AO boss tells BBC: We're a British success story – the UK should be turbocharging us
Some 25 years later, he's won his bet and then some.
The so-called kitchen king started AO selling discounted fridges and washing machines after a £1 bet with a friend that he couldn't pull it off.
He is now at the helm of a £564m UK empire selling a host of big and small household appliances from TVs, laptops and phones, to fridge freezers, washing machines, kettles and toasters.
He is a British success story. As founder and chief executive, Roberts has built the firm - formerly known as Appliances Online - up from scratch to an employer of some 3,000 people in the UK.
The firm has overcome a post-Covid pandemic slump in trade and problems with international expansion to recently launch its first share buyback and raise its profit outlook for the full year.
The bumper financial figures fly in the face of grumblings over the current economic backdrop, tough business environment, and household cutbacks on the types of big, one-off purchases Roberts' firm sells.
He bounds into the studio for our Big Boss Interview, a new business podcast from the BBC, with the energy of someone looking forward to a first pint on a Friday night, and the variety of conversation topics that might come with it.
Yet for a man who appears to be on top of the world, he's surprisingly angry, in particular about the increasing hurdles he perceives the government is putting in the way of firms like his.
Tax rises in the form of employer's National Insurance and concerns over the impending Employment Rights Bill have made it harder, he argues, for businesses to take risks on staff and tougher to compete with Chinese rivals who don't face the same obstacles.
"We can't carry costs that some of our competitors are not carrying. It's as simple as that," Roberts says.
"To not accept that is fantasyland, and we're a UK success story. As a business, we employ thousands of people, we do great service. We're rooted in the UK, and we should be turbocharged by our UK government, not disadvantaged."
Following last autumn's Budget AO warned that it was facing an extra £8m a year in costs as a result of April's rise in National Insurance and the minimum wage.
Such costs, Roberts warns, are putting "grit" into businesses like his.
"We should be talking about job creation, not enforcing things that make business leaders think twice about recruiting people and about giving somebody a chance," he says.
"It will still put grit into our business and grit is cost, and that means that it's harder to be competitive."