What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (91 page)

I was furious and convinced the
Mail
had done this deliberately. Earlier in the trial they had arranged lots of clips from various newspaper articles pasted in isolation on plain sheets of paper. The words had indeed been spoken by me, but the way they were presented had been taken out of context and that seemed deliberate. I protested to the judge that this was very misleading and that they seemed to be up to the same sort of trickery again. The only other explanation given to me by my lawyers was that maybe someone on the
Mail
team had been incompetent. Whatever the reason, for these accusations to be levelled against me in such circumstances was sick. Given this development, my lawyers were able to confer with me. They told me the bare bones of what they'd discovered and that the next morning, after the
Mail's
barrister had finished with me, my barrister would get up to rebut the allegations.

That night, Herbert Smith informed the
Daily Mail's
lawyers that the court had been misled and that the matter would be disclosed the next day. The next morning, the
Mail's
barrister did not turn up. On the previous day there had been talk of him not feeling well for some reason and it was unclear if his absence that day was due to this or some other reason. Maybe he was ill or had other commitments. Maybe on seeing the overnight notification from my lawyers that morning he felt sick about what I had been put through on a false premise or maybe there had been a falling out amongst the
Mail
legal team over this horrendous blunder and the way the
Mail
had leapt on it. The judge was not having any of it and would not accept any delay in the proceedings. He ordered the
Daily Mail's
second-in-command, the female barrister, to take over and finish the case off.

I was called to the witness box and was cross-examined by my own barrister, who drew the jury's attention to the document which had been discussed the previous day. He then produced the second page of the document. He asked the jury to study the second page and note that it totally exonerated me from the allegations made the previous day. My barrister then invited me to comment on how I felt about this.

I said, 'The jury is made up of ordinary people, similar to me, who don't really understand the legal process. They look at the man standing in the court wearing the wig and gown and assume - as he's a barrister acting on instructions - that everything he is saying is correct.'

Turning to the jury I continued, 'Maybe on your journey here today by bus or tube you saw yesterday's allegations - which have now been exposed as false - printed in the national newspapers. . .' I stopped and pointed to the back of the court, '. . . written by those people there.

'Thankfully, there are times when a bad thing comes to some good, because
you,
the jury, have now seen in full Technicolor - you've seen it all play out in front of your eyes just how these people work. You have seen an untrue accusation made to the court and you've seen that lot back there repeat it in the papers. I couldn't
ask
for any better evidence than that.'

Finally, glaring at Powell, I added,
'That
is the way he works.' Once again, I was getting things off my chest, possibly overstepping the mark, but I was on a roll.

I turned to the judge and said, 'Your Honour, I don't know what rights I have outside of this hearing, but I would like to officially make a complaint against the lead barrister and that woman there [pointing at his number two] and the law firm representing the
Daily Mail.
Would you please put that on the record? I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing asking you this, but please put it on the record.'

The judge turned to me and said, 'Your solicitors will certainly advise you what avenues are open to you, Sir Alan, but of course the transcript today will show what you have just said.'

The
Daily Mail
had tried everything in the book. They'd contacted Gerry Francis to see whether he would give any evidence against me, but he wouldn't - in fact, he didn't want to be involved for either side. The only person they could get to speak out against me was Teddy Sheringham and all he reported were factual matters that didn't add up to anything. It made no sense calling him.

George Graham was shitting himself, thinking I was going to call him as a witness, but my lawyers felt it would be counter-productive. If he were cross-examined about my investments in the club, he could obviously not deny the money I'd spent, but he had this theory that he was only able to buy second-class players because I never provided him with
enough
money to buy first-class players. There was a danger he would come out with this rubbish to try to protect his position, so right up to the eleventh hour we never told him whether he would be called as a witness or not, leaving him plutzing.

I asked Sol Campbell to be a witness; he refused. I asked a few other players; they also refused. They didn't want to be involved. The only person who stood by me was David Pleat. He was prepared to do something unprecedented. You see, the chairman was the enemy and the playing staff would always side against him. It was unacceptable in the football world for an ex-player or ex-manager - someone on that side of the fence - to side with a chairman, let alone stand up in court to support him. Yet David Pleat did. I am sure that, amongst his contemporaries, he was frowned upon at the time. However, all he did was honestly portray events and give his fair comment on the marketplace and how much money I'd invested in the football club. Now, that might not sound a lot, but it took a lot of balls to do what he did - be a witness in such a high-profile case. I think only those closely involved with football will understand what I am saying.

Jeff Powell himself was called to the stand. He started off in a very cocky manner, at one point trying to imitate George Graham's Scottish accent when explaining how friendly he was with him. My barrister tore him apart and brought up past articles he'd written about me, and also my son Daniel, to show that Powell had some vendetta against me and the way Spurs was run. It's important to understand that Venables was also a big pal of Jeff Powell.

At the end of giving evidence, the jury was instructed by the judge that if they found the
Daily Mail
guilty of defaming Sir Alan Sugar, they had various options open to them as far as financial damages were concerned. He read them some examples. In the case of someone sustaining a broken leg, they may be awarded PS5,000; a broken ankle may be PS4,000; an incapacitation PS100,000, and so on. He told the jury he was obliged by law to give them these examples and that when they deliberated, if they felt Sir Alan Sugar was entitled to any damages, they should take these examples into account.

I was obviously not allowed to allude to the fact that any damages I might be awarded would be donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital. This would have tainted the jury and caused a mistrial. While the judge was talking, my thoughts went back to the Western Digital jury, who'd reasoned, 'Why should we award this multi-millionaire anything at all?' However, this time I wasn't interested in the money. I was interested in winning.

