Sir Alan Sugar - The biography, by Charlie Burden, published by John Blake

The fact that I was disappointed by this book may be something to do with my own rather negative views of ‘Sir Alan’. I had hopes and expectations that, as the book was written by a journalist rather than by the man himself, there might be some challenge to the sycophantic attitude of everyone involved in the Apprentice series. But challenge and questioning was kept to a minimum and always answered with a rationalisation or a ‘he was right all along’ explanation.

The book takes on a rather conventional structure by starting with his birth - ‘you’re sired’ is the chapter heading - and emphasising the rags to riches story that the man himself loves to tell us about. And it certainly was impressive during the seventies and eighties when he developed technology products that were cleverly geared to consumer needs and price points. But somewhere along the way he seemed to lose his spark and his flair for product development, perhaps when he became one of the first rich businessmen to be tempted to invest in the glamour of football clubs.

It was at this stage that I began to suspect that the author was being less than objective: I had hoped that a journalist might at least be open about the mistakes that were made, and investing in Tottenham Hotspur with Terry Venables as a partner was about as big a mistake as it was possible to make. But even this is glossed over as a triumph, with not a suggestion that perhaps this was a distraction that helped to derail his progress as an innovator in the electronics market.

The final part of the book covers in some detail perhaps his greatest triumph, his ability to ‘out-trump’ Donald Trump by making the Apprentice so much more entertaining and compulsive than its US equivalent. Yet this part of the book follows the misleading line of the TV programme by continuing to talk about his ‘sprawling business empire’ while admitting elsewhere that it is now not much more than a property portfolio based on past successes.

Whilst accepting the brilliance of Sugar’s early innovative drive and his undoubted TV charisma, I found the book to be so one sided and sycophantic that I wanted someone to write a ‘hatchet job’ to provide some kind of balance. This might also have raised the issue that the book avoids - whether the management style represented by his manner and the way in which conflict is encouraged on the Apprentice, give out all the wrong signals about the way in which business success is achieved.

One interesting insight into the Apprentice is that the two grey haired sidekicks who appear to work for him on the programme, are not his employees at all, but are retired legal and public relations executives whom Sugar used to do business with. It perhaps explains something that has always puzzled me - how two such shrewd individuals could have possibly worked for ‘Sir Alan’.