S7 EP1: Boris Becker on encountering Diddy, mind-games with Nadal and his spell in prison

Bingo cards at the ready... for the first episode of the series, Louis’s on the road again - this time in sunny Milan to sit down with tennis champion, coach, and commentator, Boris Becker. The pair discuss Boris encountering Diddy in Miami, playing mind-games with Rafael Nadal in the Wimbledon locker room, and his spell in Wandsworth prison. Warnings: Strong language and adult themes. Links/Attachments: Book: Boris Becker Inside, Boris Becker (2025) https://www.waterstones.com/book/inside/boris-becker/9780008782924 Book: The Player, Boris Becker (2004) https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-player/boris-becker/9780857500274 Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker, (2023) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10366552/ Boris Becker: The Rise & Fall, (2023) https://www.itv.com/watch/boris-becker-the-rise-and-fall/10a2940 Song: ‘Me Against The World', Tupac (1995) https://open.spotify.com/track/76wJIkA63AgwA92hUhpE2V?si=dcabe1b32c4947c9 Song: ‘Slippin’, Lil Kim (2005) https://open.spotify.com/track/3xN4CIFCdrJOiCFF7NFILQ Article: Judge Ordered to Pay Fine for Racist Tweet https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/16/alternative-germany-politician-ordered-pay-compensation-boris/#:~:text=Jens%20Maier%20of%20the%20AfD%20was%20ordered%20to%20pay%20%E2%82%AC,obtain%20bookings%20as%20a%20DJ Credits: Producer: Millie Chu  Assistant Producer: Maan al-Yasiri Production Manager: Francesca Bassett  Music: Miguel D’Oliveira  Audio Mixer: Tom Guest Video Mixer: Scott Edwards Shownotes compiled by Elly Young Executive Producer: Arron Fellows     A Mindhouse Studios Production for Spotify  www.mindhouse.co.uk  Open a Moneybox Cash ISA at https://moneybox.onelink.me/Cqlx/y3xncge Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Hello there, welcome back to what we call the Louis Theroux Podcast.

• 0:19Speaker 00

  This week's guest is tennis champion, coach and commentator, and also tabloid fixture Boris Becker. Boris Becker. That's the first of the impressions I'll be doing this week. I find when I do Boris, it kind of goes into Arnie, Arnie. Anyway, Arnold Boris Becker. It's Boris Becker. You know Boris Becker, come on. Legendary tennis player who won Wimbledon aged just 17. Yes, a Wunderkind. He was German, so it works on both levels. He became the youngest men's champion in the tournament's history. He was a child. And he went on to win six Grand Slam titles in total. His success so early on in his career catapulted him to fame.

• 1:05Speaker 00

  With all the attendant issues to do with media coverage and the many temptations life put in his way. He became one of the most recognisable athletes on the planet. Earth, in case you were wondering.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  After retiring from professional tennis, Boris remained in the public eye, working as a commentator. He later coached Novak Djokovic, if you've heard of him, during one of the most successful periods of Novak's career. But Boris's life off the court has been almost as headline grabbing as his time on it. There have been divorces.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  That was a tongue in cheek gasp. Divorces are divorces, but these ones played out in a high profile way. There have been financial problems, legal trouble and time spent in prison. All reported on by the tabloids. He was in Wandsworth Prison, close to where I grew up in South London.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  The relevance, you ask? None. But we do talk about the almost poetic irony of Wandsworth Prison, SW18, that's the London postcode, and Wimbledon, SW19, a scant mile or two away, and the ways in which his life reached its lowest ebb and its highest ebb in these vast physical structures that were so close. I don't know. Anyway, life is strange, isn't it? And you can, one minute you're winning Wimbledon and the next you're doing

• 2:46Speaker 00

  porridge with some lags in Wandsworth Prison. I've only had ups. What are downs like? If you can tell me, get in touch. Boris was declared bankrupt in 2017 and then separately found guilty of four charges under the Insolvency Act in 2022, so two different cases. As Winston Churchill never said, "To have one criminal case could be accounted a misfortune. To have two begins to look like carelessness." I don't have any. I was arrested. Anyway, let's not go into that. He was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment. I'll catch you up on the, at the end, there's a cliffhanger. I'll tell you what I was arrested for at

• 3:30Speaker 00

  the end. He was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment. He ended up serving eight months. We recorded this conversation in November. It involves an LTP road trip to Milan in Italy, where Boris currently lives. Boris is not allowed to come to the UK as is one of the conditions of his early release from prison. I was very happy to go on the road. It's always a bit of an adventure when you arrive on location for a podcast interview. We met to discuss, in theory, I mean, not in theory and in practice, but this was the peg, the release of his new book, Inside, subtitled Winning, Losing, Starting Again.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  It was published late last year. It's a warts and all. That's such a cliche. You have to say that. It's a no warts. You mentioned doing a no warts book. A wartless. It's a definitely non-wart-free account of his life in prison. He'd written a previous memoir that's more tennis-focused, and this one is about arriving in prison and making the best of it.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  Kind of getting in touch with himself, learning from the Stoic philosophers, as well as learning and helping his fellow inmates, learning from and helping them. He was running a little late from a hospital appointment with his wife. She gave birth to his fifth child a few weeks later. I reference that because the conversation starts in medias res. That's the Latin for in the middle of the thing.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  In middle of thing because in Latin, of course, there is no definite article. And no word for yes or no. Did you know that, Millie?

• 5:17Speaker 00

  A quick warning, this conversation contains a bit of bad language and some adult themes. Does it? We definitely talk about some of the sexual stuff and Epstein comes up, P Diddy, freak-offs, so yeah, that would be accurate. All that and much else besides coming up.

• 5:46Speaker 00

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• 7:20Speaker 00

  When you walked in, I was going, I was gonna, I had a whole little bit planned, I was going, welcome Boris, or should I call you A2923EV?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Well, that was a short time of my life, not, not worth my name.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  That was my joke.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  But you've written a book about it, which we're going to talk about.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Which is very enjoyable.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  What struck me reading it, among many other things, was the physical injuries you're carrying.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  You're carrying the war wounds of a storied tennis career. You've got, tell me a little bit about what, do you struggle to walk or was that before? Like, how is you, can you run? What is your physical condition?

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Well, how much time you have?

• 8:05Speaker 00

  You were a little bit late, so.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I have, I have hips, replaced hips, partially replaced left knee. And a replaced right ankle, which doesn't really function anymore, meaning I cannot run. You know, I cannot move the ankle, it's stiff. I do my power walks.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  You can't run at all?

• 8:28Speaker 01

  No, no, no. That was actually since 20, had it replaced 2017.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  There was quite a struggle mentally. Yes, about eight years ago.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  I struggled mentally because I've been doing physical sports all my life. You know, whether that's tennis or basketball or football or just running with the kids. And just to accept the fact that because of the wear and tear and all the injuries I've had, that you cannot like run anymore. It was mentally as much a struggle as it was physically.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Are you in pain?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  No, no. Having said that, I think I'm in better shape now than I was ten years ago.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  You're looking good.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Um, um, I do, I mean, I have to do a lot for it.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Swimming?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Uh, biking.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Um, power walking, uh, swimming, I like the water. I'll do my weights, you know, uh, tennis, uh, only if you wanna play with me, not against me. Then I can play tennis.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Does that mean?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Well, you play in the middle or I stay in the corner, then I can, I can have a strong arm still, so.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Really?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  My, my vision is good, um, so I can still hit the ball, but I cannot run towards the ball.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. Right. Does that mean what, okay, is that all because of tennis?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I had a pretty physical style.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  You were known for your, yes, physical dives and leaps, jumping around. And what, and that caught up with you, did it?

