Post by QPR Report on Mar 15, 2010 7:33:09 GMT
Somewhat less significant/interesting than it once would have been. But he still is a QPR shareholder
Mail - Bernie Ecclestone: I gave $1 billion to my ex-wife... But I'll be all right. I shop at Waitrose
By Cole Moreton, Live Reporter
14th March 2010
You need nerves of steel to take on Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. Here he talks about Max Mosley, those controversial comments about Hitler and still being in love with his former wife
Bernie Ecclestone : 'What Hitler did was at best disgusting. And unnecessary. What happened up until 1939 was, probably, good for the country'
Bernie Ecclestone seems a nice bloke, at first. He's chatty and witty, nothing like you'd expect from his reputation as the Napoleon of Formula 1, a tiny control freak with a tight grip on the loudest, flashiest sport in the world. Until he gets heavy.
'Let me have a look before you publish, will you?'
That's an order, not a question. He puts it so nicely, with a smile on his face and his hands gently clasped, that I don't realise at first. Then comes the threat.
'Better if I can put you straight in advance, rather than have to go after you afterwards. Because I will.'
I believe him. As he says himself, Ecclestone has had to fight extremely hard in recent times - in court, on camera, but mostly behind closed doors - to stay in control of his sport and prevent his empire being destroyed: 'Last year was the most difficult year of my career.'
He brought some of the trouble on himself by praising Hitler, and he's still very sensitive about all that, hence the threat. And yet here he is - against all the odds - still in charge of F1 as a new season begins in Bahrain today, hyping things up.
'All the indications point to this being a jaw-dropping season. We've got four world champions for a start (Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher), and it's been years since the last time that happened.'
Schumacher has come out of retirement at the age of 41 to race again, this time for Mercedes.
'Forget about winning races; I have Schumacher on my bill for winning the championship,' says Ecclestone.
He is sure Hamilton can make a comeback for McLaren, but has questioned Button's wisdom in choosing to defend the title by racing alongside him.
'I was surprised to see it happening,' he says. 'I suppose he feels confident enough to take on Lewis and that's it. It's a bit of a task to take on, that's all.'
But by far the most emotional return today will be that of Felipe Massa, after suffering life-threatening head injuries last year. Can Ecclestone really be sure that F1 is safe enough?
'Yeah,' he tells me, 'I mean, when you look at all the accidents there have been where people just take off their seat belts and jump out of the car... the only problem is that their head is in the open air.'
'How did I cope? With great difficulty,' said Bernie on his difficult 2009
Massa fractured his skull, and the Formula 2 driver Henry Surtees was killed when a flying wheel hit his head during a race last year.
'I don't know whether or not drivers would wear more face protection, like the goalkeepers do in ice hockey. The chances of those things that happened both to young Surtees and Massa happening to someone else... You've got more chance of winning the lottery.'
Is he one of those petrolheads who think you've got to have danger or the races won't be worth watching?
'Not really. You don't have to hurt people to entertain.'
Off the track, the trouble-making has started again. Ferrari has complained of a 'holy war' being waged against the richer teams, while the new ones get favours. It says a 'munificent white knight' bailed out the ailing Campos Meta team (now Hispania Racing), and rumour says it was Ecclestone. Whether it was him or not, he has done a lot of deals in his 79 years.
He has also made a lot of money, with a fortune estimated at £1.5 billion. So you'd think he would be able to afford a better-fitting suit than the one he's wearing, which is a bit too big. It fits him like a shell. The little septuagenarian with a mop of grey hair looks like a tortoise in an Andy Warhol wig. But only a fool would treat him as a joke.
'I had no ambitions when I left school,' says the son of a trawlerman, who went to work at 16.
'All I wanted to do was leave school. It never entered my head that I could be a businessman.'
He sold motorbikes, then cars. When a crash ended his dream of being a racing driver, he bought a team. He persuaded the other teams to let him negotiate commercial rights on their behalf, and eventually to organise the races. He hustled, cajoled and charmed his way into a position of absolute power in a sport that tells princes where to sit and governments what to do. Then, last year, he almost lost it all.
'What with one thing and another, it wasn't easy,' he says, drily.
'How did I cope? With great difficulty. I don't get myself stressed out. I think life is like a game of cards - you get dealt a hand and you have to play that hand the best way you can. Or chuck it in.'
It looked like F1 was finished many times during 2009. There were cheating scandals and the leading teams rebelled against a proposed cap on their spending. The solution brokered by Ecclestone involved the departure of his long-time ally, Max Mosley, president of F1's governing body.
'They were upset with Max for proposing the cap. Max is quite strong with what he wants to do.'
