Perhaps surprisingly for those who remember him as the controversial chairman of Tottenham Hotspur football club, people on this side of the Atlantic seem to have embraced Sir Alan Sugar as their very own sour Donald Trump - a media star and entrepreneurial role model - following the success of the British version of US reality TV show The Apprentice.

While the Trump version was warmly received in Europe, the British show has been called the sleeper hit of the season for BBC 2, where last week's episode was watched by more than 2.6 million people in Britain.

The show has also created a buzz, marked by high audience appreciation figures and lots of media attention.

It's hard to say whether the 58-year-old has let all this media attention go to his head. He first tasted fame during the 1980s when he listed Amstrad on the stock market and then again, more painfully, at Spurs.

The appeal of Britain's 55th richest man - worth an estimated £700 million (€1.03 billion) - is also that, while he may be cantankerous and opinionated, he is genuine rather than two-faced or smarmy, according to television producers.

In Sugar's words: "I am what I am. There's no acting in this thing."

But how does this straight-up style survive the demands of reality TV?

There's the space-age film set and shots of sparkly skyscrapers for a start, not that close to the reality of a squat red-brick office block in Brentwood. And surely the 14 candidates were chosen for their entertainment value rather than whether they would really want to work with Sugar?

Sugar denies this: "I swear to God, on my grandchildren's life." He takes himself and business far too seriously to have allowed anyone to choose the finalists.

One thing is real: Sugar has a view on everything and everybody. Here he is on some of the wannabes who are so desperate to work with him: Paul, the property developer, was "a bit liberal with the truth". James, the public schoolboy banker, was "clever but would have applied for Big Brother" and will be "a very, very disappointed chap".

He has forthright views on the British government, Iraq, Rover, customer surveys and happiness. He calls UK prime minister Tony Blair "a genuine stand-up fellow", and chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown "the best chancellor Britain has ever seen".

He switched parties ahead of the 1997 election and is still an ardent admirer of Thatcher. The switch wasn't difficult.

"This isn't a Labour government," he says. "They are a Conservative government. The difference is that they're not run by toffs and people born with silver spoons in their mouths for the elite. The opportunity is open for everybody."

Sugar may be typically British in that he's not a good schmoozer. He may own several Rolls-Royces and sport a permatan from spending time at his Floridian or Spanish homes, but they rarely grace the pages of glossy magazines. He has been happily married to the same woman for 37 years and his three grown-up children have all worked for him.

Apart from football - he is still Spurs' largest shareholder - he shuns society invitations.

"I don't go to these things. I gave them up. In the end I thought: what the hell am I doing? Standing here, wasting my time driving all the way into town, talking to ... a load of people who don't give a shit.

"I prefer being with my family or friends in a restaurant or at home watching telly ... rather than dragging all the way down to Mansion House, listening to people waffling on, sitting next to another load of wafflers. You know, pathetic people with no homes to go to."

His company has not fared particularly well under the renewed spotlight, despite the free advertising on the BBC. In February, when the show went on air, Amstrad's share price was 184p. Last week, , it was 131p, valuing the company at less than £113 million, a far cry from its heyday of more than £1 billion in 1989.

Having started selling car aerials from the back of a van at the age of 18, most of Sugar's wealth now comes from his property assets rather than Amstrad's "disappointing" videophones or even the more successful personal video recorders.

He may make great television, and Rupert Murdoch may have called him "probably Britain's greatest entrepreneur", but does anybody really want to be Alan Sugar?

"I don't think many people would want my job," he admits. "I'm a bit of a nutter. I do more work in a day than the average person does in a week."

What, 40 hours? A flash of irritation crosses his face as he says: "Same amount of hours but I'm just fast, very fast."