going to be a minister? Are you going to be part of Gordon's new Cabinet reshuffle?'

I told him again, 'With respect, it's none of your business,' and just hung up the phone. That day, there were some comments on Sky TV about me being at Downing Street, as one of their cameras had been positioned at the rear of Number 10 and had filmed me walking back to my car and being driven away.

That evening, I told Ann what had happened and that there was a possibility that I might be made a lord. She had to keep it confidential. I joked with her, 'Of course, this won't mean much to you because when I became Sir Alan you became Lady Ann. And, I'm afraid to say, even if I
do
become Lord Sugar, you'll
still
be Lady Ann.'

She was very excited. It must have been a proud moment for her - after all, she'd known me since she was sixteen and she'd watched me over the past forty-odd years as I worked my way up the ladder through Amstrad and Spurs, then became a knight - and now there was the prospect of me being a lord! But, as it was just a proposal, we kind of parked the notion until it was formalised.

The next day, the papers speculated that there would be an announcement involving me in the new government reshuffle. Daniel called and said, 'What's all this about you becoming a lord? Is it true?'

'Well, I think it's most probably going to happen.'

He congratulated me on what a great honour and achievement it was.

The day the announcement was due, Friday 5 June, was the day I'd put aside in my diary for filming
The Apprentice: You're Hired!,
a show introduced by Adrian Chiles which featured the two finalists for series five - Yasmina Siadatan and Kate Walsh. I'd also arranged to meet Simon Cowell for lunch.

I turned up at the offices of Talkback Thames around ten in the morning and started to discuss our plans for the day with the production people. It's always a difficult moment when the losing finalist has to turn up again and be filmed in the
You're Hired!
programme. Traditionally, I've always taken time to speak to both the winner and the runner-up, just to put them at ease before their first experience of being on a live show in front of an audience. As you can imagine, the runner-up, Kate, was feeling a bit despondent. She needed a bit of personal attention to help her feel comfortable about performing later in the day.

At around half past ten, all hell broke loose. I had imagined the announcement of my new position would be one of those routine stories, just another small detail largely ignored by the media. Not so! First of all, my BlackBerry started pinging every few seconds (I received around 150 emails and texts that day) and my phone was ringing constantly, with friends and relatives congratulating me on my appointment, journalists wanting to discuss the new position, TV companies asking whether they could interview me, all that stuff.

On top of this, I was contacted by Number 10 to say that I had to urgently fill out some forms to be put forward to the House of Lords Appointments Commission, a formality to ensure I was the right calibre of person to be a member. The forms had to be filled out quickly and returned, in order for the process to start. All this was going on amidst our planning discussions for the
You're Hired
show. Michele Kurland and her team could see it was becoming an untenable situation for me and they agreed to leave me alone for half an hour or so to fill out the forms and let the dust settle a bit. It was impossible to concentrate on the show.

Left on my own, the whole thing started to sink in -
I was going to be appointed to the House of Lords!
It began to dawn on me what an amazing honour this was. Rumour has it that when people are about to die, their whole life flashes before them. Well, thankfully I wasn't dying, but I have to say there was a moment when I had one of these flashbacks. I remembered my mum on her deathbed saying, 'Who do you think you are, Lord Beaver-brook?' At that moment, I kind of choked up a little, thinking, 'No, Mum, not Lord Beaverbrook - actually, it's Lord Sugar.' It was a very personal moment and I was glad I was alone. I became quite emotional thinking about how my mum and dad would have felt if they'd still been around.

The story was all over the media. The phone had not stopped ringing and my public relations company, Frank PR, was inundated. I suggested they immediately come and meet me to talk about how to handle things. I hadn't really been given a definitive brief on exactly what I was going to do as a government adviser. There was talk of me having an office in the DBIS and some staff allocated to me, but from there on, I had no idea what was expected of me.

I'd already said to Gordon, 'If you've got visions of me spending five days a week in a nine-to-five in Victoria Street, you've picked the wrong bloke.' I wasn't going to change my lifestyle. I deal with things on a 24/7 basis. It doesn't matter where I am. I could be in Spain or America or up a mountain. I could be at home with my BlackBerry or at my office in Loughton.
Wherever I might be, I make more decisions in a minute than some businessmen do in a week stuck at their desks. I can operate anywhere and I certainly
wasn't
taking some desk job.

As I wasn't clear on what I'd be doing, it was quite difficult facing the media, who were asking me
exactly
that question. To be perfectly honest, I didn't know at the time what 'taking the whip' was - I'd just accepted the position with whatever conditions were attached. I trusted that Gordon wouldn't ask me to do something I wasn't happy with. There simply hadn't been time to articulate the finer points in our short meetings.

As I walked out of Talkback's offices, I was caught by Sky Television, who asked for an interview. We decided the street was not the right place to talk, so we went back into the building. Embarrassingly, the woman interviewer was asking me what my new job entailed and there was I thinking to myself, 'I don't actually know.' I couldn't really say that live on TV, so I waffled a bit: 'I'm going to be looking after matters to do with small- to medium-sized businesses and trying to assist in the promotion of enterprise.'

I made one mistake by saying, 'I shall be going down to Victoria Street and seeing what all those people are doing there because I've never found civil servants or politicians to be any good at business.' For me, at the time, it was a true statement, but as I found out afterwards, it was not the cleverest thing to say. It alienated the whole bloody building.

I then went off to meet Simon Cowell in a restaurant in Bayswater, where we chatted about the TV business. I don't know whether he was oblivious to what was going on as far as I was concerned, but I found it rather strange that he didn't mention my being offered a peerage. Maybe he didn't know or didn't want to bring it up for some reason or other. He got a phone call from Philip Green at one point and said, 'Hey, Phil, I've got Alan Sugar here - he's actually funnier than you!'

After a nice lunch, we went outside and compared cars. Simon had bought himself exactly the same stretched Rolls-Royce I had and our two drivers were exchanging specifications. His was the same colour as mine, but had a more glitzy interior, as one would expect.

When I arrived back at the studio after lunch, Andrew Bloch and David Fraser from Frank PR told me there was a groundswell of feeling against the appointment coming through from the Conservative Party. They were making noises to the effect that I shouldn't be allowed to be a government adviser and at the same time participate in a BBC television programme. We looked at each other as if to say, 'What's that got to do with the price of cocoa?' I simply didn't understand the logic behind their objections.
Nevertheless, my two PR guys said this was the general thrust of the comments coming from the media. The same question kept being thrown at me, as well as at Number 10: 'Now that Lord Sugar is going to be an adviser to the government, will you be asking him to give up his television programme?'

My answer was, 'It's nonsense! What the hell have the two things got to do with each other?'

I had to put my frustration on hold as we got on with preparations for
You're Hired!
Despite trying to focus on this, I was constantly being interrupted by Andrew Bloch telling me he needed my attention. 'I've had the
Daily Mail
on the phone. They're going to press right now with some story that you've agreed to give up
The Apprentice.'

'Tell them it's a load of rubbish. Tell them we'll be making a statement at the end of the day.'

'They say that's not good enough - their deadline is five o'clock and we won't be done till ten tonight.'

'Andrew, what do you want me to do? I'm in the middle of preparing for the show. We can't deal with this now. Just tell them to go away. Whatever they print, they print - we'll have to deal with it tomorrow.'

'Can't you give me a steer on what I should say to them?'