What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (89 page)

I argued with advertising agencies and media buyers that they needed to convince their clients that advertising on the email phone was
not
internet
advertising - our screen was like a miniature version of a street hoarding which sat in people's homes. Where else could you
guarantee
consumers would get to see the advert? Despite these arguments, we failed. We had a great technical solution to send targeted adverts to users' screens; we could profile different regions and change the adverts quickly. Yet in spite of all this, the advertisers did not cotton on that we were offering them, in advertising terms, a Trojan horse into consumers' homes. The only company who actually understood the concept was BSkyB, who spent a lot of money on advertising these phones and proved they got new subscribers from it. Yet even with BSkyB's testimony, we still weren't able to convince others.

Bob Watkins also wanted us to embark on developing our own mobile phone. Having spoken to Dancall's former chief engineer, Per Christianson, Bob told me that mobile phone technology had become much simpler now and it would be easy for us develop a phone and get a share of the market. I agreed that we should go ahead with this on the basis that we worked hand in hand with Per Christianson, who had now joined Infineon, a chip manufacturer wholly owned by Siemens.

Bob had seen his return to New Amstrad as a last throw of the dice to be a businessman rather than just an engineer. His first project was the email phone, on which he
did
spend most of his time handling the engineering side. I left him to this mobile phone business on the basis that he would try to replicate what we'd achieved at Dancall.

Around that time, Virgin had decided they would start a mobile phone service. Unlike Vodafone, Orange or Mercury, they didn't have a proper network infrastructure with their own antennas in the streets, but would buy wholesale volume from Mercury, a main network operator. I set up a meeting with Richard Branson and the chief executive of Virgin Mobile to discuss the possibility of us supplying them and as a result they became our first customer. I left the whole thing in Bob's hands, thinking it was a done deal. All he had to do was develop the phone and get it into mass production.

Unfortunately, Bob's assertion about the technology no longer being rocket science turned out to be untrue. Bob had laid on production with a sub-contractor in China and promised them we were going to make millions of these phones, but as time passed, the software was nowhere near finished and there were terrible technical problems.

As a side issue, Margaret Mountford had decided she'd had enough of being a corporate lawyer, working every hour of the day, and wanted a less demanding but interesting challenge. I was eager to get her on the board at New Amstrad, and she joined Jeoff Samson as a non-executive director.

Cracks started to appear on the mobile phone project. Pressure was coming from Margaret and Jeoff to the effect that Bob's adventure was burning money and putting the company in a vulnerable situation. On deeper investigation, it seemed we'd committed over a million pounds for parts with the sub-contractor in the Far East. Additionally, Infineon had been given a contract for half a million chips, but Infneon's senior management had instructed Per Christianson to no longer communicate with Bob Watkins, as we were constantly breaking our promises on accepting delivery of the chips. It was another disaster, which resulted in me having to ask Bob to leave for the third time, which he duly did in September 2001.

It was crying shame that this man was not satisfied doing what he was best at - engineering. He had this unshakable conviction that he was a businessman. In the early days after bringing him back to New Amstrad, I gave him his head and let him get on with things, as he'd learned a lot about telephones when he worked for Gulu, and he decided we should continue with the traditional Betacom business of selling ordinary fixed-line telephones. For the first couple of years, I went along with his scheme, but it was peanuts selling PS5-6 phones to people like Argos and every year the division lost money. I'd made the point to Bob so often - that the effort involved in selling items for a fiver is a waste of time - yet he convinced me to continue with it. After losing money for two seasons I gave him six months to sort it out. Bob finally realised I was right and I managed to sell the division, with the staff included, to the company Alba - a nice, elegant way out. Now it was again left to me to get us out of trouble, this time on the mobile phone venture. It cost us a lot of money to pay off the sub-contractor in the Far East. Fortunately, Richard Branson was okay with the situation and was able to buy his phones from other suppliers. That was the end of our romance with mobile phones.

*

Back at Spurs, George Graham had become something of a silent assassin. He would pretend to be trying to work professionally with me, but at every press conference he would tell the media that the Tottenham team was not capable of winning things, saying that he needed at least three new players. If we bought three players, he would tell the press he needed
another
three players. I decided, from past experience, to keep my mouth completely shut when questioned by the media about Graham's opinions. Thankfully, some journalists could see that Graham was constantly buying players yet continually saying he still needed more, and it was mildly heart-warming to see the sensible
ones picking up on exactly what I was thinking. Nevertheless, Graham sang the same old song at every press conference after he'd lost a match.

I recall one particular game in the League Cup, in December 1999, when we were drawn against Fulham, who were not in the Premier League at the time. It was one of those games that Graham and his squad thought would be a walk in the park. We'd roll over this lower-league team - no problem at all - and march into the next round.

Wrong. We were beaten 3-1. After the match, I was gutted we were out of the cup. As I left the ground, I looked across at Graham and shook my head. He knew I was angry at our defeat. I saw him scuttling away with a bunch of his cronies. Fulham's ground was close to London's King's Road, where all the flash restaurants were, and he was off to dinner with his wife and his friends, including Jeff Powell of the
Daily Mail.

The following day the most disgusting article, written by Jeff Powell, was published in the
Daily Mail.
The outrageous headline read, 'Why miserly Sugar must come out of his counting house and give George the money.' The article accused me of never investing in the club. What's more, the loss at Fulham was
not
the fault of football genius Graham; no, it was
my
fault because of lack of investment.

