Alan Sugar broke down in court yesterday at the start of a libel trial over a newspaper article which he says called him a miser.

The Amstrad man was so overcome by emotion, according to the Telegraph, that he left court choking back tears accompanied by his wife Ann.

Sugar is suing the Daily Mail over a story from December 1999 headlined "Why miserly Sugar must come out of his counting house and give George the money." It's all about whether Sugar would stump up cash for players for Tottenham Hotspur FC when manager George Graham asked for it.

Those IT journalists who've met Mr Sugar will be stunned at this picture of him as a sensitive flower. He can be quite spectacularly rude. We're with Terry Venables on this one. ®