Sugarballs

Alan Sugar is a tosser and a flake of the old school.

He'll always be a tosser because he lives in that fog occupied by those who huff n puff but are always the last to catch on when it's their mickey being extracted.

His pale pimping of the Donald Trump 'Apprentice' show made him a weekly butt of mockery.

Now he is pushing new boundaries of self-referential obtuseness, threatening clever Quentin Letts with a libel suit for outing him as 'stupid'.

Let's be in no doubt:

Alan Sugar is stupid. Unusually so. Even he admits he didn't know what 'taking the Labour whip' meant.

But that's not actually being stupid. That's just one of the many surface ignorances our seed-spiller thinks passes for a cloak of stupidity.

He mixes in the worst company - just look at the bogus types who turn up on his show.

So old hat that no one thinks to mention it any more, but Sugar only got his 'peerage' because of his high profile cavortings as a simian TV 'personality'.

Like all bullies, he is au fond a coward, hence his attacking Letts personally.

It will rebound and some eminent names have seen it off to a romping good start:

"Sir: We the undersigned wish to condemn Baron Sugar of Clapton’s threatened legal action against our colleague Quentin Letts for calling him a ‘telly peer’ who ‘doesn’t seem to have an enormous intellect’ on LBC on 20 July.

According to a letter Mr Letts received from Herbert Smith, Lord Sugar will issue a writ against Mr Letts for libel unless he pays his legal costs to date, donates an undisclosed sum to a charity and gives a written undertaking never to criticise him again.

When journalists have been sued by public figures in the past — particularly by Members of Parliament — the convention has been to sue the newspaper or broadcaster that provided them with a platform, not to pursue the journalist personally.

In this way, Britain’s libel laws have been kept on a level playing field, since few individual journalists can afford to fight a legal battle on their own.

However, Lord Sugar has dispensed with this convention. No corresponding action has been threatened against LBC, which means that if Mr Letts decides not to bow to Lord Sugar’s demands, he faces potentially ruinous costs a proportion — as much as a third — of which he wouldn’t recover, even if he won.

The absence of a First Amendment in Britain means that we depend to a great extent on the observance of legal convention to preserve our free speech. If parliamentarians are now going to threaten to sue individual journalists personally, members of the press will be inhibited from scrutinising them in future.

This is a particularly dangerous development, given how many journalists are now working as freelancers.

We urge Lord Sugar to withdraw his threat so we can continue to write and speak freely about public figures."

Roger Alton, Matthew d’Ancona, Liz Anderson, Martin Bright, Jeremy Clarke, Nick Cohen, Nicholas Coleridge, Lloyd Evans, James Forsyth, Julia Hobsbawm, Rachel Johnson, Dylan Jones, Mary Killen, India Knight, Rod Liddle, John Micklethwait, Fraser Nelson, Matthew Parris, Stephen Pollard, Hugo Rifkind, Andrew Roberts, Alan Rusbridger, Sebastian Shakespeare, Paul Staines, Sarah Standing, Mary Wakefield, Toby Young

Good jab by the acute Iain Dale and more to follow

The media likes rich blinkered thickos who blunder into the ordure up to their stubbly juddering jowels.

I sent the sensitivo Sugarballs a polite postcard (words of one syllable) showing our yobbiest resort. As I popped it into the box I commented to my companion that I should have appropriately addressed it to Lord Sugar of Kavos. Without missing a beat, she came back, "Lord Zakari of Naphos, more like."

Rather good, I thought; captures the precise tone of his ignoblement.

More, much more, to follow on the Sugarballs Express

To grasp the full hilarious magnitude of how Sugarballs just doesn't get it - and it's not just his age or commode-hugging insecurities - you have to hear for yourselves his mangled vocab and see his nervous twitching vacuity on camera.

