Alan Sugar: I’ll fire myself – that’ll learn you

In what was described as an "astonishing rant" at an enterprise seminar in Manchester on Tuesday, the blunt-gobbed Sugar launched an attack on failing small business owners in response to a question from Alber Goldberg, an invisible-paint manufacturer (don't laugh) from the area, and exactly the type of entrepreneur that Gordon Brown hired Sugar to help, amid a welter of publicity, in June.

Riffing on Goldberg's complaint that four banks had recently refused to lend him money for a new product, Sugar described struggling businessmen as "moaners" who lived "in Disneyworld" for not understanding the harsh realities of the post-credit-crunch economy. "I would not give them one penny," he said. "They're bust. The moaners are bust."

Unfortunately for Sugar, the timing couldn't have been worse, coinciding as it did with a speech by his colleague, the chancellor, Alistair Darling, in which he hailed small firms as the "lifeblood" of British business. The incident left the prime minister with egg on his face and much of his suit, and Sugar, his flash new hire and freshly minted peer, facing calls that he should - oh, sweet irony - be fired.

Today, however, Sugar is defiant.

"Brrrr, yeah, well, if you believe what was written, they would have a point," says the burly, compact 62-year-old, leaning forward in his chair. The incident has left him feeling highly "frustrated", he says. "Basically they've taken a lot of my words out of context. Suggesting that I have said that 85% of all businesses are not worth lending to, that is absolutely totally wrong. Rubbish."

What did he say? "The fact was," he says, "that wasn't what I said. I took the precaution of recording the whole seminar for this very reason. I'll play you the clip, the actual thing, and then after that, I'd like you to take your time, drink some coffee and read that article. And you tell me whether, you know, you think that's fair representation."

Listening to the tape, however, I can see why Goldberg might have felt annoyed. Although Sugar clearly says, "I wouldn't put you in that category, sir", the rest of his answer is baffling and abrasive, and at times sounds directly personal.

Goldberg - whom Sugar refers to as "the paint man" - thought that the response was "out of order", I say. Sugar is instantly furious that I have taken this quote from a newspaper. "But you see, dare I suggest you're reading from a newspaper," he sneers. "How do you know he said that?"

Well, surely he did say that, I gabble. Perhaps I am being naive, but I can see why Goldberg might have done so, and I think, well I suddenly don't know what to think because I am only about six questions in and I am already scared by Sugar's manner, which is aggressive and weapons-grade charmless. I know that's his thing, but it's a bit of a shock to experience it first hand. Those poor, dumb, Apprentice stooges. Their boardroom sweat patches are real!

Anyway. Back to Goldberg. According to Sugar, "they're distorting what he said", he continues. "Let me make it easy for you . . ."

No, no, I say, I'm not trying to ... it's just his reaction after seemed ...

"His reaction is wrong!" shouts Sugar suddenly, exasperated. "It's as simple as that. I'm a bit concerned that you are taking what you choose to read in the newspaper as fact."

Okay, it's been a tough week. Sugar is feeling fragile, beset, in need of some positive PR - which he has already got down to himself: sending out e-mails about how popular he is, including the results of a Prince's Trust survey of great world leaders that puts him fourth behind Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, but ahead of Moses, he says. "I don't know what's better, that or beating Simon Cowell. Ha ha ha . . ."

He's also sent a copy of the seminar tape to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), perhaps to remind Brown, whom he's not spoken to yet, that he's in the right, because even Sugar realises none of this is particularly fab. Brown may even be having second thoughts about appointing him as enterprise champion. And to be honest, so is Sugar.

"This week, yeah, definitely," he says. "Too much negative stuff is really unhelpful. I may decide that this is simply not worth it, when you're giving your time free of charge for no agenda. What am I going to get out of it? I'm not getting paid. I've not got my titles for the sake of a badge. The small to medium-sized businesses need people like me. I am the man. I am," he pauses for effect, "the man."

Why is he doing it? He first met Brown in 1997, at a football match, "Coventry playing Spurs," he says. "We had a chat, and I said to him I'd be interested in embarking on visits to schools, and from that moment onwards I've been to every single university in the land." When Brown became prime minister in 2007, "we spoke, and he was pretty clear then that while he appreciated my efforts, in view of the fact that I've got a lot of businesses, that giving me a ministerial position would be totally not possible", he says.

A ministerial position, I say? How did that come up? Did Sugar want one?

"No, absolutely not."

Why did the topic even arise? Sugar, who has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to Labour, waves his hands. "No, no, I think he just mentioned it to me, that, um, now he's PM, what he wanted me to do was join his business council . . ."

Right, well, anyway, he was then "asked to do the apprenticeship thing for Ed Balls this time last year". The scheme, which aimed to encourage youngsters to take up apprenticeships, saw Sugar conduct seminars, set up a website, "and I recorded some television adverts", he says.

One thing led to another and he was suddenly Lord Sugar and not Suralan, responsible for reinvigorating small and medium-sized businesses. It was an elevation that drew vitriolic horror from some quarters. Still, he has worked hard in his new role; it's been tough; he's done all right. He doesn't regret it, but with the recession it was a difficult task to take on, he says. "But I'd like to see what [David] Cameron would have done."

