What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (79 page)

Unfortunately, this logic fell on deaf ears and I got some dumb looks from certain chairmen. A couple of the shrewder ones caught on to what I was saying, in particular Ken Bates and Sam Hammam. But the others just dug their heels in and argued because they didn't understand what I was talking about. David Dein and Arsenal were still banging on about allowing ITV and others to pitch. My maths lesson had been a waste of time and we agreed that the next TV deal would be decided at the annual summer meeting, to be held in Coventry, with an array of broadcasters invited to pitch their propositions to the chairmen.

At the Coventry meeting, a fashion parade of broadcasters arrived. Michael Green, the head of Carlton Communications, came along with a bunch of people, saying that he'd put a consortium together and was prepared to put up a bid. As an eloquent speaker, he got the attention of some of the chairmen. Then I opened
my
mouth and started asking a few questions. 'Mr Green, do you have a proposal as to how viewers will be able to
watch
the programmes broadcast by your consortium?'

'No, no, no, don't worry about that - we'll be putting up a service on a satellite. That's really a minor issue.'

'Excuse me, Mr Green, that is
not
a minor issue. BSkyB have invested hundreds of millions of pounds putting equipment in people's homes to enable them to watch football. Is it fair to say, Mr Green, that your consortium has no way of broadcasting at the moment?'

'My technical people say there is a way that we can use the existing dishes in the market - they can be turned and tuned in to another satellite.'

'No, no, Mr Green, please hold on. With all due respect, my fellow chairmen are not technically up on these issues. I have to say, on behalf of the chairmen here and the Premier League, that I
am.
And there is no way you can simply turn a dish in another direction, nor will you be able to use existing BSkyB equipment to collect your money. Also, Mr Green, if, for example, you were going to offer over a hundred and fifty million pounds to us, we would need to know where the money is or how you're going to get it.'

At this point Green lost his temper, telling me that I was only there to line BSkyB's pockets and that I wasn't being fair. I told him, 'I've asked you some simple and reasonable questions - how are you going to broadcast the stuff? You have given
us,
the chairmen, no answer. You have passed the question over to your so-called technical expert who, with the greatest respect, is talking a load of rubbish. You haven't told this meeting whether you can guarantee the money and, by the way, even if you
could
guarantee the money, we would be a bunch of fools to accept money from an organisation that is not actually providing a service to the public. We all agree that one of the effects of BSkyB's coverage of football is that it has popularised the sport - all our stadiums are now full and there is an excitement about football.
That
has all been brought about by the tremendous job done by BSkyB. With respect, Mr Green, what
you're
proposing sounds like walking two steps forward and ten steps back.'

Green shut up at that point and the meeting was brought to a close.

I wasn't lining the pockets of BSkyB; I was genuinely talking with my Premier League hat on. A further meeting of the chairmen only was convened an hour or so afterwards and we finally decided to go for BSkyB's new offer - equivalent to PS150m per season. How did that come about? Well, one of the few people who took notice of me was Rick Parry. He had nothing to lose by hinting to all the broadcasters that they needed to be in the PS150m ballpark.

I tried to reiterate my idea of putting some of the money away into a trust, but this was shouted down by Chelsea's Ken Bates and Terry Brown of West Ham. They claimed it was
their
money and they should be allowed to do with it what they wished.

Sam Chisholm was delighted when I called to tell him that the meeting was over and he could pop the champagne, as they'd won the deal again. While I was talking to him, his other phone was ringing - Rick Parry was on the line, about to tell him the same thing.

BSkyB never knew about my intervention with Michael Green. They don't realise to this day what a pivotal moment it was. I spoke to Green afterwards and he told me that all he wanted was to get a consortium together to buy the
rights,
then he would sell them on to someone like BSkyB and make a profit on them. Quite a clever move, if he'd got away with it.

New Inspiration with New Amstrad

1996-8

'Mr Sugar, what is a lie?' Peter Goldsmith demanded.

'I'm sorry - a lie?' I said weakly.

It's a funny thing. When you're confronted by a barrister, all dressed up in his wig and gown, with the judge next to you as well, you tend to get nervous.

It was July 1996, nearly six years since Amstrad had issued legal proceedings against Seagate for the duff hard disk drives they'd shipped us. The case had finally got to court and the hearing was in front of a specialist judge, experienced in technical matters. My staff had given their evidence and now it was time for me to take the stand. I'd spent the weekend reading up on all the documentation as best I could, bringing myself up to date with events that had occurred nearly eight years earlier. There were about ten thick files and it was torturous work. All I could do was scan through the stuff.

This was the first time I'd given evidence in a court case. As you can imagine, I was anxious and this was not helped by the fact that Seagate had employed the services of Peter Goldsmith, the same guy the FA had used in the arbitration with Spurs. He was backed up by two other barristers and a pile of solicitors. David Gold had warned me that Goldsmith was a bit of a Rottweiler - tough, tricky and hard to deal with. His opening gambit had thrown me, but I pulled myself together and decided I wasn't going to be cowed or bullied by
anyone
- I would simply tell the truth.

'Yes, what is a lie?' Goldsmith persisted.

'Well, a lie is when someone doesn't tell the truth.'

'Okay, Mr Sugar, do you lie?'

'Well, not generally.'

'Well, not generally',
he mimicked. 'Mr Sugar, do you lie? Yes or no? Do you lie?'

This dramatic opening question obviously caught me a bit off guard. I collected my thoughts and replied, 'Well, there are different types of lies, aren't there? There are serious lies and little white lies.'

'Little white lies, Mr Sugar, are lies, are they not?'

'Yes, they are lies.'

'So you
do
lie then?'

'Well, Mr Goldsmith, I most probably lie as much as you do, or His Honour here.'

