Sweet he is not. But Sir Alan is soon to become Lord Sugar and he will join the Government in a role to promote entrepreneurship.

The millionaire host of The Apprentice and Britain's most belligerent businessman is to be given a peerage and will be called on by Gordon Brown to help to "boost enterprise" as the embattled Prime Minister undertakes a reshuffle of his Cabinet after this week's string of high-profile departures.

Sir Alan, 62, is a long-standing supporter of Mr Brown and was spotted entering Downing Street yesterday as the political crisis enveloping the Government worsened.

Giving a TV interview this morning, Sir Alan lent further support to Mr Brown, saying he would not step down and that he did not think everyone in Government was of the opinion that he should just because a number of ministers had resigned.

Sir Alan, who was knighted in 2000 for services to business and holds two honorary Doctorates of Science degrees, is already a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Council for Britain, which advises on issues affecting enterprise and the economy.

He has also extended financial support to Labour by donating £200,000 in 2001.

Seen as the archetypal East Ender done good, Sir Alan was born in Hackney, East London, and has gone on to achieve fame first in business, then through his time as chairman of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club and more recently as a TV star.

The son of a tailor, he started his business ethic early on, making extra money from boiling and selling beetroot from a stall while at school.

After leaving school at 16, he worked briefly in the Civil Service as a statistician and then started selling car aerials and electronic goods.

Sir Alan set up Amstrad, which stands for Alan Michael Sugar Trading, in 1968, when he was 21, and started selling stereos before moving into personal computers.

The company, which is widely credited with giving many consumers their first experience of personal computing, listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1980 but struggled to compete with larger PC manufacturers.

At one stage Amstrad had a stock market value of £1.1 billion

Amstrad shifted its focus to making set-top boxes for satellite TV, which led to the company being bought in 2007 by BSkyB, which is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corporation, the parent company of The Times, in a deal that landed him about £34.5 million.

With the majority of his wealth in property in London, Florida and Spain, Sir Alan has seen his fortune shrink by about £100 million to £730 million, according to The Sunday Times Rich List.

During his chairmanship of Spurs, the North London club he bought with Terry Venables in 1991, Sir Alan angered fans by dismissing Mr Venables, for which he famously said it made him feel “as though I’d killed Bambi”.

He ended his association with the club in 2007, describing his efforts as “a waste of my life”.

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