What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (74 page)

I don't know whether it was my tough upbringing in the business world, but I find it very difficult to express emotion when people do things that are hurtful to me. Not wishing to show that I am angry or upset about something, I remain silent. I'm not sure this is a good trait - perhaps I
ought
to express myself and tell the offending party I'm not happy. I'm not confining this to
just my family life, but also to business, when colleagues let me down or do things which are hurtful or disrespectful.

Fortunately, this is not a problem between Ann and me. As I often tell people, while Ann may come across as a very quiet, prim and proper lady who never seems to open her mouth about anything, she's never silent when it comes to letting me know when I've done something wrong and there have been many occasions when she's put me back in line and pointed out the error of my ways. Ann's input has often served as a great wake-up call. Having said that, I can't think of many occasions when I've had to reciprocate and tell her that
she's
done something wrong. In fact, I don't know anyone who has a bad word to say about Ann, nor indeed anybody who'd have the
right
to say a bad word about her.

*

It was July 1994 and we were about to start a new season. How would we be able to attract new players when the club was already down six points and out of the FA Cup? All credit to Ossie, he was optimistic. He told me that I'd done a good job in reducing the twelve points to six and said I should just look at it as losing two games over the season.

I was still furious with Kelly and decided I was going to take on the FA again. At the press conference after the appeal hearing, I told the journalists I wasn't going to leave it there. I spelled it out very clearly - Mr Kelly had overstepped the mark in protecting God's gift to football, his England coach, and this was clearly a vendetta against me for the aggravation I'd caused by embarrassing the FA over Venables' financial affairs.

I was determined to kick Kelly's arse and asked Alan Watts at Herbert Smith what options were open to me. He told me it would be hard, if not impossible, to challenge the FA's decision in the courts. Normally, you could challenge such a decision by way of judicial review, but since the FA wasn't a governmental or quasi-governmental authority, this wasn't possible.

There was, however, another path. I could threaten to take them to court on a breach of contract claim. FIFA, world football's governing body, had strict rules stating that no football association from any nation must engage or allow one of its members to engage in legal action. This FIFA directive meant that all national football associations had to make sure any disputes were settled out of court. If Tottenham were to take the FA to court, there was a chance the English FA could be punished by FIFA, even to the extent of banning England from a future World Cup! One country had recently been banned from all FIFA events because it had allowed such a dispute go to court.

So we came up with what I suppose could be deemed a risky and divisive plot - directly attacking Kelly and threatening to take the FA to court. Since Herbert Smith would never threaten legal action if there was no real intention of carrying it out, we agreed that all communication on this matter would be written by me personally, on Tottenham letter heading.

Before moving on to this story, I'd like to tell you about a little present I bought myself to cheer me up during the Venables litigation nightmare. Ann and I had got into the habit of chartering a boat for our summer holidays. On a visit to the South of France around June time - shortly after winning the Venables court case - the broker we'd previously chartered boats from, Nick Edmiston, took us to pick one for that year's holiday. Only one was any good -
The Margo Rose.
He explained that it was actually locked up by a bank, who had repossessed it from its previous extravagant owner, a Swedish millionaire. The bank was employing a skeleton staff to keep the boat in good condition, otherwise their asset would erode.

Nick suggested I ask the bank whether they'd be prepared to let me charter the boat for a couple of weeks, on the basis that they might as well recover some money from a charterer. The bank, being a bank, rejected the proposition for the bizarre reason that they didn't want to risk any liabilities. Who knows what liabilities they were referring to, but I wasn't going to argue. However, they
did
say they'd be ready to take a write-down on this asset and flog it to me for $7m.

In the same way that Ann had poked me in the back when we first set eyes on Bramstons, she was doing it again as we were walking around this luxury boat. It was much better than the one we'd previously chartered. I told her she was nuts. 'What am I going to do with a bloody boat? We only want it for a couple of weeks.'

She suggested we could spend more time on it in summer, instead of going to our regular haunts like Los Monteros in Spain or the South of France. We could take a few days off here and there and jump on the boat. I must admit, it sounded a great idea at the time. Ann was very excited, as the boat was done up really well, with a cinema, great bedrooms, dining rooms and all that stuff. On top of this, it was full of immaculate art and furniture.

I told Nick there was no way I was interested in buying a boat, but my wife was quite insistent that I pursue the matter. Then I laid it on about the recessionary times we were in and how the bank would have to wait a long time before they found another Hooray Henry to buy it. I put in a go away' offer. 'Tell them I'll give them five million dollars and I'll do the deal within a couple of days.'

'Don't be silly, Alan! That's ridiculous! There's no way they'll sell this boat for five million - it's worth at least eight. It cost
fourteen
million to build four years ago.'

I reminded him, 'If it's worth eight million and you're such a bleedin' good agent, why is it still sitting here in Golfe-Juan clocking up lots of costs?'

'Well, it's the economy at the moment.'

'Exactly! Now, you go and tell the bank that I'll give them five million dollars and if they're interested, get back to me.'

Like all good agents, he was like a dog with a bone and of course he
did
get back to me. He told me he'd spoken to the bank and, as anticipated, they'd totally rejected my offer.

'Great,' I replied. 'Now I can go and tell Ann they didn't want to sell it.'

'No, no, no, come on, Alan, you can do a bit better than that. How about six and a half million?'

'Nick, you're not hearing me, are you? I do not want a bloody boat, do you understand? I just thought that, as an impulse buy, it wasn't a bad bargain for five million.'

'But you're not going to get it for five million.'

'Yes I know, Nick. You've already said that. And I'm telling you the same thing again - just find me a boat to charter and I'll be a happy bunny. Forget
this
boat and tell the bank to clear off.'