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wasn't as, um, fluid as a Federer or as agile as a, as a Djokovic. Uh, I was more like a Nadal physically, you know, overbearing opponents physically.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Uh, and then with age, you know, good old age is catching up to all of us. So a combination of all of that, I think, made me, made me how I am. But having said that, uh, in my forties, I think I was a lot worse and I was in my fifties now.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Uh, there's a lot to get into. Um, as I mentioned, there's a book, it's called Boris Becker Inside. You, uh, also wrote another one, um, a memoir, what, ten, fifteen years ago, maybe?

• 10:38Speaker 01

  I was, um, checking it the other day, it was, uh.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Two thousand and four, was it two thousand and four, five, something like that?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  You've also come out of prison, uh, what, a year, two years ago?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Um. In December of twenty two.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Three years ago.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  December fifteenth of twenty two.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  And, um.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  You know, I'm of the generation that grew up with you. Like, I remember when I was fifteen, you were seventeen, you won Wimbledon. My brother was seventeen. I thought, that's so weird. Like, my brother, he's just doing his exams at school. Like, how, like, and some part of me thought, like, why aren't you winning Wimbledon? You know what I mean? It was like, it's so strange that a member of his peer group would be reaching that level of fame and excellence. Then you've been on a long journey ever since. Ups and downs. What else can I say? There've been ups and there've been downs. And I think if it's not too painful, we should probably get a few of the more awkward things out of the way. Would that be all right?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  You go, you go shoot and then I defend.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  It is. Well, you know, it's funny, when you came in, I was like, you know, an interview is a bit like a tennis match.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Well, it's a big back and forth. You have an idea, what you want to know.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  I think I'm more of an Agassi. Like, I've got quite a weak serve, but a strong return.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  Does that make sense?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  I actually never played, never liked to play Agassi. So, because he has a good return and he was, I was playing into his strengths.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  But he's a, he's a nice guy after all.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  He seems nice. His book is also good. As I mentioned, there's a book, I did read your book, but also watched two separate documentaries, one with your cooperation, the Alex Gibney one. Very interesting. And then another one, unauthorized one, made by ITV. Have you seen both of those?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  I've seen the one with Alex Gibney. Lovely, lovely gentleman. It was a difficult one because half of it, I was already inside. So, it was as good as possible, given the circumstances that I was in. You know, thankfully, I had a, had a wife outside that fought like a lion. And in that case, I had a very good agent called Sonar. They defended me as good as they can. Hopefully, there's another documentary with, with complete control of what actually happened to me in the near distant future.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Have you fallen out with Gibney?

• 13:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 13:09Speaker 00

  No.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  You just, there were things about the film that you were like...

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Well, because, because he did two parts. The first part, I was outside and I could help the edit, I could help tell the story. In part two, I was inside. And some of the storytelling is not a hundred percent accurate. How could it be? And and the correction through the through the the book that I got, you know, with short calls to my wife and then to the agent. Naturally, there had to be some some some mistakes, but I think overall, it's it's the best documentary that's out there.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  It's called Boom Boom.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  What's the subtitle, The World According to Boris Becker, is it?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Against, I think, the world.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Against.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Me Against the World a little bit, which is one of my favorite Tupac songs.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  A Tupac song?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Well, it's it's a famous, I'm a big, big admirer of Tupac.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  Oh, Tupac Shakur?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Of course. So one of the famous songs he has is Me Against the World.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  You like rap?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  I used to like rap from the nineties.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  You like Lil Kim?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  I, well, Lil Kim had one or two good songs. One one was called Slippin', which which I really liked. If you want to get into rap a little bit.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Let's do a bit of nineties, notorious B I G.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Who else?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Um, I was always a big fan of J C.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  J Z.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  I love love J C.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Did you meet J Z?

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, met him a couple of times. He's a big tennis fan.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Is he?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  I met Beyonce as well, so.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  She nice?

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Very nice, yeah, very cool couple. You you wouldn't you wouldn't associate Boris Becker from West Germany with with, you know, rap music like that, but I always had a bit of an eclectic taste.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  Did you meet Diddy?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  I've met him, I spent a lot of time in Miami.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Did it surprise you when the stuff about the freak-offs came out?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Um, no. I mean, if you if you if you know Diddy, if you live in Miami, if if you you are invited on the weekends, you know, to parties, you have a choice of saying yes and you have a choice of saying no. Nobody really talked in detail what happened, but they they went, you know, they went for hours and and I call them freak-offs and you you you put your two cents together what happened there, okay?

• 15:33Speaker 00

  I feel like the freak-offs are getting conflated with the parties, because the freak-offs took place in hotel rooms.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  I think with Cassie, and then he would bring in sex work, male sex workers, and there would be drugs and they would take days. The parties were parties.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  The parties were parties, but even the parties, they took sometimes a day or two.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Really?

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 00

  How do you know that?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Well, you know, when you, when you, you know, talk to someone on a Saturday afternoon and you talk to them again on the Tuesday and you say, damn, I just got out of it.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Then, then they were like, what? Yeah, it just took forever. We just didn't leave. And then, then you know, they're, they're longer than just a night. And of course, nobody ever says what they've done in those forty eight hours, of course, but.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  You think that was.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Naturally, uh, uh, an espresso Red Bull isn't strong enough to make you survive the two nights.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  No.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, but Miami, again Miami, in the nineties.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  And sexual activity, do you think?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  I, I don't know what, I mean, I, I've never, I've never been a guy of, of going to a long party because, you know, what's the point?

• 16:46Speaker 00

  You never met Epstein, did you?

• 16:48Speaker 01

  No, no, I mean, you're opening all boxes now, no, I never met Epstein.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  No. I, I did meet.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  He had a Miami connection.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  I, I know Epstein, I had, no, no, I did meet Andrew.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Did you?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  I did meet Andrew, I mean, I met the royal family many, many times. Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  What, what, what would you say about Andrew?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Look, we are on air now and, and I, I don't think I should talk about this subject. It's so brand hot now, brand new. Um, but it's, uh.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  That's our clickbait headline is Boris Becker on P Diddy, Epstein and Prince Andrew. That's gonna break the internet.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Exactly. He's not called Prince Andrew anymore.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  Oh, you're right.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  He's called, um, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  Do you feel bad for him?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  I, I shouldn't be talking about this. I mean, you're, you're leading me into, into something that I, I shouldn't be commenting, yeah. My, my life is full enough, right? I shouldn't be the one that pointy fingered at others and criticized others for their, for their mistakes.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  I knew you'd say that. That's why I felt comfortable asking the question, because I knew you had the poise to give the perfect answer.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  I should say, I, I should say, by the way, Alex Gibney is a. Very well-known American, a very respected American director. He's definitely one of the top directors of documentaries in America, if not the world.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Can I say a bit about the other one? So the other one by ITV, I would call it a hoax. Because I went with a very good legal team against it because there were so many facts portrayed that are wrong.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Well, we might be able to put some of those to bed. So one of the things, one of the narratives that comes out from watching those, and I just want to, because that, everything you said could be true, and in addition, it could also be true, I don't mean to sound like it's not, but in addition, it could also be true that you were maybe reckless. Where I'm going with this is, one of the quotes that Gibney gives in promoting the, I guess he was promoting the film. He said, "What made him great," meaning you as a player, "didn't serve him well in real life. You have to be a little bit crazy to do what they do." I think meaning top tennis players or athletes. And Lilian, in a different quote, she said something similar. She said, "In order to be a champion, you have to believe you're invincible.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  That probably brings you to a level where you think you're untouchable in real life." So I wonder if there's a part of you that is naturally a bit reckless, a bit of a gambler? Someone who maybe risks too much where the odds aren't good enough, or looks for the edge?