Too strong?
Bernie and his ex-wife Slavica
'All of us have got little bits of failings; sometimes we go over the top, one way or another. It was the teams that caused the last rift, because they wanted more money to waste. Some of these teams have been spending £450 million a year. It's totally unnecessary.'
Does he miss Max?
'Yes.'
Is that really all he has to say about him?
'We've been friends for a long time. I'll miss him in as much as he does push things through. I mean, all the changes that he forced through, if you asked the teams to take them all out again and go back to the way things were before, they would say, "No way."'
Ecclestone must be great at poker, because he's deadpan about everything, even the end of his marriage.
'I think the money is more or less sorted. I haven't been bothered. I knew she would be very fair about everything.'
Slavica Radic is 28 years younger than Ecclestone and ten inches taller. They looked absurd together, but it worked for 24 years, long enough for them to have grown-up daughters, Petra and Tamara. People say he's still in love with her - is that true?
'Yeah. I mean, I would really hope that we could get back together again.'
There doesn't seem much chance of that now, given his recent appearances with a new girlfriend, Fabiana Flosi. She's 30. That only partially explains why Ecclestone is so laid-back about the details of his divorce, given what he says next. Four years ago he did the biggest deal of his life, selling his lease on the commercial rights of F1 to a firm called CVC Capital Partners. That raised an estimated $1 billion (£610 million).
'It was given to Slavica. She put the money in trust and the trustees control it. I don't have anything to do with the trust. I don't talk to them.'
So what percentage of his money is now out of reach?
'Oh well, I'll be all right. I shop at Waitrose.'
This we know, having seen pictures of the billionaire wandering the aisles of a supermarket with a basket in his hand last year.
'I don't know why people were surprised. It's the way I live.'
Could Formula 1, so obsessed with speed, youth and beauty, be a life support for its elderly ruler?
'I'd be happy to die on the job. For me, that's the only way to go. If I died halfway through a grand prix, no problem. Although I'd prefer that it happened after the race was finished.'
He'd die in luxury, anyway. So what does he say to those poor fans at Club Corner who pay fortunes to sit in a rickety stand?
'I don't know. I've never been up there. The truth of the matter is that you, unfortunately, went to Silverstone. It's British. It's what Britain does well.'
What's that?
'Anything down-market.'
How patriotic.
'At other races you'd find it was a hell of a lot better. Silverstone and British races have always been a bit amateurish and clubby, because the people that run them, that's what they are. So that's what you'll get. Hopefully, the new people at Silverstone will look at it a lot differently. It's sort of grown out of a gentlemen's club, which is now devoid of gentlemen.'
Is he nostalgic for his own racing days?
'Nostalgic for the kind of people who were involved, for sure. We have a different class of people now to when Mr Ferrari and Colin Chapman and people like that were around. But otherwise, no. Not at all. You can't have people wandering around the paddock, when you think of all the equipment we have. If somebody's smoking or something, it's difficult to control.'
Control is everything to Ecclestone, which explains his interest in dictators. Last year he made the mistake of praising Hitler as someone who could 'get things done'. It was a stupid thing to say just before the German Grand Prix, particularly when some of the bankers who finance his companies are Jewish. 'I'm sorry,' Ecclestone told the German paper Bild.
'I apologise honestly and sincerely.'
But he then said of Jews, 'It's a pity they didn't sort out the banks; they have a lot of influence everywhere.'
Sir Martin Sorrell, who is on the board of CVC Capital Partners, was not impressed: 'Any other CEO, in any other business, would be gone.'
The smart thing now would be to shut up about Hitler, but he is blessed with the self-confidence to try to explain himself.
'It started because I said I thought that the old form of democracy was a little bit old hat. The world is changing so quickly and decisions have to be made so quickly. The government says something, then the opposition says something different, then there's a compromise, then the compromise is changed again... and it's all too late.
'People in business have to make decisions today, like that,' he says, snapping his fingers. 'That's how I think countries should run. The two young women who were interviewing me said, "You mean a dictator." I said, "Not really, because most dictators manage to rule by fear and terrorising people. What you want is a good leader, not a dictator." That's when they said, "Do you mean like Hitler?" I said, well, at least what I thought he did during that period was right. The early days.'
As many have pointed out, the Nazi leader didn't just drive his economic miracle by constructing nice straight roads for motoring enthusiasts; he also built up a massive army. Ecclestone does realise he upset a lot of people.
'Quite rightly so. That's why I apologised.'
So, does he want to stand by his comments?
'Since this has all happened I have managed to look a bit more into these things.'
That doesn't mean he has changed his mind.
