When Sugar doesn't taste so sweet

Tim Montgomerie posts on a sour Sugar:

Alan Sugar is a prat. He's a dipstick. He's a wally. (As well as not having an enormous intellect).

Roger Alton, Matthew d’Ancona, Liz Anderson, Martin Bright, Jeremy Clarke, Nick Cohen, Nicholas Coleridge, Lloyd Evans, James Forsyth, Julia Hobsbawm, Rachel Johnson, Dylan Jones, Mary Killen, India Knight, Rod Liddle, John Micklethwait, Fraser Nelson, Matthew Parris, Stephen Pollard, Hugo Rifkind, Andrew Roberts, Alan Rusbridger, Sebastian Shakespeare, Paul Staines, Sarah Standing, Mary Wakefield and Toby Young have written this letter to The Spectator in protest at Lord Sugar's threat to sue The Daily Mail's Quentin Letts for calling him a ‘telly peer’ who ‘doesn’t seem to have an enormous intellect’.

One of the letter's signatories, Matthew Parris, has gone further still in today's Times:

"This is outrageous. What a prat. What a dipstick. What a wally. Alan Sugar is threatening to sue my former fellow-sketchwriter, Quentin Letts. A letter to The
Spectator this week, to which I have just added my name, protests that the libel
lawyers Herbert Smith have written to Mr Letts complaining that on LBC radio he
called their client a telly peer who doesn’t seem to have an enormous intellect; and that a writ will follow unless he pays Lord Sugar’s legal costs to date, donates an undisclosed sum to charity and gives a written undertaking never to criticise their client again. Find me a bucket, I feel sick. This from a delicate flower who has made his media career verbally humiliating people."

Matthew Parris at his best. Read his full column here.

Reality Show leaves a bad taste in the mouth

Reality show The X Factor has been criticised over claims producers encouraged a teenage contestant from Bridgend to play up the town’s spate of suicides.

Alexandra Davies, 17, from Litchard, Bridgend, was seen on Saturday’s ITV show being voted through to the next round for her performance of Eva Cassidy’s Fields of Gold.

Shortly before she appeared on the programme, viewers heard host Dermot O’Leary introduce her with the words: “Alex’s hometown of Bridgend had bad press recently after a shocking spate of youth suicides. She’s hoping that success today might provide some welcome good news for a town that’s been living under a cloud.”

Immediately afterwards, while talking straight to camera, Alex said: “Because of all the bad press that Bridgend has had recently I just think that getting through would be a good bit of news that we need. Today is a big deal, this is where my confidence needs to deliver and I can prove to myself that I can do this.”

But Alex last night revealed that the references to the suicide were invented after pressurised questioning about the suicides from the show’s producers. “They thought that up when I said I was from Bridgend,” she said. “The producers wanted me to talk about it but I didn’t want to, just in case I offended someone’s family.”

In recent years, talent shows have become synonymous with stories of personal achievement and heartache.

But Saturday’s remarks, aired on prime-time television, angered many in the Bridgend area who think the tragic series of deaths has been mentioned for the benefit of entertainment.