Sugar hasn't always been red, of course. Right up until 1997, the East End boy who started in business aged 19, building up his Amstrad empire throughout the 1980s, voted Tory.

"I voted for Thatcher," he says. Amstrad had a rocky time in the 1990s, but Sugar is still worth an estimated £730m today. "I admired her, letting cheeky chappies like me come into a marketplace which was normally riddled with the elite. My worry about the opposition party now is that we're going back to those days."

Would he work for the Tories? He pauses. "Um, well. Look, I'm working in the department at the moment, the BIS. I think it's safe to say if the Tories got in, they would say they didn't want my services."

What if they called him? "If anybody approached me to say would I continue supporting small and medium-sized businesses, I would say yes. I would continue my role under any government," he says, although he reiterates that he thinks there is about as much chance of George Osborne telephoning as "a rabbi eating a bacon sandwich. They wouldn't out of sheer belligerence, even if I was the best bloke in the country".

Still, his schemes have received mixed reviews. I pull out another article, which happens to be from the Mail.

"You like the Daily Mail, dontcha?" he bellows. "You should get a job working for them. Haven't you got it yet? Haven't you got it that the Daily Mail will never write anything positive about me or this government? Have you not got that point yet?" He throws his hands up. "I'm really not prepared to sit here having an interview with you based on press cuttings." Oh, he is ghastly! So rude. He even takes calls as we talk. I thought he cared about his public image. "I don't care, I'm not particularly bothered about what people think," he huffs. Anyway, when it came to his peerage, he shrugs, "there have gotta be doubters", he says, who include "the big business gurus in this country. They have a very low regard for me as a serious businessman, although they can't deny that somehow or other I've managed to amass this wealth". Young men don't like him either - "the 30 to 45-year-old testosterone male, if you ask him what do you think of Alan Sugar and that television programme, they'll call me a tosser and an idiot, that's not how you run business. But if I ever wrote a book, they'd be the type of people who read the book and put a white cover on the outside", he says. "My admirers are the young. I'm also admired by the 45 to 55-year-old lady, for some reason or other."

Because you're so handsome? "Nah, nothing to do with that. When I'm somewhere and a lady of that age group comes up and her husband is hovering in the background gritting his teeth as the wife is saying, 'Oh I really like your programme,' and the husband is standing behind, kind of nodding and gritting his teeth. I often say to my wife, 'Look at this'."

Sheesh, I'd forgotten the wife. Ann. What on earth must she make of her husband? They've been married for 41 years and have three children. Sugar's attitude to women is famously antiquated (he asks me if I know what a sub-prime mortgage is). He once notoriously said that since you're not allowed to ask a woman at job interview whether she is pregnant, "just don't employ them. It will get harder to get a job as a woman".

It's a(nother) comment he clearly regrets, so I ask him if he'd employ a woman who was pregnant.

"Would she be applying for a job if she was pregnant?" he asks, dumbfounded.

Why not? "Why would anyone give anybody a job knowing . . ." He considers the issue. "Unless it was a temporary job ... because if she was pregnant, then within three or four months she wouldn't be able to do the job, so if it was a temp job and you had a need, of course, why not?"

What about a full-time one?

"She wouldn't be able to do it, would she?" Well, yes, you'd hire her and then she'd go on maternity leave.

"Oh, I see. Well, technically, you have to," he says. Suddenly, he looks at me like a demented buzzard. "I'm not going to answer this question," he shouts. "I've had enough of this type of stuff. How could you ask a question like that? A woman comes in, 'I'm pregnant, I'm going to have a baby in four months' time, can I have a job please?' The only job you can give them is (a) something short-term or (b) if you know that person has had special skills and capabilities that you are short of and that, yes, you can have the job and yes I have to understand you'll be away for two months or three months . . ."

I'm sorry, I say, I ...

"I know there's been a lot of debate about this," he sweeps on. "This famous thing of if the woman comes, I chuck their CV in the dustbins. It's outrageous, an outrageous lie," his voice rises, "an outrageous lie. I think most women would be quite happy to talk about their home life, what they plan to do, and explain to employers that they've got everything sorted. Because human resource people can sit there and give them a nice face-to-face discussion, no intention of giving them a job, pretty please, pretty nice, and when they leave the room, no intention of putting them forward."

In fact, he seems to think it is women who are often the ones to block potential female employees. "Women are the biggest offenders! Women are the biggest offenders. Women know about women. They know. They think to themselves, she's young, she's attractive, she's going to get a boyfriend, what's going to happen? Women think about it more than men, in my opinion."

Sugar pauses to take on some air.

"Sometimes people don't like what I say, the way I express it, for example," he says. "I use an expression that people use sometimes, that you don't like hearing the home truth sometimes, and I'm ... I think that what the government needs is a refreshing person like me who tells it as it is. And you'll get newspapers like the Daily Mail who love it. I mean, I'm cannon fodder for them, I am their bread and butter, particularly when they deliberately take my words out of context."

I leave the offices and get in a taxi. The driver asks me if I've just had a meeting with Suralan. "Yes," I sigh. "Ha," he says. "I told him to get out of my cab once. It was late, I'd been waiting. He told me, nastily, that I'd wait as long as he was paying, so I told him to get out."