Sir Alan Sugar has sparked outrage after he posted a tweet about the Senegal World Cup team this morning, which has since been described as 'racist'.
Taking to Twitter, the businessman wrote: "I recognise some of these guys from the beach in Marbella. Multi tasking resourceful chaps."
Alongside the team picture were photoshopped images of sunglasses and handbags for sale on what appears to be a beachfront.
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Now he has removed the offending tweet and tried to defend his actions.
Sugar, who hosts BBC show The Apprentice, posted the picture which prompted an immediaet backlash. One user suggested the tweet was 'terrible', to which the business magnate simply replied: "Why?"
Another said the tweet 'wasn't okay', to which Sugar retorted: "Why not? It is meant to be funny. For God's sake."
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Now, the defensive update message has also resulted in a string of responses.
Another person wrote: "The entire joke revolves around you making a stereotype based on the colour of somebody's skin. You're fired pal."
Meanwhile a Twitter user commented: "The whole joke is based on the people's race. If a punchline is based on their race, it's racist. If you can't see that it's racist then there is a problem."
Someone else said: "The fact that you find blatant racism funny doesn't make blatant racism less offensive though."
Seventy-one-year-old Sugar became a billionaire in 2015 and the following year his fortune was estimated at £1.15bn($1.51bn), ranking him as the 95th richest person in the UK.
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He was chairman of Tottenham Hotspur from 1991 to 2001 and appears on The Apprentice, which has been broadcast annually since 2005.
Topics: UK News, Celebrity, News, World Cup 2018, World Cup
