Would you hire or fire this man? Alan Sugar, star of The Apprentice and now the House of Lords, has produced his first ever curriculum vitae to prove his credentials for his job as the government’s enterprise czar.

A draft copy of the document, which he jokes he will hand out to peers on his first day at work, has been forwarded to The Sunday Times.

In its initial rough form it goes against the rule that a CV should not exceed two sides of A4. It is six pages long, talks about boiling beetroot and buying car insurance and skips over the key achievements in half-sentences.

However, it reveals new details of his extraordinary rise from a council flat — in Hackney — to be one of Britain’s most famous entrepreneurs and now the newly ennobled Baron Sugar of Clapton in the London Borough of Hackney.

Despite his brusque television persona, there are hints that he is not always as sure of himself as he admits that he is “sometimes too blunt.”

The headhunter's verdict

Despite the length of the CV, our own interview panel has given Lord Sugar the job. The Sunday Times told three leading recruitment consultants about the CV to get their views.

Jonathan Baines, a partner at Korn Ferry/Whitehead Mann, said: “Hired, definitely. I do question whether this is a CV and not a life story, but it shows extraordinary entrepreneurialism and amazing imagination.”

Peter Waine, managing director of Hanson Green, said: “It’s not a CV; it’s a self-congratulatory gesture, a first draft of his life story. Clearly, it’s showing he’s a different, quite exciting individual who knows how to make money, but that doesn’t mean he’d be any good on a board.”

Mark Freebairn, partner at Odgers Berndtson, said: “You couldn’t receive a CV like that without being hugely impressed by what he’s achieved. Would I employ him on that basis? You’d have to.

“At the age of 11 he’s out trying to make money and that’s unteachable.

To get from living in an environment where your father’s earning an uncertain £13 a week to a fortune of £840m is a staggering achievement and a wonderful endorsement of the country we live in.”

With a candour that is unusual in most CVs, he details some of his failures. He reveals he was forced to content himself with a “curio role” — in the school play after being upstaged at an audition for the lead part. Surely that should be cameo role, a bullying interviewer in the final heats of The Apprentice might point out.

Ironically, he confesses that his first forays into the computer industry, where he later made his fortune, were a disaster. In an episode that most job applicants would gloss over, he admits he failed aptitude tests for jobs as a trainee programmer at both IBM and ICL at the age of 16 .

Instead, he joined the Ministry of Education as a clerical officer. It is difficult to imagine anyone more unsuited to life in the civil service. He lasted less than a year.

Gordon Brown’s decision to appoint Sugar has triggered a wave of unfavourable comments from peers who have questioned his suitability. Critics claim his tough management style sets a bad example and have accused Brown of trying to win “cheap votes” by courting celebrities.

Labour peers have allocated Sugar a small office in the outer reaches of the Palace of Westminster. “There is barely enough room for his executive chair and Amstrad computer,” said one peer.

Friends of Sugar say he has been hurt by the attacks and is determined to use his experience to help more people to succeed in the business world.

Although he has been offered “millions” to publish his life story, he has refused and the draft CV is his first full account of his career.

The draft reveals that aged 10 he was already juggling multiple enterprises, including selling scraps of material from local garment workshops to a rag-and-bone man and collecting empty lemonade bottles to redeem the penny deposit.

He notes that he “built a replica Guy Fawkes and sat outside the flats on the main road in late October to collect a penny for the guy, so as to have some fireworks for the party on November 5th, held on an ex-bomb site in the flats”.

At 11 he so impressed the headmaster of a secondary school while giving him a guided tour of his classrooms that the head convinced his parents to send him to his school. He did a newspaper round and boiled the beetroots at a greengrocer’s where he had a Saturday job. Soon he was practising his entrepreneurial skills. He found a better use for the empty bottles of pop, refilling them with homemade ginger beer and selling them.

He then hit upon an idea which he describes in the CV as an “easy sell” — photographing neighbours’ grandchildren. He converted the third bedroom in his family’s flat into a makeshift darkroom.

By 17, Sugar had passed his driving test and “wanted a job that came with wheels”. He joined an electrical company, becoming its top salesman within six months. He “resigned on principle” after being turned down for a pay rise and set up on his own.

He took £100 out of his post office savings, bought a second- hand minivan, “acquired third party, fire and theft car insurance for £8” and with the balance bought some car aerials.

With them he “made my first trade sale as Alan Sugar trading as AMS Trading Company”. He initially worked from his parents’ flat, repairing second-hand television sets which he sold to visiting customers from his bedroom. His mother was “not happy having strange people coming and going.”

Some incidents resemble Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses. He kept his stock in his first house but lost it all in a burglary.

He bounced back, rented his first commercial offices and was able to rescue his father from a “lifetime in uncertain unemployment” by making him his first employee, answering telephones for £20 a week. The CV proudly points out that this was £7 a week more than his father had been earning.

Some of Sugar’s greatest achievements are dismissed in bullet points: “2005 Appeared in the first series of The Apprentice . . . 2007 Sold Amstrad Plc to BSkyB for £135m”.

Sugar says he has learnt some bitter lessons about the cut-throat business world. “Obtained greater understanding of the lack in honesty and integrity of those I met and dealt with,” he writes ruefully.

“That might help to prepare him for some of the characters at Westminster,” another peer joked.

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