Alan Sugar's family life with wife and children revealed
Lord Alan Sugar returns to our screens on Thursday night in the 19th season of BBC One's The Apprentice. The new series will see 18 candidates head to the iconic boardroom in the hopes of becoming Lord Sugar's next business partner. After competing in a series of tasks and challenges, just one contestant will bag the £250,000 investment and mentorship from the business titan.
Lord Sugar has seen many aspiring entrepreneurs come and go throughout his impressive career, but one person who's remained a constant is his wife Ann Simons. Keep reading for all we know about their 56-year marriage and family life.
Alan and Ann's love story began back in 1966, when the future business mogul was just 18 and Ann was 16 and worked as a hairdresser.
Sharing her first impression of Alan in a BBC documentary from 2009, Ann said: "He was very straight-talking, I wasn't used to that type of thing but that's what I liked about him," she said, adding: "Don't know why but I did!"
The couple struck up a romance and two years later tied the knot on 28 April 1968 at Great Portland Street Synagogue. Their nuptials were followed by a two-week honeymoon in Majorca.
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Recalling his proposal to Ann in a previous interview, Alan confessed that he didn't make a grand gesture. "We were going over the Stratford flyover in the minivan at the time. It was more along the lines of, 'I suppose we should get married then?'" he explained. "There was certainly no going down on one knee, with a rose, in a restaurant."
In 2008, Alan and Ann celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary with a lavish black-tie party, with over 250 people on the guest list.
According to the Daily Mail, Alan made a touching speech about his wife, telling his guests: "I can honestly say I have never ever heard anyone say a bad word about Ann. As you know you can't say the same about me. Talk about chalk and cheese. She always says the day she met me she knew she had met Mr Right; what she didn't know was that my first name was Always."
He went on to say: "A real successful man puts the love of his wife and children first, a real successful man's greatest position in life is to have a great family. I am lucky enough to have had a wife for 40 years, who gave me three great children, who in turn have given us seven wonderful grandchildren."
Nowadays, the couple live in Chigwell, Essex, which isn't too far from his business headquarters in Brentwood.
While Ann remains out of the limelight, she also has links to the entertainment industry as the aunt of EastEnders actress Rita Simons.
When Rita went into the I'm a Celebrity jungle back in 2018, she spoke about her relation to Alan and explained how she got her acting jobs through auditioning, rather than her family connections. "I never wanted to be famous, that was never my intention," she said. "It was my intention to be an actor and a performer which is what I do, and not how can Alan help me do that?"
Alan's children and comments about fatherhood
Alan and Ann share three children: sons Simon and Daniel and a daughter named Louise.
The couple welcomed Simon in 1969, the year after their wedding, before Daniel arrived in 1971, followed by Louise in 1974.
Opening up about fatherhood during an appearance on Piers Morgan's Life Stories in 2019, Alan admitted he was not a "modern-day father" while bringing up his children.
"I was not at the birth of Simon, the eldest," he confessed. "I was playing tennis. And I must admit I was not the modern-day father."
Quizzed on how many nappies he had changed, Alan replied: "Maybe two or three," before adding that he and his wife "had help" by the time their third child, Louise, arrived.
When asked if he had any regrets about the time he spent at work, Alan said: "Compared to the modern father? Yeah.
"I was out working and I wouldn't get home until eight o'clock at night," he continued. "The thing is that we are very normal people. We kept the children grounded and that's why they are normal people."
The business mogul did, however, describe keeping his children "grounded" as an "achievement". "The thing is that we are very normal people," he explained. "We kept the children grounded and that's why they are normal people."
He added: "That's bigger than making the hundreds of millions or whatever you want to talk about."
The Apprentice returns to BBC One and iPlayer on Thursday 30th January 2025.