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Look, I think in order to become the best in what you do, you have to go past your own limitations. You have to go further than you think you can go in order to get to that last point and make that last serve and just come back from two sets to love. If you wouldn't believe in your own strength, you would never do that because it's not logic. A lot of people have tried and a lot of people have failed. So in order for me to be best tennis player in the world, I have to cross border lines. Okay, that is an attribute that I have by my DNA.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  What kind of border, you mean pushing the envelope? Do you mean just, what do you mean by crossing border lines? Because that could sound like... Kind of transgressing.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, just, just, just not accepting no for an answer, for example. So that worked very well as an athlete. Now, in real life, we all have our borders, right? There's, there's the law, you have to, if the red light, you have to stop and all this, which I, which I do. But if I'm in business and I see an opportunity to make this business successful, I go as far as necessary and as far I have to go. Now, it's good and bad.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  With this, this character trait, if you may say, I've, I've survived prison and I'm, I'm, I'm living, I'm living the, probably the best life I've been living in the last fifteen or twenty years. Now, if I would give up easily, if I would accept no easily, if I would always believe what you tell me, I wouldn't be in this position today at almost fifty-eight, right? So it goes both ways. Now, I see why people wanna do a documentary about it because some of the things that I've done, nobody has done. The good and the bad.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  But I think it's a character trait of mine that I don't accept no for an answer. Otherwise, I would have never been, been the best.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Are you reckless?

• 21:20Speaker 01

  No, I'm, I'm not reckless, I'm, but I'm not afraid. I think there's a difference. I'm, I'm not afraid also of falling down. I can't accept not trying. That doesn't mean I succeed all the time, that sometimes I, I, I get a bloody nose. But I'm not afraid of trying if it means I have to fall down.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  One of the things in the ITV documentary was your ex-wife Lily said that you kept horses in the bedroom of your thinker.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Well, how could you imagine that?

• 21:51Speaker 00

  In order to evade taxes on horses.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Well, how much, how much bullshit is that, seriously? Can I swear on this?

• 21:58Speaker 00

  Please.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Do I have to?

• 21:59Speaker 00

  Go ahead.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  My language? So, I mean, have you ever seen such a load of bullshit in your life before? Just, just think logically. How big a bedroom have to be to hide horses in there? Let alone, she's talking about the Fink and Mallorca. The bedrooms are on the first floor. So how on earth should the horses get onto the first floor? And then to avoid paying taxes of paying taxes of what? So that's just one element and thankfully for laughing. That's just one element of the BS that's been storied about me in that particular documentary. Thankfully, it was not a success. People didn't believe it. It wasn't watched, so it's not even worth talking about it. But that's what I'm dealt with.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  If my name isn't Boris Becker, there isn't even going to be a documentary about it. Right?

• 22:48Speaker 00

  The other one was, this is the, yeah, I mean, I don't, I know you've got an answer to this one.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Hiding horses. Yeah, yeah, I've heard that too. This is crazy.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  The, at a certain stage of the insolvency proceedings, you announced that you actually had a passport from the Central African Republic.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  And that you had diplomatic immunity, therefore, from the case.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Well, the first part of your question is correct. The second part is not correct. I never asked for immunity in my insolvency case. It was a business deal that I was offered.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Yes, the passport turned out to be fake.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  The passport turned out to be fake. And, and at the time, it was about the auction of my trophies. I had a problem with that. I had a problem that the trustee had the right to auction of my trophies that I, I put all my, my, you know, blood, sweat and tears about it. They had no financial value other than to me, that he had the right to sell them. He, he fetched a lot of money for it. But that legally it was possible and that pissed me off. And I thought, which way could I stop this auction? Then this business idea came and I thought, maybe I can stop the selling of, of my, my trophies, which it was stopped for about six months.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  By becoming an African?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  No, no, no, to have an immunity against this particular point.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Through the passport?

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Through the passport. That was the whole point. Once it was clarified that it was a fake passport, I was the first one to say. Do what you want with the trophies, hopefully you get a lot of money for it and so forth. So that was stopped. Now, in hindsight, that was foolish. Of course, that was foolish, but I got my emotions in the way. I don't think any trustee should ever have a right to touch any of my trophies. I think it's it's really wrong, but there you go. That was a mistake.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  Do you know offhand how much one of your Wimbledon cups would have gone for?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Um, funny enough, uh, nine trophies, even the Wimbledon ones, are missing. So it was in.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  It's a little bit suspicious.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Well, part of the prosecution was that for each missing trophy, they had a case against me. Now, the explanation for me was that as a teenager, you win Wimbledon not because of the trophy. You win because of the title. You win because you want to win, not because you want to keep the trophy and so forth. Trophies matter only when you can't win them anymore because they're too old. You want to show them to your kids. So I never knew who I gave these trophies to. Probably my manager at the time. I asked him, he didn't have him either.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  Some were sold, I think, no?

• 25:33Speaker 01

  There were a lot of, a lot of important trophies. I won a lot of trophies in my life, right? So a lot of important.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  Shall we talk about how many trophies you won? I mean, that might be, well, we don't have.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  How many Masters did you want? How many, um, come on, let's just quickly.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  We've got this. Forty-nine ATP singles titles.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  That's in singles, yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  Grand Slam victories.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  Six, three Wimbledons, one US Open, one Australian. No French Open?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Well, six as a player and six as a coach. Sometimes also if you Google Wikipedia, they don't, they don't talk about my.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  Six as a player, six as a coach.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  So you don't know how much a Wimbledon trophy would, that you won, would sell for?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Not all these trophies, memorabilia, they call it coins, um, you know.

• 26:19Speaker 00

  What, Olympic coins, because you won doubles, didn't you, in Barcelona?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, all this was sold for seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Having said that, I would say the nine most important ones are not part of it.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  And they are still not to be found.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  Eon Tyriak. What was he? He comes up in the Gibney documentary. He looks a bit like kind of 70s medallion man. He's got a big moustache, hairy chest.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, let me remember, yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  And kind of, I suppose it was the 70s when he was looking like that. So that's fine, but he was a Romanian tennis player who became your coach or advisor?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Coach, because I wasn't making any money yet at 15 and 16. But then he quickly became also my manager.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  And he comes across as a voice of reason. And he claims that, I think he said early on, look, take whatever, 5, 10% of your money. Play with it, have fun, go crazy. Just remember the other stuff, don't take risks with it. Keep a ton of it in the bank, keep most of it in the bank accruing a stable rate of interest. That's one of the things he said, he said. And then he's also described you as the most stubborn human being I ever met.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Let me just clarify the first point. No, I didn't have any financial issues in my tennis career. His issue was we could have earned more. But I wasn't playing for money. I wasn't playing for profit. I was playing to win. It drove him crazy. He said, go to Hong Kong for two nights, go to Morocco for two nights, we make a fortune. And I said, but it has no meaning to me. See, that's been always a confrontation between us, a healthy one. Because he comes from nothing. So for him, money is everything. But I come from something. So again, we clashed on this philosophy that money for him was everything. Money for me was never everything. And am I stubborn? Of course.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  So lovely. In all the documentaries, there's one bit of archive they always seem to use where you look like you're about seven or eight years old and you win, you play this long baseline shot across the court and then you go, "Yay!" It's amazing. Do you know the one I mean?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was nine. I was nine, yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  At that age, were you thinking, "I'd like to play tennis as a profession"?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  You just weren't. It's very young to be thinking about that.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Is there something about tennis, you know, Naomi Osaka's been public about mental health struggles, other people have struggled. It comes across in Andre Agassi's book very strongly. He talks about how much he hates tennis. That's sort of the leitmotif of the book. And it's a lonely sport and you're there, you're not really even allowed to be coached while you're out there, correct?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Nowadays, the rules are changing a little bit, so you can coach a player when he's on your side of the court, but he's not really on the court coaching.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  But is there something that's, I mean, it's kind of obvious in some ways, but what would you say about what tennis demands from its athletes that's different from other sports?

