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82-485: Alan Michael Sugar, Baron Sugar (born 24 March 1947) is a British business magnate, media personality, author, politician, and political adviser. Sugar began what would later become his largest business venture, consumer electronics company Amstrad , in 1968. In 2007, he sold his remaining interest in the company in a deal to BSkyB for £125 million. He was also the chairman and part-owner of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club from 1991 to 2001, selling his remaining stake in

164-458: A Millionaire? in 2005. In January 2009, Fiona Bruce presented a BBC Two documentary entitled The Real Sir Alan . Also in 2009, Sugar appeared in television advertisements for investment bank NS&I and The Learning and Skills Council talking about apprenticeships. In May 2011, he presented Lord Sugar Tackles Football , a documentary looking into the financial woes of English football . In September 2012, Sugar appeared as himself in

246-463: A business venture and not a footballing one made him an unpopular figure among the Spurs fans. In Sugar's nine years as chairman, Tottenham Hotspur did not finish in the top six in the league and won just one trophy, the 1999 League Cup . After being sacked as the club's chief executive by Sugar in 1993, Venables appealed to the high courts for reinstatement. A legal battle for the club took place over

328-565: A cameo in the Doctor Who episode " The Power of Three ". Sugar's cameo was filmed on the set of The Apprentice . In November 2012, he appeared as himself in a cameo in a special episode of EastEnders for Children in Need . Amsair Executive Aviation was founded in 1993, and is run by Sugar's son Daniel. As with Amstrad, the name Amsair is an acronym taken from the initials of Sugar's name " A lan M ichael S ugar Air ." Amsair operates

410-431: A condition for appearing in the third series, Sugar placed a requirement that the show be more business-oriented rather than just entertainment and that he should be portrayed in a less harsh light, to counter his somewhat belligerent reputation. He also expressed a desire that the calibre of the candidates should be higher than those who had appeared in the second series (who had come across as manifestly lacklustre) and that

492-499: A debate over the BBC's political impartiality regulations in the run-up to the UK 2010 election, resulting in both Junior Apprentice and the sixth regular edition of The Apprentice being delayed. In May 2008, Sugar made an appearance on An Audience Without Jeremy Beadle to pay tribute to Jeremy Beadle as they were close friends and both appeared on a celebrity special of Who Wants to Be

574-457: A fan. The PC1512 was therefore quieter than other PCs. Rumours circulated that an Amstrad PC would overheat, and while existing owners would note that this did not happen, new buyers were discouraged. As a result, later models had a cooling fan integrated into the main case. Another example of rumour was the suggestion that there were issues with the 'unshielded' power supply in the monitor affecting an optional hard drive that could be installed at

656-468: A greengrocers. After leaving school at the age of 16, he worked briefly for the civil service as a statistician at the Ministry of Education. In 1968, aged 21, Sugar set up Amstrad with £100 of Post Office savings. He started off selling radio aerials for cars and other electrical goods out of a van which he had bought for £50 and insured for £8. The name of the company was formed from his initials and

738-555: A jumper. Video output was compatible with the CGA standard, with an extension allowing all 16 colours to be used in the 640×200 graphics mode. The CPU of both the PC1512 and the later PC1640 was an 8 MHz Intel 8086 , which was sufficient for playing The Secret of Monkey Island , Maniac Mansion and Prince of Persia . The power supply was located in the monitor, which made upgrading difficult. The input devices supplied with

820-493: A large Cessna fleet, and one Embraer Legacy 650 with the registration G-SUGA, offering business and executive jet charters. Amsprop is a property investment firm owned by Sugar and is now controlled by his son Daniel. Simon Ambrose , winner of the 2007 series of The Apprentice , started working for Amsprop Estates after the series finished. However, in April 2010, he was reported to be leaving to start his own venture. Sugar

902-509: A long spell on the sidelines during the 1993–94 season . He further stated that Sugar had refused to give him the five-year contract he wanted, as he had not believed Sheringham would still get into the Tottenham team when he was 36. Sheringham returned to Tottenham after his spell at Manchester United and continued to start for the first team until he was released in the summer of 2003, at age 37. Sheringham said that Sugar "lacked ambition" and