'In fact, there has been an awful lot written recently about those days, and when you read all that you realise it probably isn't what people thought.'
I take this to mean that he thinks the pre-war Hitler has had a bad press. He even suggests some modern regimes are just as bad.
'When you look all over the world, these things are happening. They're not right. Quite the opposite.'
You'd have to call his take on the Holocaust unique.
'What Hitler did was at best disgusting. And unnecessary.'
What a strange, cold word to use.
'What happened up until 1939 was, probably, good for the country, because it put Germany back on the road; but (what Hitler did) after that was completely unnecessary and I don't think there was any advantage. I don't think anybody could have got any advantage out of it.'
I wonder what CVC makes of all this. Was he given a telling-off last time?
'No.'
Not even after the board member went public?
'That's Martin Sorrell. He's, you know, Jewish...'
Oh dear. Fortunately, there's a sure-fire way he can stay in with the money men: extracting as much profit as possible from the spectacle of cars going around in circles. Later I find myself accompanying him to a press conference for F1 Rocks, a concert that was held alongside the Singapore Grand Prix last year and will be again in September. On stage at London's Met Bar, Ecclestone refuses a request to pose with an electric guitar.
'I'm not into all this nonsense, to be quite blunt with you,' he tells me. 'I'm not in showbusiness.'
Really?
'I just organise it.'
He's asked if he likes music.
'I know most of the modern stuff... I mean, Frank Sinatra?'
Cue sycophantic laughter. An acolyte says that if anyone could organise a comeback gig for Ol' Blue Eyes, it's Bernie. He smiles, and opens his hands. 'Anything is possible.'
It's like watching a general at a kiddies' tea party, humouring them all until he can get back to the war. Then a young journalist goes too far: 'When was the last time that you woke up in the morning and laughed your head off at how great your life was?'
Gosh, it's cold in here, suddenly. Ecclestone's eyes narrow. I recognise that look, and the chilling tone.
'Never answer a stupid question with a stupid answer.'
Quite right, too. Better to shut up than to have to make threats. He'll do well to remember that himself this season, as cars and tempers begin to fly again - particularly if a mischief-maker pops up before the Italian Grand Prix and asks what he thinks of Mussolini.
www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1257007/Bernie-Ecclestone-I-gave-1-billion-ex-wife--But-Ill-right-I-shop-Waitrose.html#ixzz0iED51PYT
Mail - Bernie Ecclestone: I gave $1 billion to my ex-wife... But I'll be all right. I shop at Waitrose
By Cole Moreton, Live Reporter
14th March 2010
You need nerves of steel to take on Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. Here he talks about Max Mosley, those controversial comments about Hitler and still being in love with his former wife
Bernie Ecclestone : 'What Hitler did was at best disgusting. And unnecessary. What happened up until 1939 was, probably, good for the country'
Bernie Ecclestone seems a nice bloke, at first. He's chatty and witty, nothing like you'd expect from his reputation as the Napoleon of Formula 1, a tiny control freak with a tight grip on the loudest, flashiest sport in the world. Until he gets heavy.
'Let me have a look before you publish, will you?'
That's an order, not a question. He puts it so nicely, with a smile on his face and his hands gently clasped, that I don't realise at first. Then comes the threat.
'Better if I can put you straight in advance, rather than have to go after you afterwards. Because I will.'
I believe him. As he says himself, Ecclestone has had to fight extremely hard in recent times - in court, on camera, but mostly behind closed doors - to stay in control of his sport and prevent his empire being destroyed: 'Last year was the most difficult year of my career.'
He brought some of the trouble on himself by praising Hitler, and he's still very sensitive about all that, hence the threat. And yet here he is - against all the odds - still in charge of F1 as a new season begins in Bahrain today, hyping things up.
'All the indications point to this being a jaw-dropping season. We've got four world champions for a start (Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher), and it's been years since the last time that happened.'
Schumacher has come out of retirement at the age of 41 to race again, this time for Mercedes.
'Forget about winning races; I have Schumacher on my bill for winning the championship,' says Ecclestone.
He is sure Hamilton can make a comeback for McLaren, but has questioned Button's wisdom in choosing to defend the title by racing alongside him.
'I was surprised to see it happening,' he says. 'I suppose he feels confident enough to take on Lewis and that's it. It's a bit of a task to take on, that's all.'
But by far the most emotional return today will be that of Felipe Massa, after suffering life-threatening head injuries last year. Can Ecclestone really be sure that F1 is safe enough?
'Yeah,' he tells me, 'I mean, when you look at all the accidents there have been where people just take off their seat belts and jump out of the car... the only problem is that their head is in the open air.'
