Alan Sugar becomes Murdoch's gofer

SIR ALAN Sugar's most famous company, Amstrad, is to be acquired by Bskyb for £125 million. The firm was making most of its profits from making set-top boxes and Sky was its biggest customer, anyway.

So this means that the man who styles himself as the UK's leading entrepreneur on The Apprentice TV series, will now have to report to Rupert Murdoch' son, James. A bit of a come-down.

The move is widely viewed as showing Bskyb's anxiety to be in charge of the technology that actually delivers its content - set-top boxes.

It won't please Sky's other box suppliers such as Pace and Thomson.

Reviewing Amstrad's chequered history, it's important to note that the remnants of the old Amstrad PC business were spun off into Viglen back in 1997.

Amstrad was also nearly acquired by Psion back in 1996. Some insiders suggested that Psion was interested in Amstrad's cellular comms unit to fulfil its plan to add wireless hooks to the Psion OS, EPOC. Which later became Symbian.

Perhaps the most risible claim made by Sugar was that Amstrad had invented the PDA back in 1991. He described it as Amstrad's biggest flop.

Another flop was the Amstrad emailer which was discontinued in 2006 after being overtaken by the rise of broadband.

The INQ recalls how the Amstrad boardroom couldn't be used for filming the TV series because it was then filled by unsold kit like Emailers and videophones.

It will be interesting to see how the Beeb bills Sir Alan in future series of The Apprentice. µ