When Harry Met...Alan Sugar

Harry Borden looks back on two brief but fruitful shoots with the businessman and TV personality

Alan Sugar, who became Sir Alan Sugar and is now Lord Sugar, has been one of the UK’s leading businessmen since the 1970s. Although he came from a working-class background, his budget consumer electronics company, Amstrad, made him a multi-millionaire. For ten years he was the chairman and part-owner of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Since 2005, he’s been best-known for his appearances in the popular BBC TV series The Apprentice.

I first photographed him in 2001 for the business magazine Management Today. At that time, I was doing the portrait that went with the magazine’s main interview and on this occasion he was the subject.

The shoot took place in a building in central London, overlooking Marble Arch. Sugar was doing some property developing and had bought the building, refurbished it and converted it into luxury flats. It had been done up in a very traditional, elegant way and was one of the best addresses in London you could imagine. It was a fascinating insight into the other strings to the businessman’s bow.

He is an interesting person to photograph because he’s a little powerhouse and he’s also got a fabulously wrinkled face. I do have a lot of respect for him. However, it was clear from the outset that I wasn’t going to get much time for the shoot. He was extremely brusque and didn’t really do small talk at all. The persona we see on television in The Apprentice isn’t an act.