Let's find the local Alan Sugars, Cameron tells our readers (VIDEO)

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Mr Cameron was speaking at his first PM Direct meeting in Leeds, an event organised by the Yorkshire Post at which the Prime Minister took questions from an audience of our readers.

PM Direct is an extension of the dozens of Cameron Direct meetings Mr Cameron did with small audiences around the UK while he was leader of the opposition.

Answering a question from Claire Young - the runner-up in the 2008 series of the BBC show The Apprentice - the Prime Minister said: "I've attacked Alan Sugar in the past but actually there's something that that programme and Dragons' Den and all these others things really do do that's important.

"And that is give our country a sense of entrepreneurialism and enterprise again."

But he rejected adding business ideas to a crowded school curriculum, instead suggesting schools and business people should liaise.

Mr Cameron said: "I hope they will take the initiative and get the local Alan Sugar into the school to talk about setting up a business, about enterprise, about the joy of working for yourself, the joy of creating jobs and wealth for others.

"I don't think we do enough in our country to set up and revere and get excited about enterprise and jobs and being a small business leader."

The Prime Minister looked relaxed as he took questions for about an hour from an audience of around 100 people at Leeds Trinity University College.

He covered topics including the cancelled loan to Sheffield Forgemasters, the banking levy, pensions, the proposed Leeds Arena, MPs' expenses, women in science, business red tape, capital gains tax, the future of farming, short-term prison sentences and the Government's attitude to the arts.

Mr Cameron congratulated one woman, who said she was "just a pensioner", on a four-minute long question about the economy, saying to her: "Do you want a job in the Treasury?"

The woman said: "My dad was a simple collier - a simple man. He went in the pits when he was 13 and he died gasping for breath at 62.

"He had simple philosophies and he taught us as children: if you can't afford it, if you can't pay for it, you can't have it. And if you want something you've got to work for it."

Mr Cameron said: "We have been living beyond our means in this country for a long time.

"When I was at that G20 this weekend, looking round the table, you're looking at countries like Brazil and Argentina and we're the ones with the biggest budget deficit of the whole damn lot."

After about an hour on his feet, answering questions in shirt-sleeves, he left saying: "It's great to be back in this kind of format with no lecterns and no scripted questions and no scripted answers. I think it's much more fun. I think it's what politics ought to be about."