The CV

An extraordinary CV for an extraordinary life and career.

Read Lord Sugar's CV, with its extracts from his bestselling autobiography What You See is What You Get, and discover what it takes to make a true entrepreneur.

Alan Sugar was born in 1947 and brought up on a council estate in Clapton, in Hackney. He started spotting money-making opportunities as a kid, engaging in activities as diverse as selling surplus 35mm film to schoolmates (undercutting the photographic shops by 50%) and making and selling his own ginger beer. At the age of nineteen he set up his own company; through his CV we see how Amstrad's groundbreaking ventures in hi-fi and computers made him the darling of the stock exchange. The breadth of his experiences is apparent, from buying Tottenham Hotspur FC and exposing corruption in the football industry to starring in the BAFTA-winning television show The Apprentice; from his appointment as Enterprise Champion, advising the government on small business and enterprise, to his elevation to the peerage.