Sir Alan Sugar’s consumer electronics group Amstrad is finally disappearing from the public markets, being sold to BSkyB (which is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corp, owner of The Times). Sir Alan’s business talents have been trumpeted by no less illustrious bodies than the BBC, where he fronts the popular television series The Apprentice, and National Savings & Investments, for which he advertises Premium Bonds.

Certainly, he has made money for himself. The latest Sunday Times Rich List estimates his personal wealth at £830 million, mostly in property.

But his record in making money for other people is less impressive. Amstrad’s long-term shareholders have little reason to cheer. Over the years, its performance has been pedestrian, at best. Since 1988, which is as far back as reliable records go, Amstrad has been a disappointment, apart from a brief golden moment in 1999 and 2000 when it was catapulted into the stratosphere by the technology mania.

Moments of commercial success, such as the highly popular PCW8512, for many Brits their first experience of personal computing, have been followed by lengthy fallow periods.

A thousand pounds invested in Amstrad shares in 1988 with all dividends reinvested was worth £3,000 last week and about £3,700 after BSkyB’s agreed offer. That equates to a compounded annual return of 7 per cent, probably no better than the return available from a building society savings account over the entire period. By contrast, the same money put into a broad spread of UK shares, as reflected in the FTSE All-Share index, would have grown to £7,000.

Sir Alan is in some ways a national treasure. There is no one better when it comes to belittling, hectoring and generally squashing self-important twentysomethings on prime-time television. For delivering pithy soundbites puncturing the egos of lawyers, management consultants, merchant bankers and Premiership footballers, he has no equal.

As a role model for modern-day stock market capitalism — in which the vast majority of shareholders are outsiders and not entrepreneurs — he has not scored so well.

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