I went berserk. I rushed down to the training ground where Graham was in a meeting with some of his staff. I burst through the door and told them to get out. Graham looked at me and said, 'Chairman, we're having an important meeting about tactics.'

I told him I didn't give fuck about tactics and to get them out now. They all jumped up and scurried out. I slammed the article down on the desk in front of Graham and said, 'This is what your mate has written. Did you tell him to write this when you went out to dinner with him?'

Graham said, 'No, Chairman. This is a surprise to me - I haven't seen it. I've been working all morning, I haven't even looked at the papers. I don't know what it's all about - what does it say?'

'You know exactly what it bloody says. It's your friend Jeff Powell protecting your arse. Now, here's a fucking message from me to you to give to him. My lawyers are going to be on to the
Daily Mail
today. If he doesn't retract what he says in the paper, I'm taking him to court. And here's the bad news, George:
you
are going to be called as a witness, simple as that. I will drag you into the witness box, because
this
is a piece of shit. I've had enough stick now from people. And by the way, I've had enough of you telling everyone in press conferences you need six more players.'

Graham could see I was really angry. He reiterated that the article had nothing to do with him.

Now, I want to explain why I reacted so strongly to these types of articles by some of the sports journalists. I'd learned to take the rough with the smooth when it came to the press - it comes with the territory when you put yourself in a goldfish bowl as a high-profile businessman. The financial media bigged me up when I was on the way up in the mid-eighties, then they slagged me off when things started to go wrong. This is par for the course. I think it fair to say that the treatment I received from the UK financial media was 'reasonable and correct reporting' and I never engaged in any arguments or litigation with the UK media over any criticism of me to do with business.

With football, however, it was a different matter. I think one has to look at the quality of some of the football journalists writing for the tabloid newspapers to understand why. Basically, they are glorified fans, in awe of people like Terry Venables, George Graham and Brian Clough. In the eyes of these hacks, the chairmen and directors of football clubs are the devils, while the players and managers are the angels.

Before I alienate the whole of the sports-reporting industry, I will make the point that in some of the serious newspapers there are some great journalists who are balanced and honest - Neil Harman, Patrick Collins and Oliver Holt, for example, and to a certain extent Brian Woolnough. On the other hand, if Harry Harris didn't like somebody, he would criticise them. Fortunately, he trusted me and was very supportive. So much so that sometimes it was a bit cringey and in fact he got himself in bad odour with his contemporaries for being so supportive of this ogre Sugar in the days of the Venables altercations.

I can take fair reporting, but unlike many other chairmen, I wasn't prepared to put up with lies printed about me in the football media. I had taken legal action against newspapers on many occasions. Most never reached court and were settled with damages paid to me and an apology printed in the paper. The system was unfair in that they'd write an article about me which was a pack of lies and it would appear as a back-page headline or a double-page spread, but the apology would be no bigger than a postage stamp, lost in the body of the paper.

During the years I was involved in football, over PS800,000 was paid to me in damages, all of which was donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital. The people at Great Ormond Street still joke with me that sadly they haven't seen me being slagged off in the papers lately, a shame as they were looking forward to another donation.

The
Daily Mail's
in-house lawyer, who had dealt with Alan Watts from Herbert Smith a number of times before on defamation matters, was quite a sensible person. He knew, from the letters Herbert Smith had sent, that Powell was dead in the water. Under normal circumstances, I'm sure he would have agreed to pay some damages and print the usual postage-stamp apology. The
Daily Mail
had coughed up loads of money in the past to compensate for the lies they'd printed about me. These disputes never got as far as court and it wouldn't have surprised me if this time, once again, another piece of medical equipment was going to be winging its way to Great Ormond Street.

However, on this occasion, we received a letter from the
Daily Mail
saying they would
not
be offering an apology or paying any damages and that Jeff Powell stood by his words and would be defending the case. Powell had obviously persuaded his bosses that this matter should be fought, regardless of their lawyer's advice. Powell reckoned I was the kind of person who would threaten to take legal action but would fold before it got to court, because I wouldn't want to stand up and be a witness.

The case took about fifteen months to get to trial. Meanwhile, Graham was shitting himself. He'd never been called to court to be a witness before. I told him I wanted him to provide a witness statement and if he didn't, we'd have to subpoena him. I explained that all he had to put in his witness statement were the facts: that during his management of Tottenham he had purchased more players than he'd ever purchased in his whole managerial career and that he'd spent more money at Tottenham than he'd ever spent at any of the previous clubs he'd managed. He couldn't deny these facts, as they were on the record. Therefore, having taken separate advice from his lawyer, he grudgingly completed his witness statement and signed it.

I guess my wildcat decision to appoint Graham as manager was, to a certain extent, acceptable to the fans, as long as results were coming in. The fans could no longer argue about money, as even the biggest thicko could see that a fortune had been spent since Graham had come in, but he turned out to be useless as far as management was concerned. Fans could now see beyond his so-called reputation, but his pals in the media would never blame Spurs' poor performances on him. Instead, when the results weren't good, there was a groundswell of criticism of
me.
The emphasis changed from me being the horrible man who wouldn't invest any money in the club, to me being the horrible man who'd brought George Graham to the club and ruined it.

After one particularly dismal performance under Graham's management - a cup tie against Birmingham (again a lower-league team), when we got
slaughtered 3-1 at home - the fans were frustrated and started chanting for my head. Ann was sitting next to me while the crowd were screaming, 'Sugar out! Sugar out! Sugar out!' This wasn't the first time they'd chanted this, but on this occasion the whole stadium seemed to erupt; it was really frightening.