Lord Sugar in BBC’S firing line over tweet about Senegal team

0 Lord Sugar deleted the offensive tweet and apologised The BBC has branded a tweet by Lord Sugar about the Senegal football team as “seriously misjudged” after The Apprentice boss apologised for his post.

Lord Sugar has faced criticism for likening the Senegalese World Cup squad to street vendors in Marbella.

He had tweeted a picture of the sports team, which had been edited to include a picture of handbags and sunglasses laid out on sheets.

Lord Sugar wrote: “I recognise some of these guys from the beach in Marbella. Multitasking resourceful chaps.”

The business mogul and TV star initially defended his post, saying he thought it was “funny” and that people had misinterpreted it. He then deleted it from his timeline.

The 71-year-old later apologised, writing: “I misjudged me earlier tweet. It was in no way intended to cause offence and clearly my attempt at humour has backfired.

“I have deleted the tweet and am very sorry.”

The BBC, which airs Lord Sugar’s reality series The Apprentice, issued a statement following his apology.

A BBC spokesman said: “Lord Sugar has acknowledged this was a seriously misjudged tweet and he’s in no doubt about our view on this.

“It’s right he’s apologised unreservedly.”

The Apprentice, in which business candidates compete against each other for a £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar, is due to air its 14th series later this year.

Prior to deleting the tweet, Lord Sugar had said his post was meant to be a “joke”. Glasgow has been named as one of seven cities to become trial areas for a 5G roll-out.

Vodafone UK will introduce the fifth generation wireless systems between October and December this year.

The mobile operator sadi it will form part of its investment in building a world-class network infrastructure to support “Gigabit UK”, where users can access ultra-fast connection speeds of one gigabit a second.

Engineers are laying the groundwork for 5G at more than 40 UK sites.