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984-490: A lot of people when I say the Theresa May and Conservative campaign was very lacking in what they were going to offer the public." He added that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn "did a very good job wooing the young and educated people. I would add that those people who voted for him are quite bright and educated, but also not very experienced in life." On 31 March 2018, after complaints from Labour politicians, Sugar deleted

1066-573: A takeover of Amstrad for £125m, a 23.7% premium on its market capitalisation. BSkyB had been a major client of Amstrad, accounting for 75% of sales for its 'set top box' business. Having supplied BSkyB with hardware since its inception in 1988, market analysts had noted the two companies becoming increasingly close. Sky bought Amstrad so they could have their own hardware development division to develop new satellite boxes ( Sky Q ) made in-house. Under Sky, Amstrad only produced satellite receivers for Sky, as doing so allows them to reduce costs by cutting out

1148-573: A television interview that he would leave Britain if Corbyn became prime minister. Amstrad Amstrad was a British consumer electronics company, founded in 1968 by Alan Sugar . During the 1980s, the company was known for its home computers beginning with the Amstrad CPC and later also the ZX Spectrum range after the Sinclair deal, which led it to have a substantial share of

1230-569: A total of £69,000 to Labour or to leader Ed Miliband 's office, but the following year he defied party rules to implore the public to not vote for its candidate for London Mayor, Ken Livingstone . In August 2014, Sugar was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue . According to

1312-612: A tweet showing an edited image of Jeremy Corbyn in a car with Adolf Hitler . The incident occurred after Corbyn said the party "must do better" in resolving the party's problems with antisemitism . Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell had urged him to "delete and disown" the tweet. Sugar responded that he was "not the originator" and that "there is no smoke without fire in Labour". On 5 April 2018, Sugar published an ode critical of Jeremy Corbyn, and in December that year, he announced during

1394-668: The E-m@iler . This was followed by the E-m@iler Plus in 2002, and the E3 Videophone in 2004. Amstrad's UK E-m@iler business is operated through a separate company, Amserve Ltd which is 89.8% owned by Amstrad and 10.2% owned by DSG International plc (formerly Dixons plc). Amstrad has also produced a variety of home entertainment products over their history, including hi-fi, televisions, VCRs , and DVD players. In July 2007, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) announced

1476-541: The Evening Standard journalist Andrew Gilligan reported that Sugar had been approached to be the Labour candidate for Mayor of London in 2012. Sugar subsequently ridiculed the suggestion in an interview with The Guardian . During Prime Minister Gordon Brown 's cabinet reshuffle on 5 June 2009, the BBC reported that he would be given a life peerage and had been offered a job as the government's " Enterprise Champion ". On 7 June 2009, Sugar sought to clarify

1558-567: The Amstrad CPC 464 . Although the CPC range were attractive machines, with CP/M -capability and a good BASIC interpreter, it had to compete with its arch-rivals, the more graphically complex Commodore 64 and the popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum , not to mention the highly sophisticated BBC Micro . Despite this, three million units were sold worldwide with a long production life of eight years. It inspired an East German version with Z80 clone processors. In 1985, Sugar had another major breakthrough with

1640-502: The BBC reality show The Apprentice , which has had one series broadcast each year from 2005, in the same role as Donald Trump in the US version . he fires at least one candidate each week until only one candidate is left. Until 2010, the winner was then employed in his company and since 2011 wins a partnership with Sugar, including his investment of £250,000 to establish their own business. As

1722-699: The LocoScript word processing program. They were also capable of running the CP/M operating system. The Amsoft division of Amstrad was set up to provide in-house software and consumables. On 7 April 1986 Amstrad announced it had bought from Sinclair Research "the worldwide rights to sell and manufacture all existing and future Sinclair computers and computer products, together with the Sinclair brand name and those intellectual property rights where they relate to computers and computer related products", which included

