‘If you can break America you can then be truly regarded as a global star’. This is usually a phrase linked to some of the UKs biggest music stars like Adele, Robbie Williams and Sade.
However Lord Sugar appears to have set his sights at having a go at making it across the pond reprising his Apprentice role stateside.
The 68-year-old said he “would like the challenge” of hosting the US version of his hit BBC reality show The Apprentice.
The NBC programme is looking for a new mogul after Donald Trump quit to launch his presidential bid in June.
NBC subsequently cut all ties with Trump – who also produced the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants – when he made a string of comments in which he characterised Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists.
Responding on Twitter to suggestions made by his own PR person Andrew Bloch that he would be the “perfect replacement”, Lord Sugar appeared to throw his hat into the ring, saying: “I would like the challenge”.
With @realDonaldTrump not doing The Apprentice USA anymore, @Lord_Sugar would make the perfect replacement
— Andrew Bloch (@AndrewBloch) June 30, 2015
.@AndrewBloch RT:With Trump not doing The Apprentice USA anymore, @Lord_Sugar would makeperfect replacement……I would like the challenge
— Lord Sugar (@Lord_Sugar) July 1, 2015
Although he is known in the UK for his colourful language and blunt manner, the British peer may strike US viewers as relatively tame compared with his American counterpart. Trump – who likes to refer to himself as “the Donald” – said NBC was “weak” and “foolish” for firing him and threatened to sue the broadcaster for axing Miss USA and Miss Universe.
Trump has also been very public in patronising the former founder of Amstrad. In 2012, they were embroiled in a Twitter spat after Trump called Lord Sugar “dopey” and told him: “Without my show you’d be nothing”.
In return, Sugar told him to “shut up” and said the American had “a charisma bypass”. Even Sugar’s Twitter nemesis, and the Brit who tried and failed to break America, Piers Morgan complimented his public desire to run for the role
Actually, not such a mad idea.. > RT @guardian Lord Sugar: I’d like to replace Donald Trump on Apprentice USA http://t.co/BsZqgYsdbj
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 1, 2015
The Apprentice launched in the US in 2004, a year before the first series of the BBC version. As ratings tailed off the format was changed to admit celebrity contestants only. The latest series of Celebrity Apprentice aired in January and February this year.
This is not the first time Lord Sugar has revealed his ambitions to make it in America.
The Amstrad founder once claimed he could have been as influential as Microsoft boss Bill Gates if he had crossed the Atlantic earlier in his career, saying: “People said that had I moved to America in the mid-80s I’d have gone on to rule the world.”
