City File: Spur for Amstrad

SHOCK horror. Grumpy Alan Sugar has been seen smiling. First, he is looking less like the bad guy in the Spurs saga as Terry Venables slams the ball into his own net. Second, Amstrad shares have leapt by almost 50 per cent in the past month, following Mr Sugar's promise to beef up the board.

There may be more to come. The whisper is that Amstrad may soon sign a deal to make mobile phones for the recently launched Cable & Wireless One-2-One service. The product could be right up Amstrad's street - cheap, mass-market and high-volume.

Amstrad has the manufacturing capability: it bought the Danish telecoms company DanCall last month. And it has the brainbox, having re-recruited Robert Watkins, the technical director who helped create many of Amstrad's past successes before sloping off to join Binatone. At 50p, the shares are worth a flutter.