'How did I cope? With great difficulty,' said Bernie on his difficult 2009
Massa fractured his skull, and the Formula 2 driver Henry Surtees was killed when a flying wheel hit his head during a race last year.
'I don't know whether or not drivers would wear more face protection, like the goalkeepers do in ice hockey. The chances of those things that happened both to young Surtees and Massa happening to someone else... You've got more chance of winning the lottery.'
Is he one of those petrolheads who think you've got to have danger or the races won't be worth watching?
'Not really. You don't have to hurt people to entertain.'
Off the track, the trouble-making has started again. Ferrari has complained of a 'holy war' being waged against the richer teams, while the new ones get favours. It says a 'munificent white knight' bailed out the ailing Campos Meta team (now Hispania Racing), and rumour says it was Ecclestone. Whether it was him or not, he has done a lot of deals in his 79 years.
He has also made a lot of money, with a fortune estimated at £1.5 billion. So you'd think he would be able to afford a better-fitting suit than the one he's wearing, which is a bit too big. It fits him like a shell. The little septuagenarian with a mop of grey hair looks like a tortoise in an Andy Warhol wig. But only a fool would treat him as a joke.
'I had no ambitions when I left school,' says the son of a trawlerman, who went to work at 16.
'All I wanted to do was leave school. It never entered my head that I could be a businessman.'
He sold motorbikes, then cars. When a crash ended his dream of being a racing driver, he bought a team. He persuaded the other teams to let him negotiate commercial rights on their behalf, and eventually to organise the races. He hustled, cajoled and charmed his way into a position of absolute power in a sport that tells princes where to sit and governments what to do. Then, last year, he almost lost it all.
'What with one thing and another, it wasn't easy,' he says, drily.
'How did I cope? With great difficulty. I don't get myself stressed out. I think life is like a game of cards - you get dealt a hand and you have to play that hand the best way you can. Or chuck it in.'
It looked like F1 was finished many times during 2009. There were cheating scandals and the leading teams rebelled against a proposed cap on their spending. The solution brokered by Ecclestone involved the departure of his long-time ally, Max Mosley, president of F1's governing body.
'They were upset with Max for proposing the cap. Max is quite strong with what he wants to do.'
Too strong?
Bernie and his ex-wife Slavica
'All of us have got little bits of failings; sometimes we go over the top, one way or another. It was the teams that caused the last rift, because they wanted more money to waste. Some of these teams have been spending £450 million a year. It's totally unnecessary.'
Does he miss Max?
'Yes.'
Is that really all he has to say about him?
'We've been friends for a long time. I'll miss him in as much as he does push things through. I mean, all the changes that he forced through, if you asked the teams to take them all out again and go back to the way things were before, they would say, "No way."'
Ecclestone must be great at poker, because he's deadpan about everything, even the end of his marriage.
'I think the money is more or less sorted. I haven't been bothered. I knew she would be very fair about everything.'
Slavica Radic is 28 years younger than Ecclestone and ten inches taller. They looked absurd together, but it worked for 24 years, long enough for them to have grown-up daughters, Petra and Tamara. People say he's still in love with her - is that true?
'Yeah. I mean, I would really hope that we could get back together again.'
There doesn't seem much chance of that now, given his recent appearances with a new girlfriend, Fabiana Flosi. She's 30. That only partially explains why Ecclestone is so laid-back about the details of his divorce, given what he says next. Four years ago he did the biggest deal of his life, selling his lease on the commercial rights of F1 to a firm called CVC Capital Partners. That raised an estimated $1 billion (£610 million).
'It was given to Slavica. She put the money in trust and the trustees control it. I don't have anything to do with the trust. I don't talk to them.'
So what percentage of his money is now out of reach?
'Oh well, I'll be all right. I shop at Waitrose.'
This we know, having seen pictures of the billionaire wandering the aisles of a supermarket with a basket in his hand last year.
'I don't know why people were surprised. It's the way I live.'
Could Formula 1, so obsessed with speed, youth and beauty, be a life support for its elderly ruler?
'I'd be happy to die on the job. For me, that's the only way to go. If I died halfway through a grand prix, no problem. Although I'd prefer that it happened after the race was finished.'
He'd die in luxury, anyway. So what does he say to those poor fans at Club Corner who pay fortunes to sit in a rickety stand?
'I don't know. I've never been up there. The truth of the matter is that you, unfortunately, went to Silverstone. It's British. It's what Britain does well.'
What's that?
'Anything down-market.'
How patriotic.