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1804-535: The NHS . The screens use a Face detection system called OptimEyes to try to identify age and sex of its viewers. In July 2008, Amscreen purchased Comtech M2M, which was founded in September 1992, originally specialising in communications product retailing. This was before entering the M2M market in 1999. On 29 August 2008, Comtech M2M officially changed names to Amscreen Limited. On 7 March 2011, Sugar replaced Kip Meek on

1886-728: The PPC512 and 640 models, introduced a year before the Macintosh Portable . They ran MS-DOS on an 8 MHz processor, and the built-in screen could emulate the Monochrome Display Adapter or Color Graphics Adapter . Amstrad's final (and ill-fated) attempts to exploit the Sinclair brand were based on the company's own PCs; a compact desktop PC derived from the PPC 512, branded as the Sinclair PC200 , and

1968-705: The PenPad , a PDA similar to the Apple Newton , and released only weeks before it. It was a commercial failure, and had several technical and usability problems. It lacked most features that the Apple Newton included, but had a lower price at $ 450. As Amstrad began to concentrate less on computers and more in communication, they purchased several telecommunications businesses including Betacom , Dancall Telecom, Viglen Computers , and modem manufacturer Dataflex Design Communications, bought out of liquidation, during

2050-512: The Sinclair PC500 . Amstrad licensed both MS-DOS 3.2 and Digital Research DOS Plus , which was largely compatible with MS-DOS and included some features from CP/M and the ability to read CP/M disks. Only one of these operating systems could be used at a time. They also licensed the GEM windowing system , which supported the customized CGA hardware of the 1512. In 1987 the PC1512

2132-547: The ZX Spectrum , for £5 million. This included Sinclair's unsold stock of Sinclair QLs and Spectrums. Amstrad made more than £5 million on selling these surplus machines alone. Amstrad launched two new variants of the Spectrum: the ZX Spectrum +2, based on the ZX Spectrum 128, with a built-in cassette tape drive (like the CPC 464) and, the following year, the ZX Spectrum +3, with a built-in floppy disk drive (similar to

2214-473: The e-m@ilerplus in 2002, neither of which sold in great volume. On 31 July 2007, it was announced that broadcaster BSkyB had agreed to buy Amstrad for about £125m. At the time of the takeover, Sugar commented that he wished to play a part in the business, saying: "I turn 60 this year and I have had 40 years of hustling in the business, but now I have to start thinking about my team of loyal staff, many of whom have been with me for many years." On 2 July 2008 it

2296-570: The vacuum forming process. Amstrad expanded to the marketing of low cost amplifiers and tuners , imported from East Asia and badged with the Amstrad name for the UK market. Their first electrical product was the Amstrad 8000 amplifier. In 1980, Amstrad went public trading on the London Stock Exchange , and doubled in size each year during the early '80s. Amstrad began marketing its own home computers in an attempt to capture

2378-485: The 2010 winner of The Apprentice . Sugar has criticised the US version of The Apprentice because "they've made the fatal error of trying to change things just for the sake of it and it backfired." In September 2020, it was announced that Sugar will be the new CEO on The Celebrity Apprentice Australia on Australia's Nine Network , replacing former CEO Mark Bouris . Young Apprentice ( Junior Apprentice in series 1)

2460-587: The 8087. A performance benchmarks as conducted with Checkit compares the different models and configurations of the PC1512 and PC1640, with that of a fast 80286. Amstrad also attempted to expand its market share by selling computers in the United States. In the US the PC1640 was marketed as the PC6400 and included a 20 MB hard drive. The PC1512, and also its successor the PC1640, sold very well. Part of it

2542-543: The BBC in 2015, Sugar had donated £163,827 to Labour since Ed Miliband had become leader in 2010, but on 11 May 2015, four days after the Conservative Party won that year's general election , Sugar announced that he was leaving Labour. He issued a statement to say: In the past year I found myself losing confidence in the party due to their negative business policies and general anti-enterprise concepts they were considering if they were elected. I expressed this to

Alan Sugar - Misplaced Pages Continue

2624-671: The CPC 664 and 6128), taking the 3" disks that many Amstrad machines used. In 1986 Amstrad entered the IBM PC-compatible arena with the PC1512 system. In standard Amstrad livery and priced at £399 it was a success, capturing more than 25% of the European computer market. It was MS-DOS -based, but with the GEM graphics interface, and later Windows . In 1988 Amstrad attempted to make the first affordable portable personal computer with

