The Right Honourable The Lord Sugar Kt |
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Sugar at the 2009 BAFTAs
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Born |
Alan Michael Sugar 24 March 1947 Hackney, East London, England |
Residence | Chigwell, Essex, UK |
Nationality | British |
Occupation | Entrepreneur, celebrity, author, politician |
Political party | Independent (2015-) Labour(1997–2015) |
Spouse(s) | Ann Simons, Lady Sugar (m. 1968) |
Children | Simon Sugar Daniel Sugar Louise Sugar |
Family | Rita Simons (niece) |
HM Government Enterprise Advisor | |
Assumed office 25 May 2016 |
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Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal |
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Assumed office 20 July 2009 Life Peerage |
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Alan Michael Sugar, Baron Sugar, Kt (born 24 March 1947) is a British business magnate of Jewish origin. He is also a media personality, politician and political adviser. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, Sugar joined the “billionaire’s club" in 2015 and in 2016 they estimated his fortune at £1.15bn, and ranked him as the 95th richest person in the UK. In 2007, he sold his remaining interest in the consumer electronics company Amstrad, his largest and best-known business venture.
Sugar was chairman of Tottenham Hotspur from 1991 to 2001. Sugar appears in the BBC TV series The Apprentice, which has been broadcast annually since 2005 and is based upon the popular US television show of the same name.
Sugar was born in Hackney, East London, into a Jewish family. His father Nathan was a tailor in the garment industry of the East End.
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 a greengrocers. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked briefly for the civil service as a statistician at the Ministry of Education. He began selling radio aerials for cars and other electrical goods out of a van which he had bought for £50 and insured for £8. To afford this, he withdrew all of his postal savings which totalled just £100.
Lord Sugar is an atheist, but remains proud of his Jewish heritage. Sugar and his wife Ann (née Simons) married on 28 April 1968; they have two sons, Simon and Daniel and a daughter Louise. The couple live in Chigwell, Essex.
Sugar owns a Cirrus SR22 four-seat aircraft. During an attempted landing at City Airport Manchester on 5 July 2008, Sugar suffered a crash in this aircraft because of wet and soft field conditions. No injuries were sustained, although Sugar was said to be "very shaken". He is a supporter and was the former owner of Tottenham Hotspur.