'At other races you'd find it was a hell of a lot better. Silverstone and British races have always been a bit amateurish and clubby, because the people that run them, that's what they are. So that's what you'll get. Hopefully, the new people at Silverstone will look at it a lot differently. It's sort of grown out of a gentlemen's club, which is now devoid of gentlemen.'
Is he nostalgic for his own racing days?
'Nostalgic for the kind of people who were involved, for sure. We have a different class of people now to when Mr Ferrari and Colin Chapman and people like that were around. But otherwise, no. Not at all. You can't have people wandering around the paddock, when you think of all the equipment we have. If somebody's smoking or something, it's difficult to control.'
Control is everything to Ecclestone, which explains his interest in dictators. Last year he made the mistake of praising Hitler as someone who could 'get things done'. It was a stupid thing to say just before the German Grand Prix, particularly when some of the bankers who finance his companies are Jewish. 'I'm sorry,' Ecclestone told the German paper Bild.
'I apologise honestly and sincerely.'
But he then said of Jews, 'It's a pity they didn't sort out the banks; they have a lot of influence everywhere.'
Sir Martin Sorrell, who is on the board of CVC Capital Partners, was not impressed: 'Any other CEO, in any other business, would be gone.'
The smart thing now would be to shut up about Hitler, but he is blessed with the self-confidence to try to explain himself.
'It started because I said I thought that the old form of democracy was a little bit old hat. The world is changing so quickly and decisions have to be made so quickly. The government says something, then the opposition says something different, then there's a compromise, then the compromise is changed again... and it's all too late.
'People in business have to make decisions today, like that,' he says, snapping his fingers. 'That's how I think countries should run. The two young women who were interviewing me said, "You mean a dictator." I said, "Not really, because most dictators manage to rule by fear and terrorising people. What you want is a good leader, not a dictator." That's when they said, "Do you mean like Hitler?" I said, well, at least what I thought he did during that period was right. The early days.'
As many have pointed out, the Nazi leader didn't just drive his economic miracle by constructing nice straight roads for motoring enthusiasts; he also built up a massive army. Ecclestone does realise he upset a lot of people.
'Quite rightly so. That's why I apologised.'
So, does he want to stand by his comments?
'Since this has all happened I have managed to look a bit more into these things.'
That doesn't mean he has changed his mind.
'In fact, there has been an awful lot written recently about those days, and when you read all that you realise it probably isn't what people thought.'
I take this to mean that he thinks the pre-war Hitler has had a bad press. He even suggests some modern regimes are just as bad.
'When you look all over the world, these things are happening. They're not right. Quite the opposite.'
You'd have to call his take on the Holocaust unique.
'What Hitler did was at best disgusting. And unnecessary.'
What a strange, cold word to use.
'What happened up until 1939 was, probably, good for the country, because it put Germany back on the road; but (what Hitler did) after that was completely unnecessary and I don't think there was any advantage. I don't think anybody could have got any advantage out of it.'
I wonder what CVC makes of all this. Was he given a telling-off last time?
'No.'
Not even after the board member went public?
'That's Martin Sorrell. He's, you know, Jewish...'
Oh dear. Fortunately, there's a sure-fire way he can stay in with the money men: extracting as much profit as possible from the spectacle of cars going around in circles. Later I find myself accompanying him to a press conference for F1 Rocks, a concert that was held alongside the Singapore Grand Prix last year and will be again in September. On stage at London's Met Bar, Ecclestone refuses a request to pose with an electric guitar.
'I'm not into all this nonsense, to be quite blunt with you,' he tells me. 'I'm not in showbusiness.'
Really?
'I just organise it.'
He's asked if he likes music.
'I know most of the modern stuff... I mean, Frank Sinatra?'
Cue sycophantic laughter. An acolyte says that if anyone could organise a comeback gig for Ol' Blue Eyes, it's Bernie. He smiles, and opens his hands. 'Anything is possible.'
It's like watching a general at a kiddies' tea party, humouring them all until he can get back to the war. Then a young journalist goes too far: 'When was the last time that you woke up in the morning and laughed your head off at how great your life was?'
Gosh, it's cold in here, suddenly. Ecclestone's eyes narrow. I recognise that look, and the chilling tone.
'Never answer a stupid question with a stupid answer.'
Quite right, too. Better to shut up than to have to make threats. He'll do well to remember that himself this season, as cars and tempers begin to fly again - particularly if a mischief-maker pops up before the Italian Grand Prix and asks what he thinks of Mussolini.
www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1257007/Bernie-Ecclestone-I-gave-1-billion-ex-wife--But-Ill-right-I-shop-Waitrose.html#ixzz0iED51PYT