Alan Sugar predicts Apple slide into obscurity

STUDENTS OF Alan Sugar haven't exactly been starved of the Brentwood Svengali ever since he graduated to TV mega-stardom on The Apprentice but Saturday's interview with The Times was a peach of the sweetest variety.

After the usual preliminaries, the Amstrad boss was soft-balled his favourite question: "Yet the question hanging over his career is how such a consummate entrepreneur, the man who first put a personal computer in the average home, has not ended up running the biggest corporation in the world?"

Yes, come on, Sir Alan, how come you're focused on inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs and dealing DIY cosmetics devices rather than running, oh I dunno, Microsoft or GE or at least IBM?

"You're right. You're exactly right," says Sugar ruefully. "But I'm a trader by nature. I'm a trader. And a trader cuts things back when things aren't going well, rather than investing all the money in to going forward a bit further. I'm a trader, and I'll never change from that."

But our interviewer incurs the wrath of the great man when he suggests that Sugar isn't exactly, you know, Steve Jobs.

"You people have very short memories," Sugar snarls. "Apple have been in the pits, they've nearly been bankrupt, they've had three CEOs? and then suddenly the iPod pulls them out of trouble again. As sure as I've got a hole in my bladdy arse, in three or four years' time, it'll be 'Apple who?'"

Quite right. And by then, the Sugar faithful trusts, Amstrad will have come with a worthy successor to the Em@iler. µ