There has been a fair amount of tittering since Sir Alan Sugar β the gruff television star famous for his catchphrase "You're fired" on The Apprentice β was handed a peerage in June by Gordon Brown and invited to join the Government as an "enterprise adviser". But it was those who were not amused but outraged β accusing Brown of pandering to the masses by appointing a celebrity β and a group of "persistently negative" media commentators striving to catch him out who have pushed Lord Sugar of Clapton to the brink.
But 10 days ago, after being criticised by one newspaper for allegedly dismissing small businesses unable to secure bank loans as "moaners" who "live in Disneyland", the year-old intimated that he might consider stepping down. Plans to resign just five months into the job, he insists, were also wide of the mark. Based on the letters of support I receive from those who have attended my seminars, the feedback has all been very positive, and that's what counts.
Being embattled suits Lord Sugar. Slim and sprightly, he guides me around the institution that sparked this controversy. Inside as well as out, it appears, his integration hasn't been seamless. They have this image of me as a brusque, ignorant cockney, but I have been underestimated many times in my career and I have always proved people wrong. Maybe it's the football badinage he exchanges with the reception staff, or the way he introduces me to fellow Labour peer, Lord Janner, when we sit down to lunch in the Peer's Dining Room, as his mistress, joking: "Everyone has to have one here, don't they?
It was in May this year, during one of the daily mile bike-rides he goes on when staying at his holiday home in Marbella, that Sugar got a call from the Prime Minister, with whom he has worked closely for the past decade on enterprise road shows and as a member of the Business Council. A ministerial appointment would have been impossible: with his 25 companies, Sir Alan, as he was then, had too many business and television interests to have the necessary impartiality.
I thought of my mum and dad and growing up in that council house in Clapton⦠and I decided to call myself Lord Sugar of Clapton. We're there to make sure that the government does what it is supposed to do. Although the media concentrated on the "conflict of interest" issues they maintained could be problematic The Apprentice has been rescheduled to avoid clashing with the general election , a storm of a different kind was brewing within the Palace of Westminster.