2706-607: The European PC market to consumers as well as businesses, and Amstrad's advertising of the PC1512 was aimed at homes rather than offices. The 1512's influence was such that the UK PC magazine PC Plus originally targeted itself at the "Amstrad PC 1512 and compatibles", since home ownership of other PCs at the time was rare. The PC1512 shipped with 512 KB of RAM ; it could be upgraded to 640 KB of RAM with 16 pieces of 4164-120 Dynamic RAM chips (64KBx1 per chip) and setting

2788-574: The European PC market. Amstrad had been a major supplier of set top boxes to UK satellite television pay-TV provider Sky since its launch in 1989 following the launch of the SES Astra 1A TV satellite. Amstrad was key to the introduction of Sky, as the company was responsible for finding methods to produce the requisite equipment at an attractive price for the consumer - Alan Sugar famously approached "someone who bashes out dustbin lids", to manufacture mesh satellite dishes cheaply. Ultimately, it

2870-571: The PC market in Britain. In the following decade it shifted focus towards communication technologies, and its main business during the 2000s was the manufacture of satellite television set-top boxes for Sky , which Amstrad had started in 1989 as the then sole supplier of the emerging Sky TV service. Headquartered in Brentwood , the company was listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1980 to 2008,

2952-470: The PC1512 and the PC1640 could be upgraded with a NEC V30 CPU, that increased and added 80186 instruction set compatibility, and by adding an Intel 8087 mathematical coprocessor (FPU). Upgraded with the FPU, the PC1512 and PC1640 did outperform later PC architectures (i.e. 80286 w/o FPU) in numerical operations, which was highly useful for CAD and numerical calculations. Lotus 1-2-3 and Matlab supported

3034-639: The PC1512 rebadged as the Sinclair PC500. Amstrad's second generation of PCs, the PC2000 series, were launched in 1989. However, due to a problem with the Seagate ST277R hard disk shipped with the PC2386 model, these had to be recalled and fitted with Western Digital controllers. Amstrad later successfully sued Seagate, but following bad press over the hard disk problems, Amstrad lost its lead in

3116-465: The PC1640 were silent. This was a significant difference compared to the quite noisy PCs sold at the time. Although the Amstrad PC1512 and PC1640 had to compete against faster AT-type architectures at the time of their release, they were sufficiently powerful to run office software popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including WordPerfect 5.1, WordStar , Microsoft Word 4 and 5 for DOS,

3198-715: The Year . Because Spurs had not qualified for the UEFA Europa League , Klinsmann decided to invoke an opt-out clause in his contract and left for Bayern Munich in the summer of 1995. Sugar appeared on television holding the last shirt Klinsmann wore for Spurs and said he would "not wash his car with it". He referred to foreigners coming into the Premier League at high wages as "Carlos Kickaballs". Klinsmann retaliated by calling Sugar "a man without honour", and said: "He only ever talks about money. He never talks about

3280-524: The affordable Amstrad receiver with the typical black mesh minidish were sold in large numbers. In the early 1990s, Amstrad began to focus on portable computers rather than desktop computers . In 1990, Amstrad tried to enter the video game console market with the Amstrad GX4000 , similar to what Commodore did at the same time with the C64 GS . The console, based on the Amstrad 464 Plus hardware,

3362-414: The back of the base unit and further that this would be solved by taping tin foil or aluminum foil over the back of the base unit or the bottom of the monitor to shield the hard drive. The PC1512 shipped with one or two 360KB 5¼-inch floppy drives , and optionally a hard drive (10 or 20 MB). The 5¼-inch floppy drive(s) could be replaced with 1.2 MB capacity versions. The machine was also marketed as

