Alan Sugar hired to save Brown

Can Alan Sugar save Gordon Brown's premiership? Can the star of The Apprentice save the British economy? After meeting the embattled Prime Minister at Downing Street yesterday, Sugar, the tycoon who made his fortune with Amstrad computers, has been awarded a peerage.

He will take on an unpaid role as an 'enterprise tsar' for the government, with the brief of helping struggling companies and encouraging young entrepreneurs.

Sugar (pictured yesterday leaving Downing Street by the back entrance) is a lifelong Labour supporter, who today described his friend Gordon Brown as "resolute". In February, he rubbished claims that he had been sounded out over the possibility of becoming the party's candidate for the 2012 London Mayoral Elections. He has previously referred to critics of Gordon Brown as "rats".

And he had this to say about James Purnell, who resigned from his job as Minister for Work and Pensions yesterday and called for the prime minister to quit as well: "You will always have some people who will jump ship, there is no question of that. There are always people, not only in politics but in business that don't agree with certain things. One person writing a letter doesn't mean that everyone is collapsing like a pack of cards." ·