Alan Sugar flattens IBM South Bank

THE FINAL episode of BBC's The Apprentice last night had the final candidates rejuvenating the South Bank by virtually flattening the existing IBM structure and replacing it with something more to Alan Sugar's taste.

The irony of this will not be lost on long time Big Glue watchers.

A chunk of Alan Sugar's vast fortune came from the launch of an Amstrad PC clone sold at high street outfit Dixons and which flew off the shelves like the proverbial fresh dung off a hot spade.

One of his advisers on The Apprentice, Nick Hewer, used to reside in an eyrie in Covent Garden and attempt to sugarcoat and spin Amstrad PCs. It's even related that our very own Doctor Spinola worked for a period of time for Nick H. He fired him. Spinola said: "Nick H is a nice geezer though."

At one point there was a hue and outcry when some PC hack or other suggested that Amstrad PCs overheated. Alan Sugar denied that but in characteristic mode said that if people wanted *$%#^$# fans in their Amstrad PCs, then they could, er, ^*@$^@($@ well 'ave 'em.

We spent many a delightful breakfast in the company of other British hacks down at IBM South Bank in the days when it had the IBM PC Company. Big Glue used to serve up a rather tasty full English breakfast.

The time honoured Brithack trick was to chomp away at your own breakfast and then when it was time for the IBM guy to eat his, bombard him with questions so he couldn't tuck into his sausage, egg, bacon, tomato and the rest.

Not that Big Blue didn't get its revenge. We found ourselves in San Diego one fine morning at 5.30AM at an IBM power breakfast, which consisted of the usual US fare of crap stale muffins and muddy undrinkable coffee. Oh how we didn't laugh.

The fresh faced Simon won the task last night, with an improbable looking phallic edifice replacing IBM South Bank. The fact that the leaves were falling during the course of the final episode shown last night, just goes to show that the BBC's The Apprentice is far better at enforcing NDAs than Nvidia, Intel, AMD, and IBM ever were or will be. µ

L'INQ
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