• 29:35Speaker 01

  It's, you know, obviously it's an individual sport, so it's mentally very challenging to be always on par, to have the motivation, to be convinced about your own strengths. That is very, very difficult. That's why you have so many ups and downs, you know, with careers. Lonely, I mean, every week in a different place. Yes, the hotel room can be nice.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  You're on the tour, week in, week out, all through the year, Australia, Asia, America, Europe.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Correct. So, again...

• 30:06Speaker 00

  How many are in your entourage?

• 30:08Speaker 01

  It depends how wealthy you are. You know, if you're Alcaraz from the Sunnah, I think he's got about eight to 10 people in his entourage. You know, when I was playing, I had a lot of people in my entourage. I think Djokovic had a lot of people. So you have to afford that, but this becomes your family because this is the only, only close people you have.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  You become friends with the other players?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Not when you're a good player. No, no.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Really?

• 30:35Speaker 01

  No, no. Again, it's a very, I mean, the locker room, you're sitting next to your... Opponent, the guy you're playing in Wimbledon final in a half an hour. I mean, no other sport has that.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  Why do they do, so you're in the locker room about to play the match of, you know, of your life, let's say, or certainly the final of Wimbledon, and you're both in the same locker room together.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  No other sport has that.

• 30:59Speaker 00

  Why do they do that?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Tradition, tradition, it's been, it's been like this since the beginning of tennis.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  Do you talk to each other?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  You do gossip a little and small talk, you don't really go into depth. You can't also open up yourself because then you know, okay, he's got a weak moment or he's struggling with the wife or he's struggling with this. So you don't wanna, you don't wanna share stories with your, with your toughest opponent, of course not.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  Psychological games playing, like what?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, staring each other out, you know, looking at each other, who blinks first, who walks away, who takes most space in the locker room, you know, who puts his, his entourage next to him a little bit just to spread the muscles, as we say. You know who was very good at that? Always Nadal. When I was coaching Djokovic, I mean Nadal came with entourage and he just blocked the whole corner just to say, this is my.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  In the locker room?

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, he had a thing.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  It was claimed that when you played Agassi one time and he was going out with Brooke Shields, you began flirting with her in the crowd and then it blew his concentration. That's in your documentary.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Well, I wasn't gonna comment too much on Alex's work. But what's, what's true is that it was a particular match at Wimbledon, a semi-final, and he was, he was beating my ass badly, sat in a break or so. And, and I was trying to find a way to get into his head. And, and at the time I was dating Brooke and they're sitting in the players box and I was trying to do eye contact, just to disturb him a little bit.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  With Brooke?

• 32:37Speaker 01

  With, with, with his box, with his box. And Brooke was sitting there in the middle, I don't think you can call it flirting, but I was just trying to get him off guard. Guess what? It worked. I won the match in four. So there's a lot of mental warfare going on and I'd like to think I was good at that.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  He says he could tell where you were going to serve by the tongue movement.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Well, think of this logically.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  Serving left, your tongue went left. If you were serving right, your tongue went right.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  I hate to, I hate to break a great story.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  And he's from Las Vegas after all. But I mean, a tennis court is thirty-three metres long. You really think that he has the eyesight to look into my mouth while I'm serving up, where I don't even know where I'm serving. So he thinks that with the movement of my tongue,

• 33:28Speaker 01

  it's a nice story. I love the book he wrote, but factually wrong.

• 33:47Speaker 00

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• 35:14Speaker 00

  So there's some legal business to deal with and there's some ladies business to deal with.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  On the legal stuff, just to get it out of the way. So you were convicted on a case. It was financial stuff, like initially, and again, I didn't follow this closely at the time, which is like Boris Becker's in the news, there was tax evasion. That was around 2002. They alleged, well, they convicted you on avoiding taxes by claiming that you lived in Switzerland, whereas they said you actually lived in Germany. You got two years suspended on that.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  I have to sometimes correct because most of the stuff that's been wrote about me, and that's why now and then I have to write a book, is that is actually factually incorrect.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  Did I get it wrong already?

• 36:04Speaker 01

  So I was convicted of tax evasion because I was using the guest room of my sister's apartment in Munich.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  And the Munich authorities claimed that was my home and therefore they convicted me of actually living in the guest bedroom of my sister and not in my three-bedroom apartment in Monte Carlo. Now, I did have some stuff, but you know, the rules are what they are. And so it's corrected. They convicted me of this very terrible sounding word, tax evasion, where the fact was I used my sister's guest bedroom once too many times. Correct. Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  You got two years suspended on that.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Then 2022 comes, post-bankruptcy, you're accused of breaking the Insolvency Act, basically hiding assets in order to not pay your creditors.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  That's the contention.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  I have to correct you a little bit. I mean, you're reading, you're reading.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  No, no, I was just, I didn't mean to, I wondered if I got it wrong again.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  No, no, no, you got the headlines, right? But what it actually means, because I was going to ask you, do you know why I was actually incarcerated? I was accused of twenty nine separate points. Yes. Of twenty five of them, I've won. And the four points that I've lost is that um I did a technical error. By telling the trustee, three weeks later than I was told. That I had a home in Germany, which I owned a hundred percent. I thought because my mother was living in there, she owned it half. That this home had a mortgage that I uh took money.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Out of my business account, which was legit, to pay. Personal expenses. Personal expenses again, so I wasn't hiding it. And the last bit was I had shares in a a sports startup company. The shares were valued at nine thousand pounds. Again, it took me three weeks to clarify that. And because of those three weeks, the headline is um I was hiding assets. I was not hiding assets. Whether that was correct or not, I went because of that um for thirty months into prison originally. So.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  He was found guilty on four counts out of twenty four, including hiding eight hundred and twenty five thousand euros in a business account, failing to declare ownership of a German property. You mentioned that one, and transferring large sums to his ex-wife's account.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  No, that's not correct, that's not correct, no, no, no, no, no. And I I can I can show you, obviously, I don't need to come with the evidence, but if you want to. If you want to clarify whether I I was correct, that's exactly um in documents in the court. In all these decisions, I don't want to say or claim that it wasn't my fault. All these decisions was my responsibility and I take full accountability. It's just the actual points, it was on case four. Where where what what got me the thirty month was that I took um not eight hundred and fifty thousand, but it was three hundred and eighty two thousand points.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  The reason I know it in detail because I was convicted for, so I know exactly um. To pay child support, to pay, you know, personal expenditure and so forth, which I had to do by law. That's what I did and I told the trustee this three weeks after he asked me. That's the God honest truth. That's what I did.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  And thank you for clarifying that.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  No, but it's important because it wasn't tax evasion, right? Or it wasn't.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  The 2022 one was not.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  The Insolvency Act.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So that's the headline. The headline is correct. But what does it mean?

• 40:02Speaker 00

  And if you zoom right out and you try and make sense of this, the wunderkind, seventeen, wins Wimbledon. You have your tennis career. Well, I'm just trying to kind of make sense of it all, really. Do you think you were unlucky? Do you think there was some part of you that was perhaps? Well, you were obviously breaking the law, but in ways that perhaps you were either naive or you were trying to bend the law a bit in your own mind? You had a lot of obligations, right? You had child support. At that time, it was four, was it four children?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  And across three relationships. That's a lot of outgoing expenses, right? Obviously, you also have a lot of income, certainly during the tennis days, and then afterwards presumably endorsements. Were you bad with business? What, how do you? When you look, when you zoom right out and try and make sense of what took place? What do you, how do you do that? What's the best explanation? I know that's a big question.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Well, it's a, it's a very important question because, you know, you, I did write a book about it because it's not answered in a sentence or two, but I'm going to do my best. First of all, I'm responsible for the good and the bad that happened in my life, okay? The good was I was a very successful tennis player, Wimbledon champion, number one, everything. And I earned a lot of money. Now, how much did I earn? I think this is where the.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  I can tell you that if you like.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Well, I know better what I've earned than you were going to tell me.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  I've Googled it.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Well, but that's my problem.

