The Conservatives said the bill, as it stood, was an "Amstrad" when "we wanted an IPod".

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Gordon Brown named the businessman, who sold his Amstrad business in 2007, as the government's enterprise champion last month.

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Lord Sugar, who founded the Amstrad computing business and is now best known for his Apprentice reality TV programme, is guest editing the Radio Times.

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In 1984, he created The Lords of Midnight, originally for the 8-bit ZX Spectrum and subsequently converted for the Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64.

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Sir Alan, head of computer firm Amstrad and a former chairman of Tottenham Hotspur football club, adopted the catchphrase for his stint as host of the show.

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But nowadays Amstrad dominates the market not just in home computers and laptops but in mobile phones, while Clive Sinclair's latest tablet had geeks queueing outside Spectrum stores in London, New York and Tokyo.

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