Businessman and reality TV star Sir Alan Sugar has been branded as an ‘idiot’ and ‘out of touch’ after he suggested in a new interview that poverty doesn’t exist in Britain because poor people own microwaves and televisions.

The 68 year old knight of the realm, who is conservatively estimated to have a personal wealth of around £900 million, was speaking to The Times Magazine in an article that was published on Sunday (October 4th) when he went on an extraordinary rant, claiming that people should travel back in time 60 years to know what poverty is really like.

Sir Alan SugarSir Alan Sugar claimed that people aren't really poor in the UK because they own microwaves

“Who are the poor these days?” he argued. “You've got some people up North and in places like that who are quite poor, but they all have mobile phones, being poor, and they've got microwave ovens, being poor, and they've got televisions, being poor.”

“If you want to know what poor is like go and live where I lived in Hackney, where you didn't have enough money for the electric, didn't have a shilling for the meter.”

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Immediately, social media began to deride his comments. One user wrote: “Good god what an idiot. By the same logic, no one 60 years ago was poor because of conditions 100 years ago.” Another slammed: “Word from Lord Sugar: if you have a TV you cannot be poor. Does he think people watch their way to social mobility?”

Lord Sugar made his fortune through his consumer electronics company Amstrad, which he founded in 1968. He was chairman of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club from 1991 to 2001, and has been part of the BBC’s ‘The Apprentice’ since 2005.

In the same interview, he also took aim at former ‘Apprentice’ star Katie Hopkins, whom he described as “Piers Morgan on steroids”, adding that her slew of controversial comments over the years have been because “she’s just trying to make herself famous… …her niche is to be obnoxious and controversial and it’s a schtick.”

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