The agony of watching my son die ...on live TV
TAWDRY BIG BROTHER ANTICS THAT SHAMED MARCO JR’S MOTHER
BY HER OWN reckoning, Mati Conejero has had a combustible few years. The estranged wife of celebrity chef Marco Pierre White has seen her acrimonious divorce put on ice after 30 hearings that have clocked up an estimated €3.8m in legal fees. She has fallen out, too, with her sons Luciano, 22, and 21-year-old Marco Jr, and is currently awaiting trial on charges of assaulting them both on the doorstep of her West London home – something she denies.
But the heartbreak of seeing heavily tattooed Marco Jr cavorting on the set of tawdry reality TV show Big Brother has been a new and desperate low.
In some of the most shockingly explicit sexual scenes ever to be broadcast live on mainstream television, Marco Jr was last week seen kissing and stripping off with 30-year-old redhead Laura Carter, taking a naked shower with her, before sucking her breast. The scenes sparked more than 600 complaints to broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, and left Mati crying herself to sleep over her ‘lost’ son. Humiliation has been heaped upon shame. Before he became the first contestant to be evicted from the house on Friday night, Marco Jr admitted on the show that he had spent €300,000 of his father’s money on ‘prostitutes, cocaine and alcohol’, and claimed he had only agreed to take part in Big Brother to pay off some debts.
Mati, 51, was actually watching as her son – known to family and friends as Mini – begged Laura to ‘strangle’ him with a belt in a dangerous attempt
‘He was such a beautiful little boy. Now I honestly fear for his future’
to simulate erotic asphyxiation. She was distressed, too, but hardly surprised when, just two days ago, it was revealed that Marco Jr has been charged with driving under the influence of cocaine after reversing into a police car in broad daylight.
‘I broke down when I saw that for how lost he is,’ she said yesterday. ‘I feel so helpless that I can’t do anything, but how would you feel when your beautiful baby boy ends up a man covered in tattoos, with the word “Broken” across his face?’
‘Help’ is etched elsewhere on his body, and he has a tear drop under one eye.
‘In another scene on Big Brother I saw him crying. Even at the time, I thought he was not distressed about Big Brother – but about his life outside.
‘I had hoped he might learn some lessons in there about what is and isn’t socially acceptable. But Mini doesn’t know any boundaries and now he’s in a place where he can’t control the situation. One of the girls on the show said he was like a six-year-old boy.’
Mati, it is fair to say, has a strained relationship with her two sons. But it is also fair to say that theirs has been no ordinary upbringing, living in the shadow of the titanic Marco Sr, and it is obvious that she feels her charming but driven and often domineering husband has played his part in the wreckage of her family life.
‘What went through my mind when watching Big Brother is that things won’t get any better for Mini,’ Mati continues. ‘He was such a beautiful little boy. Even when he was naughty, he had a beautiful side – but now even that is lost. I honestly fear for his future.
‘I don’t want to say bad things about my son, whom I love dearly. But I just don’t know what to do to help him. I worry it’s too late. The strangling thing was horrific to see, although I do think that Big Brother was irresponsible to have shown it. As his mother, I don’t approve of Big Brother showing him as a sexual predator. It tears me apart to say it, but I feel there’s no hope for him. Watching Big Brother is like watching my son die before my eyes.’
A further concern for Mati, who became 54-year-old Marco Pierre White’s third wife while working for him as a waitress, is the effect of her son’s antics on her 15-year-old daughter Mirabelle. She adds: ‘My daughter won’t watch the show. She leads a very disciplined life at the Royal Ballet School, but there have been comments from her school friends. So I will explain it all so she understands and can deal with it.’
It is clear from talking to Mati that she is open and intelligent – her hair is dyed pink and she dabbles in art, poetry and writing. She is also honest and self-effacing. She freely admits that, in common with many fashionable, middle-class mothers, she has erred in attempting to be more of a friend to her children rather than a parent: a mother who ‘hangs out’ with them, drinks with them and discusses their latest tattoo.
‘But lately I now think, “Is this cool?” Is this right?” It wasn’t easy bringing
up two high-spirited little boys, with the great Marco as a father,’ she says.
Marco was the youngest ever cook to attain the coveted three Michelin stars and is credited as being a major influence on other leading British chefs, including Gordon Ramsay.
