It should be interesting to watch guests' body language when Sir Alan Sugar walks up to the podium at the Marketing Society Christmas lunch in early December. Will the festive banquet take on the atmosphere of a school assembly awaiting instructions as the man who must be obeyed makes his points with the dexterity of a darts pub champion?

Or, will the Amstrad founder show the grace expected of a noble gentleman decorated by Her Majesty the Queen for achievements to the United Kingdom? The latter might be a wiser choice as his Irish guests, seated upright, mull over the thought: “Jaysus Sugar, it's a long way from a council flat in London's east end, you've come”.

Sugar – one tends to drop the royal moniker in a Republic – rose to great heights in business. The son of a tailor, he started Amstrad electronics in 1968, aged 21. The name was not created by a marketing guru, but as with all good salesmen, it was a DIY job. Amstrad is an acronym of the initials of Alan Michael Sugar plus the ‘trad' in trading.

Amstrad designed, developed and sold electronic products. Having listed the business in 1980, Sugar shot to fame by launching a series of word processors and home computers.

Amstrad struggled since its heyday in the 1980s when it launched Britain's first mass-market computer, becoming a household name and earning a market value of over