The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Mone y talks
Petra Stunt is famous for spending her father Bernie Ecclestone’s billions, and now for an ugly divorce. But what she really wants is to change the world for the better, she tells Sally Williams. Portrait by David Titlow
Petra Stunt, the younger daughter of Bernie Ecclestone, tells Sally williams why she has turned from fashion to philanthropy
Petra Stunt first realised she was a bit different when her parents were mugged outside their home and it made the national news. She was about eight at the time, still unaware that her father was globally famous for being extremely rich. ‘People were talking about it at school. At that point I realised we were a subject of interest,’ she says.
Petra is the younger daughter of the Formula 1 billionaire Bernie Ecclestone and his ex-wife, the Croatian former model Slavica Malic. She and her sister Tamara are beneficiaries of a family trust estimated to be worth £4 billion.
And now whenever she is mentioned in the press, there is an inevitable whiff of money in the air. In 2011 she had a lavish party at Battersea Power Station to celebrate her engagement to businessman James Stunt; the entertainment included a performance by Rihanna. The following month she bought a mansion in Los Angeles for $85 million( last year it went back on the market for $200 million). Two months later she had a £12 million wedding near Rome (the drinks bill alone was said to be £800,000).
It was an expensive marriage that is now coming to an expensive end. As we go to press, the Stunts are fighting a reported £5 billion divorce battle. Both are represented by high-profile lawyers (Baroness Fiona Shackleton in her case, David S her borne in his ). James, about whom Petra refuses to speak, has been accused of abu- sive and violent behaviour and drug taking, and ordered by a judge to leave their 14-bedroom home in Chelsea.
Petra’s family is wealthy. She is wealthy. Her husband is wealthy. To outsiders, she epitomises the life of the super-rich.
‘I t hi nk people want to be able to hate me ,’ she says .‘ I think that because my father is wealthy and now I am living off his money, they hate it.’
We meet in asui tea ttheBu lg ari Hotel in London, the week before news of the divorce becomes public, and while she is still waiting for a court date. Petra is being photographed in skin tight purple trousers and five-inch heels. She has a tiny body, even tinier than I expected, with kind eyes that don’t get nearly as much media attention as her ‘plump pout’. She has been up all night with a sick child – at 28 she has three children, Lavinia, four, and two-year-old twins James and Andrew – but is making a valiant effort to be bright and chatty. She prides herself on being a hands-on mum, though her hands don’t look the part, owing to wildly impractical ‘stiletto nail’ extensions. But she insists she can still change nappies and wipe bottoms. ‘I am able to do everything, basically.’
Pet ra is sweet a nd polite, a nd clearly uncomfortable being in the spot light. Tamara is more ex t rovert. In 2011 she starred in her own reality TV show, Tamara Ecclestone:
Billion $$ Girl, which she launched with photographs of herself naked on a bed covered by £1 million in £50 notes. Petra made some appearance son the show, for example swanning off with her sister to Cannes for the weekend on a private jet. But these days Tamara has 275,000 followers on Ins tag ram, while Petra has a private account. ‘I don’t want the whole world to see what I’m doing and see pictures of my kids. It creeps me out. I just want to back away and have my own life,’ she says. She maintains, too, that Tamara is different in the flesh – much quieter. Whereas ‘when I meet new people I talk more and am a bit more outgoing’.
Even as a young heiress, life for Petra was not as perfect as onlookers might have imagined. When she was nine, she contracted salmonella after eating chicken with friends and ended up in hospital on a drip. Then, at 14, she fell ill with meningitis, which she first dismissed as a bad case of flu. ‘Luckily I didn’t have bacterial meningitis, I had viral, so it wasn’t fatal. But anything like that traumatises you and you become much
‘When you are wealthy, people use you. There is always some sort of ulterior motive’
more pa ra noid.’ She spent a week in hospital, and time convalescing at home.
