How bankrupt tennis champ Becker ended up serving time
Saver, spender or splurger... at the weekend, the Mail On Sunday’s financial wizard rachel rickard Straus detailed an ingenious guide to the psychology of cash.
Other personality types in her list included the money-maker, the gambler and those who say they are plain indifferent to money (though in my experience, they’re the ones who care most about the contents of their wallets).
The seventh category is the worrier. That’s me... I worry I haven’t got any.
But there’s an eighth type, an ultra-rare one — the Becker. It wastes untold fortunes, yet it would seemingly rather go to prison than pay its debts. The Becker can face trial for non-payment of taxes, then borrow more than a million pounds from a friend at 25 per cent interest — and fail to repay it.
Despite a muddled and piecemeal opening episode last week, the second part of Boris Becker: The Rise And Fall (ITV1) was far better, dealing with the three-times Wimbledon champion’s financial disasters in a straightforward, clinical fashion.
His bankruptcy-dodging schemes were complex, but this narrative was not — it started with his divorce from Barbara Becker in 2001 and ended two decades later with Boris pocketing half a million euros for his first interview after being released from prison.
It’s staggering to imagine how one man can plough himself into so much trouble. after a woman he barely knew became pregnant, following sex in a broom cupboard at the chi- chi London restaurant Nobu, he had to pay her £2million in compensation plus £5,000 a month for the child’s upkeep. That could be the most expensive quickie in history.
He spent £15million building a hideaway in Majorca and allegedly failed to pay off half a million in debts to contractors. Most incredible of all, he fell victim to a scam that saw him claim diplomatic immunity to bankruptcy proceedings, believing he had been appointed ‘attache for sports, cultural and humanitarian affairs’ by the Central african republic — a country he’d never visited. It turned out the documents he hoped would save him were a forgery.
at his lowest, he was submitting to every celebrity humiliation, just to earn a fee and keep his face on Tv. We saw him jump through a burning hoop to land in a bed of roses, and play table-football with flyswatters strapped to his head.
It’s no shock to discover that he has repeatedly been in negotiations for a stint in the jungle on I’m a Celebrity, most recently in 2023. It didn’t happen. Perhaps this ruthless documentary was ITv’s vengeance.
The drug-dealing Kinsella family in the Irish crime drama Kin (BBC1) returned in a double bill, to face money problems that might make Boris himself wince.
after murdering the son of a Turkish drugs baron, the sort of mishap that could happen to anyone, they found themselves facing a 70 million euro bill... rising to 90 million if they wanted to avoid reprisal killings.
For that sort of money, even Boris could afford a couple of houses and several children. Kin is a series of violent gangland attacks with people shooting each other in the head, spread out between long, laboured plot explainers. The trouble is, it’s hard to see why we should care.
Clare Dunne plays amanda, the most sympathetic character if only because she’s trying for a baby while supplying the greater Dublin area with heroin. Her brother-in-law eric (Sam Keeley) is a sneering thug, and her husband’s father Frank (aidan Gillen) is a self-pitying psychopath. and they’re the likeable ones.
Imagine the Shelby family from Peaky Blinders without the charm or sweet forgiving natures, and you have the Kinsella clan. Best avoided.