‘Luciano and Mini were born only 18 months apart and were a real handful. But Marco was always too busy working to do much with them,’ she says. ‘Yet he got irritated with me if they then got bored and started playing up.
‘Everything revolved around the restaurants. A simple, planned trip to the park would end up not happening because first we would go to meet Marco at his restaurant Frankie’s in Knightsbridge.
‘The idea was for me to have a glass of wine with him and his business contacts while the boys would play with colouring pencils. And then we were supposed to go to the park, except we didn’t. The boys would understandably start getting restless, time would tick on and I would whisper to Marco that we must do something but it didn’t happen. Meanwhile, the boys were going stir crazy.
‘Marco would just say, “Can’t you control them?” It was so distressing because Marco continually reprimanded me over their naughty behaviour. That’s what Mini soaked up as he grew up. Children look naturally for cracks in consistency and the subliminal message they heard was, “Mummy just got told off and I got off scot-free!”
‘I suppose it’s not surprising Mini misbehaved so badly – it set a pattern which continues to this day. In a way, it’s not really his fault that he doesn’t know how to behave properly and knows no social boundaries. He has grown up with a sense of entitlement. He is the son of somebody famous and therefore he is well-known and he is rich and can do what he likes.
‘Night after night I sat with my husband in the restaurant while he entertained various people. There was no proper family life unless I brought the boys there.
‘Looking back, I realise I should have just left and gone with them to the park. I’m not sure why I didn’t, but I was a lot younger then. I didn’t deal with the issue well – I sort of internalised it, I suppose I still idolised Marco – he was such a towering force of nature.
‘Finally I couldn’t take any more and I said if you don’t do a family holiday this year I am divorcing you. This was the first time I used that word and it really shocked him. But I think it was only because of the money aspect.
‘My husband is always worried about his image and how things look to other people.
‘Mini never had to answer for his actions. He was a beautiful boy who grew into a beautiful young man, but his life hasn’t been easy growing up in the shadow of somebody like Marco, who has a penchant for acting and talking like a Mafia don.’
Mati reveals that Mini first got into trouble as a teenager. The family was forced to suffer the indignity of being sent to social services offices in Notting Hill, where many of the areas’s deprived children went while on probation. ‘Marco sat there and everybody agreed we could tailor our lives and his career to fit in with the boy’s requirements. Even social services got sucked in by his charisma.
‘This was about the time when we started divorce proceedings, when Marco did the crazy thing of sending Mini off to Thailand with a family friend. That is where he had his first tattoo done.
‘By this time Marco had custody of the boys. As a result, he wanted to stay in the family home in Holland Park – usually the wives stay in the family home but I had to move out. I now live in a flat above a pizza restaurant in Shepherd’s Bush.
‘To be honest I was happy to let my boys go to Marco – the stress was terrible. I had lost control of them and was struggling.
‘I was at my wits’ end. I think Mini was doing drugs, but I can’t blame it all on the drugs. He had got used to hating and blaming me for everything and not taking responsibility.
‘Mini went to good schools – we always saw education as a good investment. But there were always problems, so there were no qualifications and no university. Apart from a bit of modelling, Mini has never had a proper job.
‘I tried to show him a normal life when we went on family holidays to Spain with my family, where he and his brother would climb trees. But there was also aggravation there because Marco gave him money behind my back and he bought a load of sweets and wouldn’t share.
‘It is so painful to watch your sweet boy grow up like this – you don’t understand how toxic Marco is. Marco is acting like a womanhater. I came from a good but ordinary background, but Marco insults it, calls Shepherd’s Bush a s***hole and my boys see me as an embarrassment. I suppose I am nothing compared to hanging out with Dad’s friends like Liam Neeson and Jack Nicholson.
‘All this is very traumatic but nothing seems to have affected my husband. Our son’s shameful behaviour on TV – nothing seems to touch him.
‘Luciano is okay. He has got a girlfriend and is living in Barcelona. My precious daughter Mirabelle works very hard – she is the one thing that keeps me going. But Mini is a wild one – I cry myself to sleep at night over him.
‘But what chance did I have with the great Marco Pierre White? After all, he was the success story with celebrity and society friends. I was just plain little Mati, the waitress from Hammersmith of immigrant parents. What did I know?’
‘He doesn’t know how to behave and knows no social boundaries’ ‘It is so painful to watch your sweet boy grow up like this’