• 41:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Because I've Googled myself a long time and most of the stories about Boris back on Google is wrong. How much money did I walk away in ninety nine when I quit my tennis career? Me in the pocket, and believe me, I'm giving you the truth.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  Okay, so according to Wikipedia, your total prize, well, that's not funny.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Well, if you Google Wikipedia, Ryan Borzpecker.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  Yes, it says twenty five million prize money, and then you add endorsements onto that, and you're gonna get easily double that, right?

• 42:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  So I would between fifty and seventy five million, I'm guessing.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  You know, it's a wrong guess. On Wikipedia.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  It was euros, although I can't really remember.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Well, let's get to the integrity on this, okay? On Wikipedia, if you Google my name, I have three kids, not four kids. So, starting.

• 42:26Speaker 00

  Really?

• 42:26Speaker 01

  With a very factual, important information that it's easy to verify. Just give you an idea how many wrong things there are on Wikipedia. They've never seen my bank account, they've never seen my tax returns, and they've never seen me paying commissions to any of my managers, right? I'll give you an example with prize money. So out of this twenty five million dollar prize money, half of it is gone with taxes right away. So it's not twenty five, we're starting with twelve. Again, it's a lot of money for most people, but it's not twenty five. Now, my endorsements at the time weren't in pounds or weren't in euros, they were in Deutschmark.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  I walked away with around thirty million Deutschmarks, which is about fifteen million euros, which is a hell of a money, okay? But it's not fifty, and it's not a hundred. Within the first year after my retirement, I had a very expensive divorce. Half of it is gone. So, out of the fifteen, I have maybe left half, okay? So, because I had a high child support for three children, which I love dearly, over fifteen to twenty years, depending on their age, the child support was in a good five-figure range every month, and that's net.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Naturally, after my tennis career, I didn't have the income anymore. How could I? But I had the outgoings.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  Well, you would have had endorsement income.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but nothing even close to when you are a Wimbledon champion, when you're number three in the world. Nothing even close to that. So I'm giving you the honest story.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  So your income went off a cliff after you retired from tennis in nineteen ninety nine?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't call it a cliff. It's just that.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  It tapered, it tapered down.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Just, just the incomings were less, the outgoings were fixed. So fast forward fifteen, twenty years later, um, you know, I had assets. I had three large houses, but my cash was a lot less because of my outgoings. So that's why I asked a private bank in England for a loan against my future income, which was all legit.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  This is in the book, isn't it?

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's all in the book. It's all just.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  How much, remind me how much the loan was for? How much was the loan?

• 44:54Speaker 01

  The loan, I got a five million, five million euro loan, which I paid back a million and a half.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  It was at twenty five percent interest.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  This is where the fight broke out.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  But you, you're, you must have business advisors saying like, that's a very high rate of interest.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Again, I cannot, you know, I can easily blame my business advisors then, but it's my fault. Maybe you can call it naive, maybe you can call it, you know, very difficult, especially in my playing days where people were correcting me or would tell me no. I get that, but I was badly advised to accept the loan under such high interest.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't mean to laugh. I'm not very good with money either, funnily enough.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:40Speaker 00

  I don't think you're very good with money.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  I think I'm very good with earning money.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  I didn't have.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Business.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Huh?

• 45:46Speaker 00

  But not so good with business?

• 45:47Speaker 01

  I think earning money is business. What you call earning money not business, or is it for fun?

• 45:53Speaker 00

  Not really, because a boxer could earn enormous amounts of money, but they might be terrible with the money. You know, you look at athletes in general, people who make, they earn huge amounts. And this is the, this is the whole problem. Well, this is the challenge faced by young athletes. They have this huge income, don't they? But a limited window of opportunity. So from eighteen to twenty-six, they're earning money, but they're not good with business.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  No, well, let's say, but I'm no longer twenty-six. So in my thirties and forties, of course, I became better with money. But I didn't study business, I didn't study the law. So you surround yourself supposedly with smarter business managers than you are. Again, it's my, my fault. I'm just giving you now the facts because emotionally, I'm way past it. I've accepted it, I took accountability. I'm, maybe I'm a better man today because of it. My life is very different today than it was in the years prior. But, but it's, it's just because when you, when you go on Wikipedia or you want on Google, most of it is actually factually not correct about Boris Becker.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  We, we've talked about the legal stuff. I, I know you're happily married now and you've got a baby on the way. I don't want to embarrass your wife. Nevertheless, I have to put this out there. Do you think, um, in a general way, you've learned anything about your relations with the opposite sex?

• 47:24Speaker 01

  I mean, a quick answer is yes, but relationships are difficult. I'm not the first one that was divorced. I'm not the last one that's gonna be divorced. My, my first marriage lasted ten years. My second marriage lasted thirteen years, so that wasn't, it's not that quick. It could have been longer, but it's also not six months. You're supposed to learn, right? You're supposed to learn, but we're people, we make mistakes, nobody's perfect. I think I'm making a lot, a lot less mistakes now than I've done twenty, thirty or forty years ago, yes.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  You've said, um, there was a way it used to be with me and women. I could see it in their faces. I want to be with you because you're famous. I want to be with you because you're rich. And then that led you to question, you go on, was Barbara in love with the Wimbledon champion and everything that came with it? Then I would have to ask the same question of Charlotte Lee. Or was it ever just the boy from Lyman?

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Well, one thing is for sure, I can't prove it. But it's very, very legit for me to ask that question. Hypothetically, if both of these women, and they're the mother of my children as well, I want to emphasize that, were they in love with the superstar, the, you know, famous guy, the rich guy? Or were they in love with the boy from Lyman, from a, from a small town? Now, one thing I'm, I'm sure is that when I've met Lillian, I wasn't rich anymore. I was physically impaired. I may have a famous name even then, but, but she didn't care much about tennis. She actually didn't know me on my first night.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  So I can, you know, hand on a bible, I can say, she didn't fall in love because of the wealth, I didn't have any. Because of the, the fame, I didn't really have any. And, and physically, you know, I'm not, I'm not in a better shape now than I was at 25. So the contrast of my three wives is the first two married the famous rich guy and the last one didn't. But, look, in order, in order, I'm a big believer in my life in, in karma. And I, I'm not convinced I was always in control, even of my strength. I mean, who wins Wimbledon 17? Nobody.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  But then who would do some of these mistakes I've done otherwise? Now, important to say is that, and even, even the judge had to come, had to agree with that, that the mistakes I made were not intentionally. So I wasn't hiding money under the bed. But there were still mistakes. So you can say, maybe I didn't have the best advisors. Maybe, maybe I was too stubborn myself. Maybe I was too, I was too full of myself. Fast forward, I think, I think prison seriously grounded me. Because when you lose everything, including your freedom, you're, you're bound to have only your personality and your characters. Everything else is gone.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  And you have to deal with your, your character and your personality with other very dangerous inmates. And if you're not strong, if you're not smart, if you don't read the room, they're gonna bully you, they're gonna assault you. People even get killed in prison. Okay, so it was a very dangerous place. It's easy in hindsight to say, I'm thankful for it now because it just stopped the old life and I got a chance for a new life. At the time, it was living hell.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  And, and when I went in there, I didn't know I was gonna leave after eight months and five days, or two hundred and thirty-one days. Because when I went in there, I thought I have to be there for at least fifteen months. And then there's maybe house arrest and you're on license in UK. So all of this happened while I was inside. I, I came out earlier than, than I was expected. The deportation to Germany. When I was in, there wasn't in the cards. Because I was trying to continue my, my life in the UK. But that the consequence would have been, I would have had to stay longer in prison, which I didn't want to. The consequences of the deportation is that I can't go back to the UK at the moment. I'm working with the authorities. Hopefully, it'll happen soon.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  But if it's not gonna happen, I've been living in freedom the last almost three years. So I, I, I, I'll take that.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  I, I do wanna talk to you about life in prison. I'm, I'm still thinking a little bit about.