Later her daughter, Lavinia, seemed a lot slower than other children at talking .‘ Everyone kept say i ng, “Don’t compare one child with another, each child is different.” But she was nearly two and she had never said ,“Mama ,” and I thought, “Am I just being paranoid?”’ Lavinia was diagnosed with global developmental delay (GDD). And now Pet ra is to launch a chain of centres around the country that focus on early intervention for young children with autism and other developmental disorders. Aimed at those aged 20 months to six years, the first PS Place centre will open in Chelsea later in the year. Eligibility criteria are yet to be finalised, but she says the service will be open to all, with fees on a sliding scale. The Petra Stunt Foundation will subsidise those from families with lower incomes.
The foundation has also funded Meningitis Now signs and symptom cards for every new mother in the country, and this year Pet ra is launching a campaign to raise awareness of the disease within student communities.
‘I am going to make my kids proud one day,’ she says. ‘Lavinia and the boys are going to know, “My mum did this for the country, my mum did this for children out there.” They are going to know I helped someone.’
When Pet ra’s pa rent s met in a chance encounter at the 1982 Italian Grand Prix, six years before she was born, her father was 51 and 5ft 2in; her mother, 24 and 6ft 2in. He was abstemious and a workaholic; she was volatile and fiery. Both came from modest backgrounds. Bernie’ s father was a fisherman and then a crane driver; Slavica’s, a docker who abandoned the family in her childhood.
They were married at Kensington and Chelsea Register Office in July 1985, when Tamara was a year old. The relationship would become tempestuous, with Slavica leaving Bernie in 2008, following 23 years of marriage( she would be awarded an estimated £740 million in their divorce settlement).
But Petra has happy childhood memories of family holidays at Disney World, visiting Grands Prix around the world, and her parents giving her an English bulldog puppy when she was four: Fudge. ‘Literally, it was the best day of my life.’
She says her mother was ‘warm and loving’, and taught her girls the value of money. ‘My mum raised me to treat people with respect and not to judge people on wealth and background ,’ she goes on. ‘Neither of my parents went to university. They barely went to school, so I feel I don’t judge people.’ Her mother ironed her fat her ’s shirts, cooked his meals, didn’t have a dishwasher in the house and never hired a nanny. ‘I remember my mum washing the dishes and my dad drying them. She was the housewife, and he liked
it and she liked it because that’s just the way they were brought up.’
Her father had a ‘strong work ethic’ and, for a billionaire, simple tastes. He enjoyed shopping at Waitrose, eating in pubs or at home, Beck’s beer rather than fine wine, watching action films and wildlife documentaries.
‘He was a grafter ,’ says Pet ra .‘ He made his own way and he respects money. He doesn’t spend it on stupid things .’ He does have a multimillion-pound jet and a 190 ft luxury yacht, I point out. ‘I feel he’s had that boat for about 30 years ,’ she replies. ‘He’s had the same pair of glasses and the same bomber jacket since I don’t know when. He enjoys going to auctions,’ – for example, Lots Road in Chelsea – ‘he really enjoys bargains, basically.’
As a child, Petra assumed everyone lived the way she did .‘ I just felt like everyone went on private planes .’ She was educated in London at Trevor-roberts School and then Francis Holland, a private school for girls. ‘I had different shoes from the other children,’ she recalls. ‘My mum went to Italy and got me really nice Italian leather shoes for school, and they had Russell & Bromley or Start-rite. Some of the kids didn’t let me play games, like hopscotch, because I had different shoes to them.
‘I never really enjoyed school,’ she continues. ‘Tamara enjoyed it. I was the one who would not want to go and would make a fuss. I just wanted to be at home with Mum. I was so attached to Mum that I was distraught when she dropped me off at school; I used to cry, hang on to her leg. I didn’t like the regulations. I didn’t like the fact that you had to conform to everyone wearing the same thing. I hated the whole experience.’
