The CV

proceeds of litigation with the Hard Disc Drive manufacturers.
1998 – At the request of Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, embarked on series of visits to schools and universities to conduct Q&A sessions on enterprise.
1999 – Victory decision in the High Court with US$150m damages awarded to Amstrad from the Hard Disc Drive manufacturers.
1999 – Invited to tea at The White House by US President Bill Clinton and the First Lady.
    2000 – 2009:
Gained experience in participating in television programmes, further engagement in writing for newspapers including own column in the Daily Mirror. Continued visits and Q&A sessions on enterprise.
2000 – Was honoured by her Majesty the Queen with a Knighthood.
2001 – Sold part of my interest in Tottenham Hotspur FC and resigned from the Board as Chairman and Director.
2005 – Appeared in the first series of ‘The Apprentice’ and won BAFTA award.
2005 – Honoured by Brunel University as a Doctor of Science.
2006 – ‘The Apprentice’ won most of the awards granted to TV shows (except ITV national TV awards – no surprise as ‘The Apprentice’ is a BBC show).
2007 – Sold Amstrad Plc (formerly Betacom) to BSkyB for £135m.
2008 – Appointed to Government Business Council by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
2009 – Led government’s Apprenticeship advertising campaign and four roadshow seminars.
2009 – Appointed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Enterprise Champion to advise government on small business and enterprise.
2009 – On 20th July, took my seat in the House of Lords as Alan Baron Sugar of Clapton in the London Borough of Hackney.
    © Lord Sugar, July 2009
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1957 – 1958: Enterprise activities
    I had loads of enterprises on the go. Next to Woolmer House there was a rag-and-bone merchant who would go round collecting items such as old iron and other metal, clothing and material. He’d pay scrap value for the stuff. In his yard was a sign saying, ‘Wool 5s per lb [five shillings per pound of weight], cotton 1s 6d per pound [one shilling and sixpence], brass and copper 2d per pound [tuppence].’ Playing out in the street when I was eleven, I noticed people taking items in and getting money in exchange and I wondered if I could get hold of any stuff, so that I too could make some money. It was during one of my other ventures – car-cleaning – that I found something.
    In the back streets of Clapton, some of the big Victorian houses were converted into small garment factories with rooms full of machinists. These factories would sub-contract for bigger manufacturers using ‘outdoor workers’ (the old name for sub-contractors). One day, while cleaning the factory boss’s car, I saw in the front garden some open sacks of material trimmings, ready for the dustman to take away. When I went inside to collect my 1s 6d, I asked the boss what was in these sacks and he explained they were remnants of the material used to make the clothes. I asked him if I could take some and he said I could, but looked puzzled.
    ‘What are you going to do with them?’ he asked.
    ‘Don’t worry, leave it to me,’ I replied. The sacks were bigger than I was, so I went back to the flats and borrowed a pram. I loaded on two sacks and took them round to the rag-and-bone man.
    Here was my first experience of getting ‘legged over’. Unbeknown to me, the sacks contained gold dust as far as the scrap merchant was concerned, as the material was wool. This bloke took one look at this eleven-year-old and said, ‘What you’ve got in those sacks is rubbish.’ He weighed the stuff on hisscales and said, ‘I’ll give you half a crown [2s 6d] for the lot.’ I took it. Naïve – stupid, you might say – but half a crown was a lot of money in those days.
    The next week, after cleaning the boss’s car, I asked him what kind of material was in those sacks. When he told me it was wool, I was furious – I should have got at least £1 10s for two sacks of wool. I took a scrap of the material to the rag-and-bone man and confronted him. ‘I’ve just been told this is wool – you told me it was rubbish. I want some more money or I want the two sacks back,’ I yelled at him angrily. I won’t tell you what he said to me. He slung two shillings at me and told me to clear off.
    ‘I can get loads more of this stuff and I’m going to find another rag-and-bone man to sell it