• 52:06Speaker 00

  Your two ex-wives, it was quite a heavy thing that you said, suggesting, questioning whether they were in love with the real you or was it the trappings of success, right?

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  They might hear that and think, you know, how dare you? You know, like the years that I put in or you never gave me the chance to show me that I could be loyal at your lowest ebb? Or they'd think, you know, because Charlotte Lee implies that you may have strayed from the family bed in the documentary in one of them. And I don't know, Barbara, I'm always struck by how in those, you know, when you're playing, the sense of her emotional investment in your success and also the nature of the infidelity that took place, which was pretty brutal. She was in hospital, pregnant, going through contractions. And that was when the infidelity took place, right? You could, and then she stuck with you for a bit afterwards.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  That's not true. There were no contractions. She was in hospital, but there was no contractions, no.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  Either way, I imagine they'd hear this and think like, we put up with a lot and that's not fair to characterize it in the way that you did.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Fast forward, we settled in a divorce. You know, I cheated on her, no doubt about that. We managed to have a relationship that's built on respect. She's, you know, a wonderful mother to my two oldest boys. She actually moved to Milan, is here as well. So we moved on from that, but.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  You and Barbara, this is.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Me and Barbara. There were a couple of scenes after our divorce. Again, it's so long ago, I have to really think hard what happened. That weren't so nice from her.

• 54:05Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  You know, without, without getting into too much in a detail, but you know, she had the power. Cause I was the bad guy, okay? Um, she got a nice check out of it. She got a nice monthly support out of it. And she realized that nobody's perfect. I like to call myself a good father. I really looked after my, my two elders, even though they weren't living in, um, in Europe at the time. And they moved to Miami. Uh, uh, so twenty five years later, we really consider each other close knit family. You know, regardless of what happened. Um, with my second wife, uh, it's a lot more complicated.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Because, um, you know, for once, uh, if I, if I say that for once, I wasn't a bad guy. Again, so much happened in the last year, two years. But once a child is involved, I think we both, regardless of who's guilty and who's not guilty. We should both be a bit more considerate. So I think I'm the balanced one here. Uh, I'm trying to do the right thing. Uh, I'm very lucky, blessed, fortunate to been giving, uh, a new chance in life with, with my wife, Lillian. You know, we're expecting our first baby. So I didn't expect that eight years ago. When, when the shit hit the fan in twenty seventeen, how low can you go? How low can you be?

• 55:27Speaker 00

  Was that twenty seventeen when the shit really hit the fan?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, this is when all this happened. So.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  When you were fifty?

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, fifty, fifty, I thought my, my life as I know it is over.

• 55:41Speaker 00

  Really?

• 55:44Speaker 00

  You said, maybe I needed to go to prison. I was on the wrong path. I was not a happy camper in my mid forties. I was eating too much and drinking too much and hanging with the wrong people.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 55:59Speaker 00

  Who were the wrong people?

• 56:01Speaker 01

  The wrong advisors, you know, the wrong, the wrong business.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  Were you partying a lot?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  No, I'm not, I'm not.

• 56:06Speaker 00

  I don't think you're a drug taker.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm not, I'm not.

• 56:08Speaker 00

  Well, you took, I mean, not drug drugs, but obviously sleeping pills and, and painkillers when you were playing.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  But not recreational drugs.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Ask, ask one athlete, ask one athlete, whether he's never done, taken any painkillers and it's.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Um, ask one athlete when he can't sleep in an overnight flight to Australia, everybody takes a sleeping pill. So that's A, not a crime and be very common if you live that lifestyle. But I'm not, I'm not a recreational, you know, not, not even weed, I'm not even a weed smoker. I smoke cigars.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  I've never, never touched weed in my life.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  For loneliness, there was women, whiskey or both. That was basically, for loneliness, there was women, whiskey or both. Was that during your tennis playing years?

• 56:48Speaker 01

  No, no, I was, I was a very good boy when I was playing tennis. Otherwise I wouldn't have, um, had the success. But then I would say in my thirties, uh, I drifted away from the path. Uh, naturally, because as an athlete, you have to be so disciplined. You have to be so, so on the clock all the time that you, you can't, you can't let yourself go. It's impossible. Um, I think I let myself go, um, in a disciplined part in my, in my thirties. And I started to pay the price in my forties. Now, it, you know, the mistakes don't happen overnight, right? The mistakes happen over, in my case, probably over 10 to 15 years.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  And it started in my, my mid thirties of, you know, having, having my, my first divorce in my early thirties. Uh, naturally, you, you, you know, want to do something you, you weren't able to do before. Meaning, you meet attractive women and just, you know, having beautiful dinners and, and nice glasses of wine. Of course you want to do that. I think most, most people would have done that. Now that leads to.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  That would be about 2000, right? Cause 99, you retired, is that right? 2000, did you separate and then?

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:00Speaker 00

  You're, you're then 32, 33 and you're basically.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  Trying to find your new role in life.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly, exactly. That's not so easy. I think most athletes have their problem, have their dilemma, me too.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  I think I was settling down nicely with my wife, Charlie Lee.

• 58:19Speaker 00

  She was a Dutch model, we should say, very beautiful woman.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  She was.

• 58:23Speaker 00

  As are all your, as is Lilian and Barbara.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Well, that's always a question of taste, you know.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  All are not white. So thankfully, you call them attractive. If you were racist, you call them ugly, right? So, you know, I started to have a certain type and I stuck with it throughout all my adult life because I find them very beautiful. And yes, they're beautiful inside and out. Yeah, so the story goes, yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 00

  In preparing for this interview, I discovered, perhaps I was naive, that you experienced a degree of, I guess, racism by connection, secondhand racism, from the German public when you started your relationship with Barbara.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Well, it continued because, you know, people were racist against my older son Noah, still are today.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  Really?

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had some issues, so I had to defend him.

• 59:27Speaker 00

  Anonymous trolls or?

• 59:29Speaker 01

  No, not only anonymous trolls, there was actually one, funny enough, a judge, who was also a politician for a right-wing party called AFD. It's a bit like the Reform Party in Asia, Farage, you know, similar. And he-

• 59:46Speaker 00

  I think Farage would deny that, but I think Tommy Robinson might have some outreach with them.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Well, so somewhere in between, maybe, somewhere in between. So he called my son a negro on Twitter. So I was able to sue him. He lost his job as a judge and he had to step back. So that was quite an important message. So people are a lot more careful when they talk about colour in my family. I'm very defensive on that. Naturally. Again, there's not much on Wikipedia, you can Google that, right, or not much. My positioning on race. So I don't know who's running Wikipedia, who's running Google, you know, maybe gives it away. Yeah, so there's a different side.

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  What do you mean, there's not much in Wikipedia and Google about your positioning on race?

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  No, no, there's a lot about, you know, how much money I lost and how much my divorce. And there isn't much about my position politically. There's not much about the fights that I've had defending.

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  Well, let's go there then.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  My black family, you know.

• 1:00:58Speaker 00

  What would you want to say about that?

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  It's a fact that's completely under the radar. You know, when you Google me, you're a professional, you've done your job. That never comes up. That usually comes up at the end of the conversation when we get through all the facts of what you can read or not read about me. Usually it's, oh, we didn't know about it. I'm like, well, you never asked me about it. But you can naturally see that I have a decision made in my family life. And you can see that all of my children are mixed race. So you have these quick headlines. And by these headlines and by, you know, white people talking about it, I see the real lack of education and lack of culture. Which bothers me, okay, because that's an important side of me.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Because I'm a proud father of all my children and some are darker than others. That doesn't mean they're less black.