When she was 14, Petra woke up one Sunday morning with a headache. ‘I went back to sleep thinking it was a cold or something. Then I woke up properly and felt a bit worse. I told my parents but at that point I was already a hypochondriac, so they were like, “How predictable, it’s Sunday and she’s got school tomorrow.”’ She went out with friends, but had to get a taxi home .‘ I felt too sick. I went to bed and tried to put the TV on but I couldn’t even look at it because it was affecting my eyes .’ Her parents called a doctor and she was rushed to hospital, where she was diagnosed with meningitis.
She recovered, but her hypochondria got worse, she explains .‘ I used to wash my hands constantly. I hated going to public places. I still worry about getting sick, I panic.’ Having children means she’s had to take a more relaxed approach to germs. But she still worries about all the places bacteria can breed, and when she travels by plane, for example, she always brings her own pillows and blankets. ‘My sister is like, “You are so weird.” She could sleep anywhere, she doesn’t really think about those things .’ The thought of walking barefoot on hotel carpet scan drive Petra demented, so she brings her own slippers and lays down mats on the floor. ‘We’ve just come back from a holiday in Italy and it wasn’t great. I take my whole entourage of pillows. I don’t like to walk on the floor. I don’t enjoy it, basically.’
After leaving school she wanted to be a fashion designer and was offered a place to study at Central Saint Martins college of art and design, but decided to launch her own company instead. She set up Form, a menswear line, at 19.
The brand was stocked by Harrods, but folded after a little over a year. ‘It was during the recession and it was hard to compete with huge brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton,’ she says. In 2012 she launched an accessories line called Stark. ‘But then I got pregnant with my daughter and Lavinia became my world. So I thought, “Let’s put it on hold.”’
And t hen she suddenly produced twins. ‘A great surprise .’ Twins run in James’ s family. ‘Mentally I don’t think I was ready to have more kids because Lavinia was quite difficult at that point. She was having tantrums because she wasn’t able to speak, so it was a hard time.’
Petra is touching on the subject of Lavinia, and how her whole life became bound up with finding her daughter the right care. When they were based in LA, they found a paediatric- development doctor who prescribed intensive, structured speech therapy and occupational therapy. Pet ra talks about manually guiding her daughter through words .‘ You manoeuvre and touch the face and chin to show her basically to use her tongue in the right way.’
But back in London, there wasn’t so much help available .‘ I met one family who had to wait nearly two years to be seen under the NHS.’ And early intervention is key, Petra explains, because that’s when you can make the most progress. ‘It’s not good enough,’ she says. ‘They need to offer more. It’s not a third-world country.’
The aim is for her centres to plug the gap. ‘What I want is to have different therapies, different doctors under one roof.’
Despite her socialite image, Petra is not particularly sociable. She rarely drinks and can’t see any point in parties, except if they are for fundraising. Her friends are people she’s known for years. ‘I keep it really tight-knit,’ she says. ‘I don’t really let a lot of people in my life.’ She goes on, ‘I feel that wealth is almost harder than fame. When you are wealthy, people use you and they want money out of you. There is always some sort of ulterior motive. Whereas if you are famous, people are not going to become famous by being your friend. I just feel people become so greedy around wealth. It changes people.’
Her life revolves a round philant hropy and home. She has four dogs, and a pig called Lala. ‘Lala shares a basket with the dogs and she comes in the car, too.’
Lavinia is ‘much better’ – she spoke her first words, ‘Mama’ and ‘apple’, at two-and-a-half – though help is ongoing. ‘She loves dressing up. She had a friend around the other day and they were carrying two Kelly bags each and wearing my sunglasses.’ Petra has an extensive collection of Hermès Kelly bags (each worth several thousand pounds). ‘They are timeless.’
She is st ill close to her mother, who lives in Switzerland. And Ber nie, who is now 86 and remarried, is a devoted father and grandfather. ‘He really loves the boys.’
‘Obviously I don’t have a huge empire [like the one her fat her built],’ Pet ra says – but she has inherited some of his work ethic. ‘I could just be sitting on my arse doing nothing. But I need to have a purpose and some sor t of motivation in life. I am the type of person who gets bored really easily.’