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'. It will rebound and some eminent names have seen it off to a romping good start: 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 Rather good, I thought; captures the precise tone of his ignoblement. 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. 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) 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." 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? Let's be in no doubt:
"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.
"Has Sir Alan Sugar been offered a two-for-one deal from his lawyers?
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