Alan Sugar - Misplaced Pages Continue

3444-521: The board of the BBC initiated IPTV project known as YouView (formerly known as Project Canvas ) which is also backed by ITV , Channel 4 and Channel 5 and broadband providers including BT and TalkTalk . Sugar was paid £500,000 for chairing YouView for the year ending March 2012. From 1997 until 2015, Sugar was a member of the Labour Party . In 2001, he was one of Labour's top 50 donors, giving £200,000 to its head office. In February 2009,

3526-539: The club for £22 million. In June 2007, he sold his 12% remaining shares to ENIC for £25 million, ending his 16-year association with the club. He described his time at Tottenham as "a waste of my life". Sugar later donated £3 million from the proceeds of the sale of his interests in Tottenham Hotspur to the refurbishment of the Hackney Empire in his native East End of London. Sugar became the host of

3608-524: The club in 2007 as well, for £25 million. He is the host and "Boss" for the BBC Television reality competition series The Apprentice , which has been broadcast every year, with the exception of 2020 and 2021, since 2005. He also assumed the role for The Celebrity Apprentice Australia for Australia's Nine Network in 2021. Sugar was elevated to the House of Lords in 2009 as a Labour peer and

3690-499: The early 1990s. The company also established a direct marketing channel, Amstrad Direct, in late 1994 and announced 486- and Pentium-based products including an " All-in-One Multimedia PC" with built-in television tuner, infra-red remote control, amplifier and speakers. A pen-based personal digital assistant with support for a PCMCIA-based modem, the InfoPad, was also unveiled with a September 1995 launch scheduled. By 1996, Alan Sugar

3772-402: The first four letters of the word ‘trading’: A lan M ichael S ugar Trad ing. It began as a general importer/exporter and wholesale; by 1970 the first manufacturing venture was underway. He achieved lower production prices by using injection moulding plastics for hi-fi turntable covers, severely undercutting competitors who used vacuum-forming processes. In the mid 1970s manufacturing capacity

3854-455: The game. I would say there is a big question mark over whether Sugar's heart is in the club and in football. The big question is what he likes more, the business or the football?" Klinsmann re-signed for Tottenham on loan in December 1997. In October 1998, former Tottenham striker Teddy Sheringham released his autobiography, in which he cited Sugar as the reason he left the club in 1997. He said that Sugar had accused him of feigning injury during

3936-640: The launch of the Amstrad PCW 8256 word processor which retailed at over £300, but was still considerably cheaper than rival machines (such as the Apple Macintosh Plus, which retailed at $ 2,599). In 1986, Amstrad bought the rights to the Sinclair computer product line and produced two more ZX Spectrum models in a similar style to their CPC machines. It also developed the PC1512 , a PC compatible computer, which became quite popular in Europe and

4018-473: The machine were notable. The mouse was an Amstrad Mouse, which was incompatible with serial mice common at the time. It was supported by some games, including Elite , but many DOS programs had problems with it. The keyboard sported an Atari-compatible joystick port for digital joysticks. Joystick movements and buttons were mapped to unused keyboard codes, allowing the joystick to be used in many DOS games that were written for keyboard control. The series

4100-469: The market from Commodore and Sinclair , with the Amstrad CPC range in 1984. The CPC 464 was launched in the UK, Ireland, France, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Spain and Italy. It was followed by the CPC 664 and CPC 6128 models. Later "Plus" variants of the 464 and 6128, launched in 1990, increased their functionality slightly. In 1985, the popular Amstrad PCW range was introduced, which were principally word processors , complete with printer, running

4182-472: The middleman. Its main competitor in this space was Pace plc . Sugar commented that he wished to play a part in the business, saying: "I turn 60 this year and I have had 40 years of hustling in the business, but now I have to start thinking about my team of loyal staff, many of whom have been with me for many years." It was announced on 2 July 2008 that Sugar had stepped down as Chairman of Amstrad, which had been planned since BSkyB took over in 2007. Amstrad

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4264-443: The most senior figures in the party several times. I signed on to New Labour in 1997 but more recently, particularly in relation to business, I sensed a policy shift moving back towards what Old Labour stood for. By the start of this year I had made my decision to resign from the party whatever the outcome of the general election. Before the 2016 London mayoral election , Sugar said that he is popular politically, and repeatedly urged

