What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (88 page)

After their epic flight, they arrived at the house totally shattered at around midday. They fought to stay awake, to try to get back into a conventional sleep pattern. When they went upstairs to unpack, Michaela commented how nice the Father Christmas looked in their room. It was hard to keep a straight face, as we all anticipated the timer kicking in at three in the morning, with the light coming on, the music blaring out and Father Christmas dancing.

The next morning, we were all waiting to hear from them. When they came down, they didn't say a word, but after a bit of prompting, they told us how they'd nearly jumped out of their skins and didn't know what had hit them. They got the joke in the end and we had a good laugh. The thought of it still makes Simon and me chuckle, imagining their faces when the light came on and Santa let rip.

It wasn't until 1 January 2000 that everyone and his brother knew I'd been awarded a knighthood. It was obviously a very exciting day and I received lots of congratulatory telegrams and telephone calls. My brother and sisters,
though they already knew about it, were particularly delighted to see it confirmed. Their little brother Alan, from the council flat in Clapton, was going to be a knight. I remember reflecting on what my mother and father might have said - it would have been a marvellous thing for them to have seen.

A load of people from the football world congratulated me, David Pleat being one of the first on the phone. John Ireland, with all the efficiency of a corporate lawyer, took it upon himself to send a memo around Tottenham Hotspur Football Club informing all the staff that the chairman Alan Sugar had been knighted and his title in future would be Sir Alan. Up till then I was called Mr Sugar or Mr Chairman.

Unfortunately, his efficiency and correctness backfired. Someone at Tottenham had given the memo to the training ground people and they had passed it on to a tabloid journalist, who spun it as me
insisting
upon how the staff should address me. I asked John why he'd bothered to do it and he quite innocently said he'd thought it was the right and proper thing to do, especially as some of the staff had asked him how they should address me in future. No one at Amstrad had thought of sending out memos about this, as they knew it wouldn't be necessary - most of the staff had called me Alan for years. It was only those that were new who addressed me more formally.

The
Daily Mail,
of course, was not going to write anything positive by way of congratulating me on being a worthy recipient of this honour; instead, they chose to go with the story that I'd got the honour because I was a contributor to the Labour Party - that effectively I'd bunged them some money to get a knighthood. Certainly, it was true that over the years I'd made political contributions to both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, but I've always stated that my donations were given (prior to elections) to assist in funding the party in question to promote their policies.

The
Daily Mail's
negative publicity, together with the tabloid back-page journalists harping on about my insistence on being called 'Sir Alan', took the shine off the moment a bit. Regrettably, we live in a country where you're not really allowed to enjoy success. Nevertheless, I've always thought the negative stuff is outweighed by the genuine positive stuff.

The official knighthood ceremony wasn't until June 2000 and it was a great day. Once again, I was about to meet the Queen. Unfortunately, they wouldn't allow me more than three guests. It was a toss-up between Simon, Daniel and Louise as to who could come along with Ann. It was a terribly embarrassing situation - at one stage it was so horrible I suggested that
none
of the children come along, just Ann. The boys insisted that Louise went and then decided between themselves that Daniel would go, while
Simon would meet us afterwards at a special lunch Ann had laid on for friends and relatives in a small banqueting suite near the palace. Of course, Ann and I would have liked
all
our children to come, but reluctantly we agreed to this compromise.

At Buckingham Palace, I was escorted away from my family and taken to an area where all the people receiving honours were assembled. We were given some quick training on exactly what we had to do when we addressed the Queen and practised how you positioned your shoulder before the Queen knighted you with the sword. There were hundreds of people receiving honours, the knights being the first. There were only four or five of us being knighted that day and because the awards were presented alphabetically, mine was one of the last. Martin Sorrell, the businessman famous for his advertising company, was knighted just before me. I waited until my name was called out.

I noticed that the people arriving in front of the Queen would have a little chat with her. Here I was once again in this embarrassing situation, thinking to myself, 'What am I going to chat to the Queen about?'

As I arrived in front of her, I noticed one of her equerries, dressed in a sort of military uniform, whisper something in her ear. When the Queen spoke to me, she said, Ah, Sir Alan, not only are you known for your exploits in the computer industry and the wonderful contribution you've made to information technology, but I'm also informed you are in the football industry, which must be rather interesting?'

I replied, 'It certainly
is
an interesting business. However, it's sometimes not very rewarding and can also be a little demoralising, in a similar way that Your Majesty must have felt last night when England was knocked out of Euro 2000. So bearing in mind this terrible result against Portugal, Your Majesty, perhaps we should move on and let me say how honoured I am to accept this knighthood.'

Well, at least that was a little bit better than the first time I'd met her back in 1987. Not bad off-the-cuff stuff.

We had a great time at the lunch afterwards at Searcy's in Pavilion Road, Knightsbridge. All my friends were invited, together with the family and some of my oldest and most respected employees. It was a real milestone in my life and a great honour.

A week or so later, Piers Morgan, the then editor of the
Daily Mirror,
invited me to the boardroom at Mirror HQ to have lunch with the executives and some senior columnists. This is something national newspapers do from
time to time. During lunch, Piers congratulated me on the knighthood and asked that I explain what actually goes on in the ceremony, in particular what the Queen said to me and what I said to her.

I thought that recounting the real conversation would be boring, so with a serious look on my face and the attention of the guests focused on me, I explained the whole ceremony up to the part when the equerry whispered in the Queen's ear.

Then I said, 'The Queen said, "Sir Alan, apart from your obvious involvement in the world of IT, I understand you are also involved in football?"

'"Yes, Your Majesty, that's true - a strange business, but in view of last night's terrible result for England against Portugal in Euro 2000,I feel on this great occasion the least said the better."'

