Lord Sugar: From entrepreneur to Apprentice

Zing Tsjeng (0:08)

A stocky man in his early 50s kneels on a red carpet. A metal blade sits on his shoulder. In front of him, holding the sword, is a little old lady. She's dressed all in yellow with pearls around her neck.

Simon Jack (0:20)

It is, of course, the late Queen Elizabeth II. We're in Buckingham Palace and we're at the dawn of a new millennium.

Zing Tsjeng (0:26)

The kneeling man closes his eyes and thinks of his mother and father no longer alive. And he chuckles. Not bad for a working class Jewish boy from the East End.

Simon Jack (0:35)

He's just been made a knight. In a few years, he'll become a lord and a billionaire.

Zing Tsjeng (0:40)

Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Every episode, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.

Simon Jack (0:46)

We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million on to a billion.

Zing Tsjeng (0:51)

My name is Zing Tseng and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

Simon Jack (0:54)

And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.

Zing Tsjeng (0:56)

And our billionaire on this episode has been suggested by a lot of listeners.

Simon Jack (1:02)

Alex Chapman from York in the UK put it very well.

Zing Tsjeng (1:04)

A rags to riches story. His career touches on class mobility, media influence and how fame reshapes public perception of business success. Does his blunt old school style represent authentic entrepreneurship or outdated arrogance?

Simon Jack (1:19)

We're talking about Alan Sugar, Baron Sugar of Clapton in the London Borough of Hackney or Lord Sugar to you and me.

Zing Tsjeng (1:27)

Now, the 79-year-old is one of the UK's most famous businessmen and he's currently worth one and a half billion dollars.

Simon Jack (1:33)

Oh, yes.

Zing Tsjeng (1:34)

Have you had much dealings with Lord Sugar in the past?

Simon Jack (1:37)

I did have to go and interview him in the, I think mid-2000s at the launch of the, I'm sure we'll get on to this on the show, The Apprentice, which was basically borrowed from the current President of the United States about taking some wannabes and trying to turn them into entrepreneurial geniuses. The funny thing I remember about this, and maybe we'll get to this too, is that during this time, he came in in a massive Rolls-Royce, which had the number plate AMS 1, Alan Michael Sugar 1, and it was parked diagonally across two disabled parking bays, which are the closest parking bays to the front door of the old television centre. My eyebrows were raised by it. It was there for several hours.

Zing Tsjeng (2:25)

Was there anyone sitting in the car waiting for him to come out?

Simon Jack (2:28)

Like, my memory doesn't relate.

Zing Tsjeng (2:30)

Well, it's certainly a strong statement on the launch of your new television show.

Simon Jack (2:34)

Yeah.

So, yes, and Alan Sugar's is a brilliant story. He's a working class boy from East London. He began his career in the 1960s, selling car aerials out of the back of his van.

Zing Tsjeng (2:45)

And in the 80s, he became one of the richest people in Britain, selling computers to the mass market.

Simon Jack (2:50)

And in the 2000s, he followed in the footsteps of Donald Trump, as we've discussed, becoming host of the UK version of the TV show The Apprentice.

Zing Tsjeng (2:58)

And that's probably where most of our listeners encountered him, because his no-nonsense, sometimes you would say downright rude, one-liners made him a household name in the UK. But he's also come under fire for controversial comments made on social media.

Simon Jack (3:13)

Yeah, but let's go and try and answer listener Alex's question. Let's travel back to post-war London to find out how he did it.

Zing Tsjeng (3:24)

Alan Michael Sugar was born in 1947 His parents, as we alluded to in the opening, were Jewish and working class. Both of them were nearly in their 40s when he was born, and he was the youngest of four children. Alan grew up on a council estate in Hackney in the east end of London. This area was nothing like it is today.

Still incredibly poor and run down at the time. Much of the area had just been completely bombed to bits during the war.

Simon Jack (3:48)

No, it's quite posh, up-and-coming and trendy these days. But back then, it was not. His father was a tailor and worked in a garment factory. The family was poor and money was always a worry at home. The electricity meter that kept the house warm would sometimes run out by Thursday afternoon before his dad was paid on Friday. So they'd need to borrow a shilling from their neighbour. And just so you know, in the old days, you had to literally put coins in a meter in the house to get the electricity to start flowing through. Alan said, life was all about not having any money, not having anything and working very, very hard. I didn't want to have to live that way, he said.