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  So your relationships, you feel, have educated you in certain respects.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  If I, look, my father, my father, Karl Heinz, he was an architect, but he was also a politician for Conservative Party. His favorite musician was Satchmo, Louis Armstrong, the black sax player.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  Trumpet, yes.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Trumpets, yeah. And his favorite athlete was Muhammad Ali. So I grew up with. A black musician playing in the household and a black boxing superstar being idolized. So that's where I have it from. My mother, I don't know whether you know that, she's a refugee. She's a survivor of World War Two. She's from the Czech Republic and she was in a refugee camp in Germany when she was 10 years old.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  She was in the Sudetenland, famous from history because it was Hitler reoccupied it. And that was what Neville Chamberlain famously acceded to in his attempt to appease the Nazi party.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  Or the Nazi regime.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  So that's my mother. And my father's favorite artists and musicians are black. So that's my base. There's none of it in Wikipedia and Google either.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  Should we talk about prison a little bit?

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:03:17Speaker 00

  We should say you started out in Wandsworth Prison. You were there about four or five weeks.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  And then they moved you to one called.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Hunterkum.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  Hunterkum, near Henley.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  For foreign nationals.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  It's for foreign nationals. And you learned something about prison life and you adapted to it.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  What would you say was the set of skills that you needed to survive in prison?

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, prison is very dangerous. You know, you think you're in a safe place. No, you're most dangerous place I've been in my life, in both prisons, by the way. They don't tell you that before. I was surprised in Wandsworth, H B Wandsworth, that they didn't really have the wings where you go, okay, the pedophiles on wing B and then the dangerous criminals is on wing A.

• 1:04:09Speaker 00

  They didn't do that.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  No, everybody was sort of everybody. Who's jacking? Who's jacking? So it was pretty much, especially when the canteen opens, everybody comes together. Then they sit together and then maybe they go into back to the cell, but it was very not in order, as I would say. And the same thing actually in Handelcom. Where you had literally a cell was a pedophile and the next cell was sex offender and the third cell was me.

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  So that is disturbing, that's why you need to have a group. Well, what you quickly need to do in prison is, if you can say that, is read the room. Like, who is the loudest, who looks the toughest, who has a group around him? And you wanna be associated with them because that's your protection. So that's one of the abilities I maybe had, is to quickly understand who's in charge, right? And for some reason, they liked me or they respected me.

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  In both places?

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  In both places.

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  Do you think being Boris Becker is an advantage or a disadvantage?

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Well, they didn't know that I was a tennis player, Boris Becker.

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  That seems quite odd.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, they only saw me on TV and they thought I was a famous personality, they didn't really know why. Again, with most of these prisoners, I was on the older ones. Most of these prisoners were younger, a lot younger than me. So when you're thirty-five or when you're thirty or forty maybe, you don't really remember nineteen eighty-five, you know? It pays my favor, I think. If I was just a famous personality, I don't think I was put in danger as if they knew that I had this body of work as a tennis player and maybe, you know, I had a lot of money or connections and so forth.

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  Right, a high-profile inmate would normally be put in protective custody.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:06:05Speaker 00

  Like, there's no way...

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  It wasn't that organized and I mean, it's a common knowledge that, you know, English prisons are overcrowded. To a point where it's ridiculous.

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  Could you tell?

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was.

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  Wandsworth particularly, or both of them?

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Wandsworth more, because it was a much larger prison, about two thousand prisoners in there.

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  Two thousand.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's sort of, it's the first prison, I mean, there's one in the southwest, which is um Wandsworth, there's one in the northeast, so once you're convicted and you're sentenced, you go either one for a time being, until you're transferred to your final prison or your final destination, yeah.

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  From Wandsworth, so Wandsworth, what do they call it, what do they call it, a reception centre?

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know if you want to really call it a reception centre, but it's sort of a a base where everyone goes, and then depending.

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  And then from there they go.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  They go to another, but even having said that, there's many, there's many prisoners who stay a long time, because it's the overcrowding, it's just everyone, everywhere is so busy, that, that, you know, it's, they can't make a difference anymore, what crime you've done. Whatever cell is available, the next inmate goes in because of the problem.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  It's in, for people, we have an international audience, believe it or not, who may not know Wandsworth is in southwest London, SW eighteen is the postcode, just one digit off SW nineteen, which is the postcode for Wimbledon, and they're about two miles, two and a half miles apart, aren't they?

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  And a lot's been made of that strange symmetry, I don't know what sense you make of that, but it is weird, isn't it? Must have been, I suppose you're there thirty years on, thirty-five years on from winning Wimbledon. I mean, thinking about it, are you, is that what, is that what's taking place?

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  No, I mean, it's, it's a, it's an incredible difference, yet it's so close to each other. I mean, where there's the Wandsworth roundabout, you go far left to Wimbledon, and far right, you go to Wandsworth Prison, so, I mean, I've been on the roundabout ten thousand times, usually going left, and the one time I had to go right, and it's just a couple of miles from each other, meaning the best place, what I can imagine, is Wimbledon Centre Court, and then the worst place I've ever been, it's H and B Wandsworth, so, only two miles apart, and you, philosophically, you can, you can just, you know, this book is partly about that, it's just how contrast lives are within, within a couple of miles, and, and, you know,

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  I've, I've experienced both.

• 1:08:43Speaker 00

  It's almost a cliche of this kind of narrative that your friends quote unquote abandon you, right? And I'm just, I don't mean to make light of it, like you talk about Andrew Castle, the tennis player and TV presenter, I think writes you a letter. Jürgen Klopp, does he express an interest in making a visit?

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:09:01Speaker 00

  But it's deemed that it'll be too disruptive.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:09:03Speaker 00

  There'll be too many Liverpool fans going crazy, I guess.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  Or just the fact that he was a very popular, you know, again, security is an issue in both prisons. So when when family friends visit you, the room is open for all criminals and their families. And and you know, the police is is just by numbers very small. So if one guy next to me wanted to get hold of Jürgen Klopp, nobody could have stopped him.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  But why would they want to get hold of Jürgen Klopp?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Random security, give me something, just just the director of the prison.

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  Really? I never thought about that.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  And we're talking really dangerous criminals. I mean, they wouldn't, they wouldn't, they wouldn't hold back. I mean, some of them are inside for 15, 18, 20 years. You know, for them, it makes no difference.

• 1:09:53Speaker 00

  This is, I've forgotten the name of it again.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  That's the second one, Hunter Coombe.

• 1:09:58Speaker 00

  This is at Hunter Coombe.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  We're friends, he called me, you know, I called him back.

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Well, he can't call me.

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  You used to be the most popular German person in Britain, but I think Jürgen Klopp might be now.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  That's absolutely right.

• 1:10:10Speaker 00

  Don't you think?

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  I love him, I love him, but his time for Liverpool is amazing. No, he wanted to come, we tried twice, and the director just said, it's your right, but for security reasons, please forgive us for not allowing this, because we don't want to risk, you know, his safety, nor do we want to have an uproar in prison. So for the popularity or or safety reasons, I mean, once you're in this visiting hall, it's you and 16 other.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Dangerous criminals.

• 1:10:39Speaker 00

  Andrew Castle wanted to visit and you, again, you said, I don't want him to, but not for his safety. It was more, it felt like you just didn't want.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Speaker 00

  It would have been a strange, what, mixture, mixture of contexts.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  Like you're a different Boris in there and you didn't wanna mix it up with the BBC.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:55Speaker 00

  Commentary colleague.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  No, I, I didn't wanna, you know, you're in your bubble, you're in your routine and I didn't wanna break out of that. Of course, I, I loved, I loved seeing my wife and, and my, my two oldest boys. But even that was difficult because I felt sorry for them. I, I, I, well, that they had to visit their father and their husband in a fucking prison. I mean, who, who likes that, right? Uh, so I didn't, didn't want this to happen too often. Yes, of course, my wife insisted.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  And how was it?

