Ordinary bloke in the fast lane pulls another stroke
Formula One, beautiful women, oodles of cash, Bernie Ecclestone ended his bribery trial by drawing on his talent for reaching a deal, says
IN a story that fits Bernie Ecclestone to a T, Somerset Maugham wrote of a new vicar who sacked the longstanding verger because he was illiterate. Years later, on learning his secret, the ex-verger’s banker asked this now wealthy businessman where he would be if he could read or write. “I’d be verger of St Peter’s” was the reply.
The son of a trawlerman and a dominant mother, he left school at 16 for a job at the local gasworks. Standing 5’ 3” Ecclestone was a fighter: “Small people have to fight to survive,” he would explain.
Although he was a rubbish motor-bike racer, he revolutionised Formula 1 and became a billionaire through pulling strokes. Take this story his biographer, Tom Bower, places in 1974.
Killing time at a hotel pool with a few colleagues, Ecclestone belittled a diver who swam two lengths underwater. When someone pointed out that it was more than he could do, Ecclestone said: “Right, what’s the bet?” “One hundred dollars.” “Let’s get the bet exactly,’ said Ecclestone. “You’re saying I can’t swim two lengths underwater?” Heads nodded.
“Right,” said Ecclestone. “Go and get me a snorkel.”
With a decent education he might have ended up a lawyer rather than a powerful billionaire.
It was while he sold used cars and motorbikes and kicked around on the edges of the then gentlemen’s niche sport of motor-racing that he saw and grabbed commercial opportunities.
In the 1970s Ecclestone did a deal with teams that — in exchange for an annual payment to them — saw him negotiate the television rights. He then convinced TV companies that should buy F1 as a package rather than paying for individual races.
This development massively boosted the sport’s popularity and Ecclestone’s bank balance, and along with other smart and courageous deals put him squarely in charge of F1. A self-confessed workaholic and a control freak — straightening paintings, curtains and ornaments at home is an obsession — he sits in his motor home at Grand Prix events not to view the races, but to watch CCTV of who is talking to whom in the paddock.
Everyone has an Achilles heel and Ecclestone’s was a 23-year-old Croatian model, 28 years his junior and a foot taller than him, whom he met in 1982.
Divorced, he had been in a harmonious relationship for 17 years, but he found Slavica Malic — angry, loud and tough — irresistible. Despite her poor English, she knew how to negotiate. When she became pregnant she told him that he would never see the baby unless they lived together. In 1985 he caved in despite his antipathy to marriage — “Marriage is like going to the nick. Not very exciting. If it flies, floats or f**ks, rent it” was a frequently expressed view .
He liked beer, egg and toast and supermarket shopping. The new Mrs Ecclestone loved luxury and bling — she once bought a $35,000 handbag. She also bitterly resented his failure to enjoy society or his money and sometimes in a rage roughed him up. She was so jealous she wouldn’t let him see his daughter by his first marriage.
“She seems to love terrorising me”, he told a newspaper. But Ecclestone loved her and their two daughters, transferring around €2bn to an offshore trust in Slavica’s name. He was amazed and horrified when she divorced him in 2010.
The trust has made their daughters Tamara and Petra — socialites who dabble a bit in TV (Tamara) and fashion (Petra) — enormously wealthy and a byword for conspicuous consumption. Each had weddings costing €15m. Petra is trying to sell her Hollywood mansion for more than €100m and Tamara has been seen wheeling her baby around in a pram which has been customised with Swarovski crystals and a silver nameplate.
Meanwhile, Daddy has married a tall Brazilian lawyer 46 years his junior, and at 83 is still president and chief executive of Formula 1.
Charged in Germany with paying a German banker a €33m bribe to smooth a deal that maintained his control of Formula 1, Ecclestone has been allowed to put a stop to proceedings by paying €75m to the injured parties after four months in court.
He has another few billion in the bank and the interest piles up daily, so after what he calls “three-and-a-half years of aggravation”, now he’s getting back to full-time work.
This was another in a long line of strokes and no, doubt, there will be more.
As the sportswriter Jonathan Liew put it, “Before long, the tall shadow of the Grim Reaper will doubtless emerge behind him. And when it does, it would be no surprise if Ecclestone turned around, reached for his chequebook and with a loud, affected sigh, barked: ‘All right, then. How much?’”