4346-463: The motives of the candidates for participating are scrutinised more carefully, given that certain candidates in previous series had used their successful experience in the show as a springboard to advance their own careers (as occurred with Michelle Dewberry , the winner of the second series, who left Amstrad's employment only eight months after taking up the job). In September 2013, Sugar lost his Employment tribunal counter-claim against Stella English,

4428-575: The next season with just three points from their opening three games. Sugar next appointed George Graham , a former player and manager of bitter rivals Arsenal. Although Graham won Spurs' first trophy in eight years, fans never warmed to him, partly because of his Arsenal connection, and disliked the negative, defensive style of football which he had Spurs playing; fans believed it was not the "Tottenham way". In February 2001, after speculation and confirmation on 11 December 2000, Sugar sold his majority stake at Tottenham to leisure group ENIC , selling 27% of

4510-470: The non-political nature of his appointment. He stated that he would not be joining the government, that the appointment was politically neutral, and that all he wanted to do was help businesses and entrepreneurs. On 20 July 2009, he was made Baron Sugar , of Clapton , in the London Borough of Hackney . He made his maiden speech in the House of Lords on 25 November 2009. In 2011, Sugar donated

4592-451: The parties failed to agree a price and a strategy to dispose of the group's other assets. In 1997, Amstrad PLC was wound up, its shares being split into Viglen and Betacom instead. Betacom PLC was then renamed Amstrad PLC. The same year, Amstrad supplied set top boxes to Australian broadcaster Foxtel , and in 2004 to Italian broadcaster Sky Italia . In 2000, Amstrad released the first of its combined telephony and email devices, called

4674-597: The prize fund to 17-year-old Arjun Rajyagor. Tim Ankers finished in second place. The second series started in October 2011, and featured eight episodes and twelve contestants. The series was won by Zara Brownless, with James McCullough as runner-up. Originally proposed in March 2008 and confirmed in June 2009, Junior Apprentice received mostly positive reviews from critics. Sugar's role under Gordon Brown 's government sparked

4756-574: The public to not vote for the eventual winner, Labour candidate Sadiq Khan . In 2016, Sugar endorsed the "Remain" campaign for the referendum on membership of the European Union . In May 2017, Sugar endorsed the Conservative Party at that year's general election . During a June 2017 radio interview with LBC's Nick Ferrari , Sugar was asked about the general election result. He said, "It's very, very surprising. I think I'd join

4838-415: The spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 , Matlab , and the database program dBase III+ as well as Ashton-Tate 's Framework II integrated office suite. The PC1512 and PC1640 were shipped with Digital Research's GEM as a graphical shell , but could run also Geoworks Ensemble (up to Version 2.1), and Microsoft Windows (up to Version 3.0, that did support a 'real mode'). The PC1512 significantly helped open up

4920-527: The summer, which Sugar won (see Re Tottenham Hotspur plc [1994] 1 BCLC 655). The decision to sack Venables angered many Tottenham fans, and Sugar later said, "I felt as though I'd killed Bambi ." In 1992, Sugar was the only representative of the then "big five" ( Arsenal , Everton , Liverpool , Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur) who voted in favour of Sky 's bid for Premier League television rights. The other four voted in favour of ITV 's bid, as it had promised to show big five games more often. At

5002-572: The time of the vote, Sugar's company Amstrad was developing satellite dishes for Sky, though Sugar had declared this prior to the vote. During negotiations, Sugar called Sky CEO Sam Chisholm and angrily ordered him to "blow [ITV] out of the water" with a much higher bid. In 1994, Sugar financed the transfers of three stars of the 1994 FIFA World Cup : Ilie Dumitrescu , Gica Popescu , and most notably Jürgen Klinsmann , who had an excellent first season in English football, being named FWA Footballer of

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5084-478: The year when Sugar stepped down after 40 years. After acquiring Betacom and Viglen , Amstrad was broken up in 1997 but the name was soon revived when successor Betacom plc renamed itself to Amstrad plc. Amstrad was a FTSE 100 Index constituent up until the company was acquired by BSkyB in 2007 for £125 million. In 2010, Sky integrated Amstrad's satellite division as part of Sky so they could make their own set-top boxes in-house. Amstrad (also known as AMSTrad)