A couple of days later, he phoned me to say he'd got the bank talking sensibly and they were prepared to take $5.8m. By now I knew I had them on the hook. This type of asset was not the kind of thing people normally bought on the spur of the moment - you either wanted a boat or you didn't - and in the strained economy at the time, there were no buyers.

'Look, Nick, there's this bloke Venables and I offered him three million pounds to buy his shares in a football club. He refused and took me to court and I've had a very, very hard time. The reason I'm offering you five million dollars is because, at today's exchange rate, that's exactly the same as the three million quid I was going to give him. Now, either you get me the bloody boat for five million dollars or stop driving me bleedin' mad!'

They agreed on $5m in the end. In boating terms, I nicked it, not only because of the structure of the boat, but because the internal decoration this Champagne Charlie had spent his money on (or more likely the bank's money on) must have been worth $3-4m alone.

According to maritime law, the boat had to be taken twelve miles out to sea, to no-man's land, before the sale could take place and as I was buying it from a bank, they wanted everything conducted in the correct manner. We
couldn't have picked a worse day. The sea was choppy and I was turning greener as we were going along. Ann is a great sailor, she never seems to suffer from seasickness, but as a kid I suffered badly from motion sickness in cars. My daughter Louise is the same. I was feeling so ill, I told Nick Edmiston that he should get the bloody boat into port as quickly as possible and I joked that I might even pay him $5.2m - that's how bad I felt.

The captain of the boat was a handsome young Italian by the name of Mario and the rest of the crew were also young fellows. I found out that the previous owner was a bit of a playboy and this boat had a reputation of being a party boat in the South of France. You could see that Captain Mario and his crew had enjoyed all this partying, but if they thought this type of lifestyle was going to carry on, they'd made a big mistake. They picked the wrong bloody owner with me, I can tell you that!

Mario told Nick to point out to me that all the art and other extras like camcorders and computers on the boat were
not
actually part of the assets the bank owned - they were the personal property of the owner. I took this at face value and told Nick that the deal was off. I'd agreed to buy the boat lock, stock and barrel and there was no way I was paying $5m if these items weren't included. This put a real spanner in the works. To cut a long story short, after a load of calls on the satellite phone while we were bobbing up and down out at sea, the bank invited me to make a counter-offer.

When it comes to paintings, I can't tell a Damien Hirst from a Geoff Hurst - I just like what I like, and Ann is the same. How much would twenty paintings and a few statues be worth? Not a clue! On our past trips around St Tropez we'd seen lots of artwork on sale in the many galleries there. I figured they couldn't be worth more than a thousand or so each, so I threw a figure on the table of $150,000. The bank was obviously desperate, as they agreed to this reduction immediately, and I signed the sale agreement with the bank representative who was onboard.

Here's the funny part of the story. It turned out that Mario was telling porkies. I knew there was something fishy going on when he suddenly came up with this story out at sea. I suspected that the owner did
not
own the artwork himself and that Mario was trying to nick it. I decided to blag him with a porky of my own. I phoned him a few days later, telling him that I'd made enquiries with the bank and they'd shown me the full inventory of what they'd financed,
including
the various artworks. I wanted to know why he was giving me this load of old bullshit. He came up with some waffle and then I knew for sure he was lying. I told him that I was due at the boat in a few days
and warned him, 'I will expect to see all the stuff still onboard - if it isn't, then I won't expect to see you onboard either.'

The cheeky bastard said to me, 'But, Mr Sugar, you just got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars from the bank - why are you worried?'

I told him to mind his own bloody business and warned him that if any of the stuff was missing from the boat I would involve the police. Needless to say, I took the $150,000 reduction from the bank and by blagging Mario about checking the inventory with the bank, I didn't need to buy any additional artwork!

We planned our first trip on the boat for a couple of weeks later and the whole family came onboard (apart from Simon, who for some reason or other couldn't make it). During that week on the boat, in consultation with Nick Edmiston, I decided I wanted to make some engineering changes to it, to make it a little more streamlined. It wasn't a conventional 'wedding cake' type of yacht, but was based on a 'trawler' design, which I didn't particularly like. We called in a German firm to look into some modifications - we wanted to extend the back of the boat by another ten feet and build a massive sundeck on top. Mario was poking his nose in while I was discussing the design alterations, telling me I couldn't do this and I couldn't do that, and that I was going to change the
character
of the boat - bloody cheek! I took no notice of him and the design we came up with was magnificent - it really transformed the boat into much more of a family-oriented vessel.

This guy Mario really acted as if the boat belonged to him. He would always speak down his nose to me about what he wanted, how much money he needed to spend, what he must have, how much cash float was required. When we first fully explored the boat, we opened every cupboard and saw stores of luxury goods - soaps, shampoos, perfumes, towels, etc. Mario was getting the raving hump as we were finding this stuff because he was planning to nick it all. Having sussed him out as a bloody crook, there was no way I was going to leave him in charge of the finances, so I employed the services of an agent to manage the boat for me.

We planned our last boating trip of the season for the whole month of August and invited some of our friends and family onboard. From Golfe-Juan we planned to sail to Sardinia, then to Capri and Ponza, then back up through Sardinia to Elba and on to San Remo, Monaco and St Tropez. When we turned up, Mario explained that he'd like his wife to join him in the captain's cabin throughout the voyage. As far as I was concerned, there was no problem with this and, in any case, she would be acting as one of the stewardesses during the day. Then, as we set sail, a beautiful little blond boy came running
down the walkway of the boat! Where the hell did he come from? It turned out he was Mario's wife's child from a previous marriage. Mario had forgotten to tell me we were going to have a baby onboard as well. While this was a rather large and luxurious boat, there was no way that a baby could be confined to barracks in a small room for a month.