Lord Sugar*: Losers and prima donnas need not apply

Tips from the top...

Terence Blacker
Tuesday 17 May 2011 19:00 EDT
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There's websites, there's manuals, there's experts, there's all sorts out there but at the end of the day you've come to me for tips from the top. Now why's that?

Shut up, I'll tell you why. Because I'm Lord Sugar, and because when I left school back at 16 back in Hackney without a pot to piss in, I learnt the biggest lesson of my life. You find the customer, you get a good price, you make a profit. End of. It don't matter to me if the customer is the bloke next door, a granny with a hearing aid or bloomin' Genghis Khan. Get in there, do the deal, move on. It's not rocket science, right?

No, shut up, that's why you're nobody and I'm Lord Sugar, worth £800m, with a chauffeur-driven Roller with AMS1 number-plates. It's why, when I walk through that frost-glass door and sit down between Nick and Karren, it's bloody squeaky-bum time in the boardroom, right? I don't like losers, and I don't like prima donnas. I can't stand people who think they know the answers, or smart-alecks who do know the answers. I don't like people who answer back, or keep schtum like bloody shrinking whasnames when I ask a question. I don't like these people, I don't need 'em and I certainly don't employ 'em.

Hold on, hold on, I'll give you tips from the top in my own time, yeah? Education: I never said it wasn't important. Learn how to use a calculator, books (how to balance them), a few of what I call marketing skills (spotting the mugs, basically), and then on your bike – it's time to make some money.

When journalists interview me, I tell them straight. You may have read loads and sat on your arse at Poncyface College, Cantab, but who's the billionaire round here and who's working for a rag no one reads? Tell you what, when I was a nipper, a newspaper was something you hung on a nail in the outside khazi. At least they were useful in them days.

And if anyone comes to me and tries it on with their airs and graces, I'll tell you this – they're going to get mullered. At the end of the day, I'm just a bloke making his way in the world. I like to have my down-time hanging out with my mates at the House of Lords bar. The people who work for me call me by exactly the same name as my own missus and family. "Your lordship", "Lord Sugar", "Sir" – I don't stand on bloody ceremony.

Now get out. I'm sick of your face.

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