5166-412: Was Peter Shreeves , who replaced Venables in 1991, followed by the dual management team of Doug Livermore and Ray Clemence in 1992, former Spurs midfielder Osvaldo Ardiles in 1993, and Gerry Francis in 1994. In 1997, Sugar surprised the footballing world by appointing the relatively unknown Swiss manager Christian Gross . Gross lasted nine months as Spurs finished in 14th place in 1998 , and began

5248-447: Was a British reality television programme spin-off in which a group of twelve young people, aged 16 and 17, competed to win a £25,000 prize from Sugar. The six-part series began on BBC One and BBC HD on 12 May 2010, and concluded on 10 June. It featured Nick Hewer and Karren Brady as Sugar's advisors. Brady made her debut on Junior Apprentice ; it aired before she appeared on the adult version. The programme concluded with Sugar awarding

5330-654: Was a commercial failure, because it used outdated technology, and most games available for it were straight ports of CPC games that could be purchased for much less in their original format. In 1993, Amstrad was licensed by Sega to produce a system which was similar to the Sega TeraDrive , going by the name of the Amstrad Mega PC , to try to regain their image in the gaming market. The system didn't succeed as well as expected, mostly due to its high initial retail price of £999. In that same year, Amstrad released

5412-830: Was a tailor in the garment industry of the East End . His maternal grandparents were born in Russia , and his paternal grandfather was born in Poland . Sugar's paternal grandmother, Sarah Sugar, was born in London to Polish parents . When Sugar was young, his family lived in a council flat . Because of his profuse, curly hair, he was nicknamed "Mop head," a name that he still goes by in the present day. He attended Northwold Primary School and then Brooke House Secondary School in Upper Clapton , Hackney, and made extra money by working at

5494-622: Was also bundled with the Amstrad PC Games Collection, which included four games: Bruce Lee , The Dam Busters , Tag-Team Wrestling and Psi-5 Trading Company . These came on three floppy disks, contained in a plastic clamshell case. Amstrad launched the Amstrad DMP3000 printer, which was an 80-character dot matrix printer with both IBM and Epson compatibility that boasted NLQ (Near Letter Quality) and could handle both A4 and fanfold paper. It connected to

5576-415: Was announced that Sugar was standing down from Amstrad as chairman, to focus on his other business interests. After a take-over battle with Robert Maxwell for ownership of Tottenham Hotspur , Sugar teamed up with the club's manager Terry Venables and bought it in June 1991. Although his initial investment helped ease the financial troubles the club was suffering at the time, his treatment of Tottenham as

5658-404: Was expanded to include the production of audio amplifiers, stereo cassette recording decks and AM/FM radio tuners. In most cases beating the competition on price. In 1980, Amstrad was listed on the London Stock Exchange and during the 1980s Amstrad doubled its profit and market value every year. By 1984, recognising the opportunity of the home computer era, Amstrad launched an 8-bit machine,

5740-400: Was explained because the basic model (one floppy drive, no hard disk) launched for £399, which made it one of the first cheap PCs in Europe. This price, which initially increased to £450, was restored in September 1987 amidst adjustments in Amstrad's PC range. Second, its design was compact and visually appealing. With the exception of the fan in the PC1640's ECD monitor, both the PC1512 and

5822-510: Was followed by the PC1640, which had 640 KB of RAM and an EGA -compatible graphics chipset, acquired from Paradise Systems , integrated into the main board of the machine, although only the ECD model could display all EGA modes. The PC1640 also allowed replacing the internal graphics adapter with a 8-bit ISA VGA graphics expansion board, which made it more versatile than the PC1512. Both

5904-473: Was founded in 1968 by Alan Sugar at the age of 21, the name of the original company being AMS Trading (Amstrad) Limited, derived from its founder's initials (Alan Michael Sugar). Amstrad entered the market in the field of consumer electronics . During the 1970s they were at the forefront of low-priced hi-fi, TV and car stereo cassette technologies. Lower prices were achieved by injection moulding plastic hi-fi turntable covers, undercutting competitors who used