'I beg your pardon, Mr Sugar? It is very discourteous of you to suggest His Honour doesn't tell the truth.'

'I didn't say he doesn't tell the truth
in general.
Because you asked me to give you a black and white answer as to whether I lie - "yes or no" to use your words - I used the example of a little white lie compared to a serious lie, but it seems you're not satisfied with that answer. Mr Goldsmith, do you have any children?'

'Er, I beg your pardon, Mr Sugar? What does my having any children have to do with the matter we're discussing here today? And by the way,
I
am the one asking the questions, not you.'

'Well, I would like you to answer me, Mr Goldsmith - do you have any children, yes or no?'

'Well, it so happens I do.'

'Good. Well, when one of your children loses a tooth and you tell them that in the morning they'll wake up and find a fifty pence piece under the pillow because the tooth fairy put it there - that's a lie, Mr Goldsmith, isn't it?'

The courtroom started to laugh. Goldsmith had lost his point and I had put a stake in the ground that he wasn't going to make a monkey out of me.

He then moved on, trying to describe the technicalities of a hard disk drive and how it stores data. I could see he was bullshitting - he knew as much about the intricacies of hard disks as I did about knitting. I chose a moment to raise my eyebrows and glare at him, looking straight into his eyes as he was talking. At the same time, I smiled as if to say, 'You are talking a load of rubbish - you don't know
what
you're talking about.' He started to go red when he realised he was digging himself a bigger and bigger hole.

I kept on glaring at him and he must have thought that at the end of his ramble I was going to tell him he was talking a load of rubbish. Instead, I said, 'I assume, Mr Goldsmith, that someone has coached you on this and, to be perfectly honest, I don't know whether what you've said is right or wrong because I'm not a technical person.' I could see the judge smile. He realised both Goldsmith and I knew sweet Fanny Adams about hard disk drives.

I was on the stand for two days. At one point, Goldsmith led me to one of the files and asked me to turn to a letter from one of our customers, P&P Micro. The letter was packed with complaints - it stated they'd received the first lot of computers and they'd failed, then they'd received the second lot of computers (after we'd fitted hard disk controllers) and they'd still failed. Finally, they'd received the third lot of computers and they were still failing.

The point Goldsmith was trying to make was that we had
alienated
our customer base and had lost the market. In other words, even if we'd been making perfect computers now, we no longer had customers to sell them to. He needed to run with this argument to alleviate the claims we had on Seagate for damage to our business. He was implying that if Amstrad
had
been damaged by Seagate, we would need to refer to Seagate's terms and conditions in their contract, which stated that if they shipped bad merchandise, the maximum we could claim would be the value of the merchandise. If Goldsmith were to get this point home, then even if the judge agreed that Seagate
did
ship us rubbish, the judgement would only be for a small amount of money - the value of the hard disk drives. We, of course, were claiming not only reimbursement for the rubbish they'd shipped, but payment for damages caused to our company and its shareholders.

Goldsmith hadn't realised that I'd read the documents. I remembered that P&P Micro's letter was actually two pages long and Goldsmith had referred only to the first page. Just as he was about to move on and make his next point, I asked him to stop and look at the second page. He reminded me again that
he
was running the cross-examination and it was not my place to interject.

'Mr Goldsmith, you have made the point that you think we had lost all our customers, is that right?'

'That is exactly the point, Mr Sugar. You no longer had any customers due to the way you had alienated them.'

'I see. Well, therefore I think it only fair, Your Honour, that we look at the second page of this letter and read the penultimate paragraph.'

The judge looked at Goldsmith, then turned to me and said, 'Please read it out, Mr Sugar.'

It read, 'Despite all these problems, we are still very interested in supporting Amstrad computers. As soon as you've solved these technical issues, would you please ensure that we are the
first
customer to receive them.'

Goldsmith was very embarrassed. He'd lost his point totally, but blustered on, Ah, well, Mr Sugar, everybody wants to be the first, don't they?'

'Mr Goldsmith, you just painted a picture that no one wanted to deal with
us any more. Remember the recent crisis at McDonald's because of mad cow disease? Well, Mr Goldsmith, would you want your children to be the
first
to eat the newly launched hamburgers?'

Once again, the court burst into laughter. I was starting to enjoy myself on the stand and I was getting a real feel for how these things went. Goldsmith, meanwhile, had a face like thunder.

The case went on for about ten days, at the end of which the judge announced he would deliberate before arriving at his judgement, which would be made in several months' time. I couldn't quite understand why he needed so long, but David Gold explained that this was a complex case and it was quite normal for judgements to take up to nine months. The judge was a busy person, hearing many cases, and had to find the time to study his notes, the history and the documentation.

*

I'd taken one eye off the ball as far as Amstrad was concerned. It is one of the things I look back on and deeply regret. I have gone on record many times saying I wasted ten years of my business life in football. Not only did football disadvantage me financially (and who knows what Amstrad could have achieved if I'd concentrated on it totally?), but it also took its toll on me
personally.
It made me a miserable sod, constantly involved in arguing and fire-fighting.

Regrettably, I also hadn't concentrated on Dancall under Bob Watkins' management, but had left him on his own to get on with it. When I bought the company, I envisaged it focusing totally on the new booming GSM mobile market - they had the technology and were ready to go. I wanted Bob to do what he was best at: making sure the new GSM stuff was fully developed and getting it produced on time and at the right price. Instead, he allowed the people there to run riot with other technologies they had. There were silos of engineering in separate divisions, all filled with clever people spending a lot of money and engineering effort developing pagers for the likes of Vodafone and another wad of money developing DECT (portable fixed-line home phones). I made a big error in not being there on day one to assert my authority and make them focus on GSM only.