OVER the years he has morphed from East End market trader to Amstrad boss to failed football club chairman to The Apprentice’s ‘Siralan’ and finally to Lord Sugar of Clapton.

Now he’s back saying ‘You’re Fired’ to a new gaggle of wannabe entrepreneurs in the seventh series of The Apprentice.

And, by happy coincidence, his autobiography has just been published in paperback by Pan.

Lord Sugar famously doesn’t like schmoozers or time wasters. He certainly wasn’t one of those. Written in a direct ‘Siralan’ style, this is the tale of the boy from a council estate who became a lord.

Readers will inevitably tend to turn to the pages dealing with his ill-judged ownership of Tottenham Hotspur, or else flick to the end to get his take on some of the Apprentice candidates.

But his early life is fascinating, too – especially his accounts of the money-making schemes he got up to as a lad. He sold boiled beetroots from a display in front of his local greengrocer shop – a story which gives him the chance for a grumpy aside at the expense of tabloid newspapers which “endlessly and inaccurately” got it wrong.

He made ginger beer in his bathroom, decanted it into empty pop bottles, and tried to sell it from the sweet shop downstairs, “with limited success”.

When he couldn’t afford to buy a bike, he built one himself. “It was amazing how people would throw away old frames, wheels, handlebars and so on, which I’d collect.”

Those skills have never left him, he says, with that familiar hint of boastfulness disguised as plain-speaking. When his wife and children used to express surprise at his handiness with a bike, at mending a puncture, say, his response was simple: a shrug and a disparaging, “It’s easy”. You can almost see the expression he’d have worn.

This is an engaging, surprisingly well-written account of the life of one of our best known, most colourful businessmen.