5986-456: Was hypocritical. As an example, Sugar asked him for recommendations of players; when Sheringham suggested England midfielder Paul Ince , Sugar refused because he did not want to spend £4 million on a player who would soon be 30. After Sheringham left Spurs, Sugar approved the signing of Les Ferdinand , aged 31, for a club record £6 million, on higher wages than Sheringham had wanted. Sugar appointed seven managers in his time at Spurs. The first

6068-465: Was immediately superseded by the Japanese consoles: Mega Drive and Super NES , which both had a much more comprehensive selection of games. In 1993, Amstrad released the PenPad , a PDA , and bought into Betacom and Viglen in order to focus more on telecommunications rather than computers. Amstrad released the first of its combined telephony and e-mail devices, called the e-m@iler , followed by

6150-558: Was one of the party's biggest donors, but left the party in 2015 and subsequently expressed support for the Conservative Party . According to the Sunday Times Rich List , Sugar became a billionaire in 2015. In 2021, his fortune was estimated at £1.21bn, ranking him as the 138th-richest person in the UK. Alan Michael Sugar was born on 24 March 1947 in Hackney , East London , into a Jewish family . His father, Nathan,

6232-427: Was ordered to pay Amstrad $ 153 million in damages for lost revenue. This was later reduced by $ 22 million in an out of court settlement. In the early 1990s, Amstrad began to focus on portable computers rather than desktop computers. Also, in 1990, Amstrad entered the gaming market with the Amstrad GX4000 , but it was a commercial failure, largely because there was only a poor selection of games available. Additionally, it

6314-502: Was reported as having been looking for a buyer for Amstrad "for some time". Amongst the group's assets, cumulatively valued at £200 million , the Dancall subsidiary was of particular interest to potential acquirer Psion , producer of handheld computer products, for its expertise in "GSM digital mobile phone functionality" and the potential to integrate such functionality into Psion's own product range. Despite "long drawn out negotiations",

6396-509: Was somewhat unusual for the fact that it had a physical volume control on the internal speaker . This allowed the user to make the machine beep quietly, or silently, from boot time onwards. This innovation is still not present in most modern PCs: the legacy beeper is typically still a fixed-volume device. General hardware specifications of the PC1512: Four disks were supplied with floppy models, five with hard drive models. The system

6478-532: Was taken off the Stock Exchange on 9 October 2008. Amstrad has ceased operations as a trading company, and now exists in name only. Amstrad's former offices are now a Premier Inn Hotel. PC1512 Whereas IBM's PC (and almost all PC compatibles) had a power supply in a corner of the main case, the PC1512's power supply was integrated with that of its monitor . The monitor had sufficient venting to cool itself by convection , instead of needing

6560-474: Was the first in a line of Amstrad PCs. In 1988, Stewart Alsop II called Sugar and Jack Tramiel "the world's two leading business-as-war entrepreneurs". The 1990s proved a difficult time for the company. The launch of a range of business PCs was marred by unreliable hard disks (supplied by Seagate ), causing high levels of customer dissatisfaction and damaging Amstrad's reputation in the personal computer market, from which it never recovered. Subsequently, Seagate

6642-596: Was the only manufacturer producing receiver boxes and dishes at the system's launch, and continued to manufacture set top boxes for Sky, from analogue to digital including Sky's Sky+ digital video recorder . With the addition of the Astra 1B TV satellite in May 1991 even more TV programs were available in Central Europe. In former East Germany as well as in the parts of former West Germany that had no access to cable TV,

6724-563: Was the owner (and Chairman of the board) of Viglen Ltd, an IT services provider catering primarily to the education and public sector. He resigned his position on 1 July 2009. Following the sale of Amstrad PLC to BSkyB, Viglen was Sugar's sole IT establishment until its sale to XMA in 2014. Sugar is Chairman of Amscreen, a company run by his son Simon, specialising in selling advertising space on digital signage screens that it provides to retailers, medical centres and leisure venues. Apprentice winner Yasmina Siadatan worked there, selling into

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