The judge sent the jury out at 12.55 p.m., telling them they must start to deliberate
after
lunch, at 2.00 p.m. They came back at 2.05 p.m., having taken just five minutes to find in my favour. They awarded me PS100,000 in damages, a massive amount, the maximum awarded in recent times.

Once the jury had announced their verdict, my barrister stood up and informed the court that the PS100,000 would immediately be donated to Great
Ormond Street Hospital. I looked at the jury and a couple of the people were nodding their heads, as if to say, 'Well done,' while others, I could see, were thinking, 'Bloody hell, if we'd have known
that,
we'd have awarded a million!' I was very emotional when the verdict was read out, as indeed were Ann and David Pleat. We'd all sat through a week's trial, with lots of twists and turns and dirty tricks, and we had come out winners.

The press were hanging about outside, as were the TV cameras. I stepped outside and spoke to the media, telling them I hoped this case would be used as an example in showing the media that there
are
people who will stand up to them. I could afford to finance this long court case, but sadly there aren't too many people who can afford to take them on, so they just have to suffer the media's abuse. I said, 'My victory today is not just for me - it is for them too.'

That little outing must have cost the
Daily Mail
over PS1m. They had to pay PS400,000 of our costs (as well as the PS100,000 damages which went to Great Ormond Street) on top of whatever they'd paid their barrister and team of lawyers. I think the
Daily Mail's
in-house lawyer must have been shitting himself, thinking I was going to take the matter further and report him, the barristers and the law firm they used to the Law Society and the Bar Council. Normally, you are only entitled to get back 60-65 per cent of your costs if you win a case. In negotiating with the
Daily Mail's
lawyers, we told them we were not going to accept one penny less than
all
our legal fees, but if they settled immediately, without any negotiation, then I would not report them to the Law Society. In all the court cases I've ever been involved in, I've never seen someone settle up so quickly. They were scared shitless.

A few days later, I was ready to hand over the reins of Tottenham Hotspur to Daniel Levy. At my last game as chairman of the club, I had cause to go down to the dressing room and speak to George Graham, who yet again had been bleating to the press about how bad our squad was and how we needed to boost it with better players.

I pulled him to one side in the medical room and tore him off a strip. I told him to keep his big mouth shut in the future when it came to talking about players in press conferences. From now on, he was not to mention the quality of the players he had and how many players he needed and all that stuff. I stormed out, leaving him standing there.

Enic took over and it didn't surprise me that they wanted Graham out. I think Graham himself wanted out too. Somehow or other, Enic found some justification to chuck him out, but inevitably there was an argument about compensation. Strange - when I severed the services of the managers I'd
employed, there were never any rows or arguments over money. The Football Managers' Association used to say that Tottenham Hotspur, under the leadership of Alan Sugar, were very good in dealing with their members. Enic had only been in for a few weeks and were already having aggravation over disposing of Graham.

Some newspaper articles started to appear with stories about the fines that Graham had imposed on his players. These fines were still sitting in a drawer in Graham's office. Like many managers, he would fine players who were late or didn't turn up for training, all that stuff, but he insisted they paid in cash. Normally, fines paid by players go into a pot and at the end of the season the contents are donated to a local hospital or some other worthy charity, which was the case at Tottenham. But now there were some distorted stories in the national newspapers asking why Graham was accumulating the cash in his office drawer. The suggestion was that Spurs had implied he was going to nick the money for himself - which was not true at all. Graham had no intention of taking the money and neither did Spurs accuse him of such.

Who piped up in his defence? Terry Venables, with his headline story, 'Typical Spurs - always accusing people of stealing money.' I decided, as I was leaving, I would have a final swipe at football, so I wrote a double-page spread for the
Daily Mirror
about George Graham's sacking by Tottenham. I highlighted the fact that if Graham felt he had a friend in Terry Venables, I wouldn't like to know who his enemies were. Venables had spouted off in the media that Tottenham were accusing Graham of stealing money, when in fact
no one
from the club had ever made that suggestion. The only one saying this was Venables himself - so with friends like him, you really
didn't
need enemies.

I finished off the article by summing up my time in football. I talked about the Sky TV programme
Soccer Saturday,
broadcast every week during the season, where a panel of four people talked about that day's games. I explained that in football it doesn't matter
what
you do; once you're part of the football mafia, no one will ever say you've done anything wrong. If George Graham were to be seen live on camera taking a kitchen knife and sticking it straight through someone's heart, Frank McLintock would watch the video and say, 'George is innocent - the man lunged towards him and fell on the knife.
If anyone
is guilty, it must be David Dein, the Arsenal vice chairman.'

Years later, in 2007, Enic bought the balance of my shares in Spurs for PS25m, making the total they paid me around PS47m.

*

Back in 2001, just after I sold the first chunk of shares, I decided that as Spurs fans didn't value me rescuing their great institution, I'd put some of the money into rescuing another one - the Hackney Empire.

I used to go there as a kid with my mum. It was a famous old theatre located right opposite Morning Lane (where my first secondary school, Joseph Priestley, was). In its heyday, the theatre had hosted people such as Charlie Chaplin, but now the place was going to close, as it was in need of total refurbishment.

The actor and comedian Griff Rhys Jones was doing a great job raising money and getting grants from the Arts Council for this purpose. He was in regular contact with me over the progress of the refurbishment, as I'd made a modest contribution towards it in the past. A few days after I sold Tottenham to Enic, I called Griff and asked him to meet me for tea at the Savoy Hotel in London. I knew they were still struggling and I'd already made up my mind that I was going to use some of the money from Spurs to sort it out. I just needed to understand the extent of what was required before I splashed out. I asked Griff how things were going at the Empire.