Succherine Punch: When the gloves are off, it's sometimes necessary to fight dirty. Here, in all its gaffe naff laff gory detail, is the Wikipedia entry on Sugarbollocks. (Stop sniggering at the back! There but for one-handed pointy-capped Fate could have waddled thou)

Brunel Babble: the "real" sweetie

Woss Wankery: Alain Michel Sucre duels doltishness with the fop. (NSFW or after food.)

Just coz we're taking a merciless piss out of the gnome, doesn't mean we can't have a decent singalong.

Crest and history

Childish Games - a rather good blogarium I came across while trawling the Net for anything intelligent or impressive in 'Slowhand' Sugar's past.

Peabrain nominated Tory secret weapon

Prat - Wally - Dipstick and also here.

Clueless: 'no idea about apprenticeship'

Mensa-standard, IQ-bursting Enterprise sage: Quentin Letts good on "Sugarlump, his underling and a question of principle"

Minnows Couchant: Q Letts good on Sugarballs' quest to go armigerous.

Deft hint of disgust

Nothing but approval for Vogue cover babe, the unlikely named Liskula Cohen, but a shudder why she's even in the news: Ms Cohen has won the right "to unmask an anonymous blogger who called her a “skank” on the internet."

Apart from 'Nog-Blog being wrong, this is bad news because it also means that M'sieur Skank 'n' Spice can now 'unmask' me as the mystery sniper who's reduced him to such a bleating laughing stock.

ParkyBalls: Ayup, nowt as flakey as folk. Clearly unwilling to see Sugarballs take the Tosser crown unchallenged, our best known toy 'Yorkshireman' steps in with a saccharine-style gaffe to even the odds. You know, I've taken authors to Parkinson interviews and been a fellow guest at showbiz dos, even been in elevators with the great man ... and I have never felt any real confidence or honesty ooze from that direction.

Indeed, when he feels the spotlight is on him, Mr P ramps up the 'Yokel of the People' act to an extent that makes those around him positively titter (albeit behind their softie southerner paws)

Let's have another viewing of that classic Emu vs ParkyFlakes encounter. Note how Parkyballs loses all cool and cannot deal with it.

Club for foes of Sugarlump: What an excellent idea. Sign me up pronto. And what a good sort sounds Lord Evans of Temple Guiting (Lab). Zounds! I had no idea he was né booksy Matthew Evans, "husband of fizzing literary agent Caroline Michel", to boot. Gosh that takes me back to my own press hackery days under the genial lash of TG Rosenthal and the late great John Blackwell.

Plumbing new depths ~ Ace diarist Matt Bell spots a good one, and delivers a zippy quip about guarantees:

"Has Sir Alan Sugar been offered a two-for-one deal from his lawyers?

Not content with suing Daily Mail journalist Quentin Letts, Sugar has instructed City firm Herbert Smith to fire off threatening letters to plumber-to-the-stars Charlie Mullins, millionaire founder of Pimlico Plumbers, for daring to suggest the Government's Enterprise Tsar did not know much about apprenticeships.

Far from being cowed, I gather Mullins has hired top libel specialists Mishcon de Reya, on the principle that you fight fire with fire. This could last longer than most plumbing guarantees."

Gobfail: Such a pleasure to move Cojones Sucrés back into the charts with this wonderful report of him being typically him.

He's the spitting image of a Spitting Image of his dwarfish self. Voice-wise he's a gift and as for wot comes outta his marf, remember that SNL show when the Palin spoof was entirely her own words? Genius.

That's all the SI magicians'd need - to simply run the gnome's natter verbatim - and viewers would be calling in to complain: "Come off it, chaps - too cruel. No one talks like that, not even John Prescott ... very funny ha ha, agreed, but let's not get too carried away."

Oh Lord, what a funny little man he is, to be sure.

His pale-shadow effort to copy The Donald was up in the Blackadder category of knockabout comedy. And did you notice with what feigned respec' those mirror wanker apprentices groveled and mewled? I dunno ... woss it all abaht, eh Shoogyballs?