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Um, it was lovely, it was lovely for me, but then I go back to my cell and they go back to, to their freedom, you know, so it's, uh, for those two hours, you feel great. But then you, you, you go back to the doctors and, and they, they go back to the light. So it was tough for them and it was tough for me. But I didn't want to have any other friends, uh, because what, I'm gonna put on a story, a face. I'm gonna tell them how, how good I am. No, I wasn't good. So I didn't wanna play any role and I actually, uh, um, not playing, I, I made a decision of being always the way I am since I'm out. I'm not playing any roles anymore. If sponsors don't like it, if you don't like some of my answers, it's, I don't care.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  I'm gonna tell you my truth, whether you like it or not, and it serves me well. As a sportsman and as a celebrity, as a phenomenon, and of course you, you go into various roles and, and you wanna please this and you wanna, I stopped that. I am who I am now and that's the end of it.

• 1:12:26Speaker 00

  Must be strange, like at times waking up thinking like, is this real? Am I, cause it does feel like a movie at times. I don't know if they're gonna make a movie out of it.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  I've had some requests already.

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  It feels like a film.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Speaker 00

  The strangeness of, uh, one of the most famous and celebrated athletes in the world ends up, uh, in a prison, just a few miles from the site of his greatest accomplishment. And, you know, age fifty, and it must have been surreal. Did you not think, is this really real?

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Well, uh.

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  Feeling sorry for yourself?

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:12:59Speaker 00

  Or at least seeing your wife having to look at you and thinking. I feel so awful that my wife and my kids have to see me like this. It must be strange.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  Well, it was it was really strange since I went to Wimbledon. My life has been surreal ever since. And and you know, being in prison again felt surreal, weird.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  But it really fits my story a little bit and and ultimately

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  this circle of life that came together, which started in July of eighty five and then finished in a way in H and B once where I said, OK, and now what? Now what?

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  It was very cathartic almost of shedding all my excess, call it excess luggage, excess layers of of who was I and what I've become.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  I want to go back to who I really am. And and you know, those those two hundred thirty one days, it didn't have to last that long to learn the lesson. Sometimes I was in there and I said, I got the message, I got the message, I'm going to be different when I'm out. And I still have to serve three months. So but I philosophically speaking, it really, I think that first part of my life is complete now and I'm I'm I'm happy. I'm in a different part now because of that. I don't think I don't think my life would have been good today if I wouldn't have gone to prison.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Seriously, look, it was a shit time, OK, and it was embarrassing. And you know, losing, losing all your money is is all that. But maybe it was necessary to have a second part of my life that's now better, healthier, a little wealthier and all that. Maybe I was on a losing streak and that was the end of it. That's that's how I feel. You know, as a man, I'm sure you're happily married and everything is good, but I wasn't. You know, I turned fifty and I was like, my second marriage is going to pieces. This time it's not my mistake, but it doesn't make it better. It goes to pieces. Maybe I'm not made for relationships. Maybe it's me.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  It was never difficult for me to have relationships, as they say, but to have a commitment like, maybe it's me, maybe it's not, I'm not good at it. And so you're going into acceptance mood, who say, maybe that's it. And then out of a completely blue moment, you know, I meet this girl, who doesn't even know that I was a tennis player, because she's too young for it, and slowly falls in love with me. And I go, why? I have nothing to offer you but my personality, my character. And she says, here we go. And now, seven years later, you know, we talked, going in, that we were married, but we're having our first baby.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  I mean, if that isn't a movie, I don't know what is. And so because of all of that, I feel like I'm really blessed. I'm lucky. I'm lucky to sit here, to come from the hospital. We're gonna have a great, great dinner tonight, and we'll have some good wine. That I can do that now, I mean it. Ten years ago, I couldn't do that.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  So things happen for a reason. I'm a strong believer, my life is like that.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  The winning and the losing and everything else. And I feel like in this book is really a story that's unique, very personal. I mean, I opened up my pens, I mean, I've said how it is. Now, you can Google some of my things, and maybe Google doesn't even get it. And Wikipedia, you started off like this. But I say it how it is, and it serves me well now.

• 1:17:16Speaker 00

  Welcome back. What a great conversation. Am I complimenting myself? Maybe, but I think I'm mainly commenting, complimenting Boris. And he brought his A game. I joked at the beginning that an interview is a bit like a tennis match. And I think this one, it's not for me to say it'll go down as a classic. But, or even to say who won. It's not zero sum like that, but some good rallies. Okay, forget the metaphors getting tortured. Zooming out, for me, the grand narrative behind this conversation, maybe the paradigm is that for athletes,

• 1:17:55Speaker 00

  maybe I said this in the chat, they have this extraordinary first five to 15 years of their professional lives, like ages 18 through 30, let's say. I mean, you could say that's true for people in general. Those are key years, but for athletes more than anyone. Their earning potential, their exposure to life, the way in which temptation is set before them. And the extraordinary things they achieve, all of that is supercharged. And then they've got another 60, 70 years to live, right? And what do you do with that? It must be, it must be strange. So that, that, that's definitely something Boris had to deal with.

• 1:18:40Speaker 00

  And he made mistakes, I think he would agree, and he's tried to learn from them. Do we ever learn from mistakes? I sometimes wonder, you know, this idea, oh, I've arrived now. I've figured something out. I'm wise. Actually, we are always sort of self overcoming. What I was struck by, among other things, was, and again, I mentioned this in the chat, his physical debility. He came in struggling to walk, bearing the war wounds of.

• 1:19:18Speaker 00

  A life spent punishing himself on the court. He was known for his very physical playing style. Boom boom becca. There were certain dives, lunges that he attempted that others probably would have pulled out of. And the bill came due for that in later years. He said, I pulled my pants down for the book. And I was happy to inspect what lay beneath. To metaphorically cradle his manhood. To tell him to cough and turn to the left and diagnose what was going on. I was looking underneath the hood, if you like.

• 1:20:03Speaker 00

  Hood is a, it's an expression. I'm thinking about cars now. What were you thinking of? The manhood. Hello, is anybody out there? We went out for dinner afterwards. Boris bought me dinner. That's a, what we call a journalistic disclosure. It did not affect my professional objectivity. It was an enjoyable evening. Talking about more of life, Shay Boris and his world. I said at the beginning, I'd been arrested.

• 1:20:44Speaker 00

  I was arrested for trying to buy marijuana, ladies and gentlemen. Stay away from it. In Washington Square Park in maybe nineteen ninety-eight. I didn't do porridge. I got a ticket and, and then I had to go out on assignment and I couldn't make the court date. And then I, I think I went back to the police station when I got back and they said, you're a fugitive from justice. I'm like, well, that's not good.

• 1:21:18Speaker 00

  But I paid my fine and I think I cleared my name. I also got arrested while making an episode of Weird Weekends about black nationalists in New York and I took part in a demonstration against police brutality. And I rode down with some other protesters to the New York jail and spent a couple of hours in jail doing my bit for social justice. You're welcome. Anyway, it's always nice to talk to someone outside the world of show business as well. So other athletes, please get in touch. We would love to talk to you. You don't need to have been to prison or be convicted on serious charges.

• 1:22:03Speaker 00

  Just being outstanding in your field. That's about it for this episode. I'll leave you with credits. The producer was Millie Chu. The assistant producer was Man Al Yazari. The production manager was Francesca Bassett. The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse production for Spotify.