Then I paused until someone asked, 'What did she say to that?'

'Well, she said, "You're absolutely right, Sir Alan. In my opinion, one should have played Beckham in front of a flat back four as a playmaker, with two wing-backs raiding up and down the flanks."'

There was a stunned silence. I smiled and they all burst out laughing.

A few months earlier, Piers and I had been dragged into a scandal, a story from the heyday of the dot-com boom. Two journalists, James Hipwell and Anil Bhoyrul, who ran the 'City Slickers' column in the
Daily Mirror,
had reported in January 2000 that Viglen had started an internet division known as Vigicom. Nick Hewer had organised an interview between Bordan Tkachuk, Viglen's managing director, and Bhoyrul and Hipwell. During the interview, Bordan innocently aired our plan for a new internet division, Vigicom, and mentioned we were recruiting an internet entrepreneur to run it. Viglen's shares were tipped on the strength of this story and the share price shot up dramatically.

This event became part of the City Slickers scandal, exposed by the
Daily Telegraph
a few weeks later. Apparently, James Hipwell and Anil Bhoyrul were regularly hyping up companies in their column and it transpired they were in cahoots with City brokers, tipping them off on what they were about to write the next day. There was a lot of illegal trading on shares they'd written about. Morgan was dragged into the matter, as he'd bought some Viglen shares, as did the paper's deputy editor.

The City Slickers revelations in the
Daily Telegraph
blew up into a full DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) investigation. Both Nick Hewer and Bordan had to give evidence to the DTI at the inquiry about their meeting with the two journalists. The inquiry also wanted to see whether anybody
at Viglen, including Nick Hewer, Bordan or I (or any member of my family holding shares), were party to this share-hyping practice.

Nick got very nervous; I never understood why. He was also very protective of me. I told him, 'You've done nothing wrong - none of us has done anything wrong. The DTI can investigate till the cows come home and they'll see nothing untoward.'

The DTI has very deep powers. They can summon records from people's banks, mobile phones and credit cards and, of course, can obtain details of all dealings in shares. They carried out a full investigation to see if anybody related to me had bought or sold Viglen shares within the period that the City Slickers had written about the company. Funnily enough, a few weeks before the City Slickers write-up on Viglen, my son Daniel had disposed of his Viglen shares. This would conclusively prove our innocence to anybody with half a brain; if the Sugars were in collusion with this share-hyping, there's no way they'd have sold shares at a low price beforehand.

The knives were out from all quarters. The DTI was after people's heads, including Piers Morgan's. However, the
Daily Mirror
set up their own internal inquiry and exonerated Piers from any wrongdoing and the DTI also concluded that he had no claim to answer. At the same time, the mischievous media was making a lot of capital out of the fact that Viglen was my company and I was a so-called friend of Piers, in the sense that I was a columnist for the
Daily Mirror
(I had agreed to write a weekly column on business, advising readers on their business ideas). While none of their allegations held any water, these sorts of rumours stirred up the authorities to pursue their inquiries.

One inquiry we had to answer to was from the Stock Exchange. They intimated: 'Viglen should not have told journalists of their intention to start a dot-com company - information like this should have been sent out to all shareholders, as it was price-sensitive and of importance.'

Total nonsense! This was the Stock Exchange attempting to flex its muscles and get in on the scandal. It is
not
necessary for a public company to give notice to its shareholders when it intends to start up a new division. In this case, there was no meaningful deal, no transaction of money, we weren't acquiring anything and therefore no notification was required. However, some jobsworth, wound up by the newspapers, decided to interpret the rules differently. Eventually, we pointed out to him that we
had
placed an advertisement in the
Sunday Times,
weeks before the
Daily Mirror
article appeared, stating quite clearly that Viglen was looking to recruit personnel for a new division. As such, the information was in the public domain. After a lot of
argy-bargy, they agreed to back down. Hipwell got nicked and had to go to prison; Bhoyrul was let off with a slap on the wrist.

*

It had taken about nine months to get it ready, but the email phone was launched on 29 March 2000 at quite a big bash organised by Nick Hewer. On the day, the share price rose to 610p, putting a market capitalisation on the company of PS500m. There was no rationale behind the share price rise; we were simply caught up in the internet boom, which had just about peaked out by then. The fact that the email phone was perceived to be a joint venture between Amstrad and British Telecom attracted a lot of attention in the City on the day, but the rise in the share price was very short-lived. Soon after the launch, the so-called 'dot-com boom' imploded and the Amstrad share price fell rapidly. The penny had dropped: some companies whose values had risen to great heights actually had
no substance
- people had just been dragged in on a whim or a hope.

The business model of the email phone was all about consumers sending emails and us receiving a share of the call charge. On top of this, we were going to sell advertising to display on the screens of the phones, a kind of electronic billboard in consumers' homes. The idea was that we would subsidise the cost of the phones so they'd sell at a low retail price. Bob Watkins, in his capacity as managing director of New Amstrad, had worked out the potential revenues based on projected sales. On paper, it looked quite good. There was a break point where the revenues coming in would cover the cost of the hardware - after that, we would move into profit.

Sales of the phone went quite well - over 400,000 were sold. However, some people only realised after purchase that sending emails was not free and we experienced lots of disconnections. Also, the advertising model was not attracting the attention of potential advertisers. It seems we had launched at a time when most advertisers were sick and tired of what they called 'internet advertising'.

The first wave of internet advertising came during the dot-com boom. Everybody thought this was a major breakthrough and advertisers threw a lot of money at advertising on various websites. It turned out to be a disaster and the advertising fraternity pulled away from it very quickly, reverting to conventional media. By the time we launched the email phone, the term 'internet advertising' was like the kiss of death in advertising circles.