Bernie Ecclestone Read online

  It led, in 1935, to the Ecclestones moving from Wissett to a three-bedroomed semi-detached house in Priory Close, Dartford, around the corner from Bertha’s mother’s new home, where they remained for at least the next three years. This was the family’s address when Bertha gave birth to a daughter, Marian, in September 1938, but soon after they moved again, to Marcet Road in Dartford, settling down in a working-class environment of 40,000 people whose economy was based on engineering, pharmaceutical and papermill industries. Dartford, considered a buffer zone between London and the more genteel county of Kent, was abundant in greenfield sites and seized by post-war planners for widespread development of estates to rehouse the residents of bomb-blitzed London. It was here that Bertha got a part-time job and Sidney became an electric crane driver with a local engineering company. Culturally, it was a far cry indeed from the rural idyll of Suffolk; but for Auntie May falling in love with Uncle Arthur the fishmonger, how differently Ecclestone’s life might have otherwise unfolded.

  It was in this street-sharp urban environment that Bernard, an undersized kid with a sharp brain and a precocious eye for a quick penny, honed his nascent business skills. One of his earliest enterprises, at the age of 11 or thereabouts, saw him stopping off at a local baker’s shop to buy buns at a penny halfpenny each, which he would then re-sell in the school playground for twopence each. When his mother asked him if he ever ate one himself, says his sister, Marian, he replied: ‘No, that’s my profit.’ Known as ‘Titch’ because of his size, he protected that profit with the assistance of bigger schoolboys, who ensured that he was not taken advantage of by his customers. He also claimed in later years that he had ‘a little gang’ working for him to prevent him being bullied.

  Young Bernard’s profit margins were further increased by subsidiary activities – two newspaper rounds and, during his school holidays, picking vegetables in local farms. A significant source of revenue came from the sale of fountain pens, which he would buy wholesale in Cutler Street, in London’s East End, for sale in nearby Petticoat Lane, a well-known street market, where he would stand holding out his wares to attract the attention of passing shoppers. Whoever he inherited his early entrepreneurial skills from, it was not his private and humble parents, whom he describes as being ‘very caring people who wanted to see me get on’.

  His desire to do so was driven by a firm resolution to provide for his own needs at a time, during the days of food rationing in the forties, when the British economy was trying to recover from the crippling cost of the Second World War. Acquiring what he wanted by his own initiative and ingenuity became a way of life. Rationed food and sweets were certainly not beyond his reach. ‘We had a cupboard that was full with boxes of Black Magic chocolates and sugar and all the other things you couldn’t get.’ Some 60 years later he explained: ‘I never wanted to bother my family to buy me something. I wanted to earn my own money. I knew they didn’t have it anyway. When I wanted things I hustled and bustled until I got them. I’m an independent bastard.’

  His business success in the school playground and in Petticoat Lane was not matched by his efforts in the classroom. At the age of 15, he left West Central Secondary School, Dartford, with little academic distinction. Media coverage of his education repeatedly credit him with achieving a BSc in chemical engineering at Woolwich University, south London. It is given greater credibility by Ecclestone’s entry in Who’s Who, which lists the degree among biographical detail. But it is a fanciful claim. School records show that he attended what was then known as Woolwich Polytechnic, during his final year at West Central Secondary, for no more than one day a week to take part in a job-training scheme (although he is adamant that he attended the Polytechnic five days a week for two years). He left school in December 1946 to work as a junior in the laboratory of the regional gas board where he had high hopes of becoming a chemist.

  The one certain area of Ecclestone’s early life was the passion that would prove the driving force of his life – a love of quick-buck wheeler-dealing. By his mid-teens his business activities were taking on a serious turn – he was now dealing in second-hand motorbikes, an enterprise that his mother’s brother, Godfrey – Uncle ‘Goff’, who apparently saw in his nephew the son he never had – helped to kick-start with an occasional modest financial donation. One of his customers was Jack Surtees, a top motorcycle sidecar racer, and the father of John, who in 1956 would win the first of his seven world motorcycle championships, then become a Formula One world champion in 1964 and the boss of his own Formula One team from 1970 to 1978. Surtees recalls standing in the kitchen of Ecclestone’s home in Marcet Road as his father, a motorcycle dealer, agreed to buy a 250cc Excelsior from the boy businessman. The passage of time made it impossible for Surtees to fix the year, ‘but I was in short trousers and Bernie hadn’t been long out of his’.

  The young Ecclestone’s enjoyment of motorbikes ensured that he would not remain for long in the unfulfilling employment of the local gas board. Within a year he had approached a motorcycle retailer, Les Cocker, a modest man of limited ambitions and twenty years his senior, who ran Harcourt Motor Cycles, in Broadway, Bexleyheath, a small shopping centre situated a few miles from his home in Marcet Road. Suitably impressed by Ecclestone’s enthusiasm and knowledge of motorbikes, Cocker was persuaded to employ him as a junior salesman, a decision that earned him a unique footnote in Formula One history as the man who set Bernie Ecclestone off on his career path, although one that he did not pursue for long at Harcourt.

  He was ambitious for bigger things, namely his own motorcycle business. He saw its realisation in an astute proposal that would require the agreement of the owner of a car showroom called Compton & Fuller situated on the other side of Broadway. Ecclestone, now aged about 18, walked confidently into the showroom to attempt to persuade the owner, Frederick Compton, to let him have, in return for a reasonable rent, part of his forecourt for the sale of second-hand motorbikes. Compton, in his early thirties and no mug punter, was hugely unimpressed, telling the slight figure standing before him – ‘he was like a child’ – to go away. To him, motorbikes were filthy, dirty machines that had no place anywhere near his showroom. Undaunted, Ecclestone continued to call. Each time, he increased the proposed rent until Compton finally capitulated to an offer he couldn’t refuse: half of Ecclestone’s profits in return for a part of the forecourt, plus a desk inside. Ecclestone had his foot on the first rung of the ladder.

  During the ensuing months the business of Compton & Fuller underwent a dramatic change. In austere post-war Britain, when a second-hand motorbike could be bought for £15, and when a teenage culture of rock ’n’ roll, Teddy Boys and James Dean movies embraced motorcycles as a symbol of rebellion, Compton could do little more than look on as Ecclestone’s sales of motorbikes soared, while the sale of his cars remained more or less static. ‘When people came into the showroom, they were coming to see him, not me,’ said Compton. ‘It soon became obvious that he could make more money selling motorbikes than I could selling cars.’ Within a year Compton & Fuller’s last car went out of the showroom. By now Ecclestone had become such a dominant force in the business that he was in a position to negotiate a partnership. Shortly after his twenty-first birthday, in December 1951, Compton & Fuller became Compton & Ecclestone. One can imagine an enraptured Ecclestone standing on the other side of the street, gazing in delight at the sight of his name on the new sign over the shopfront.

  With ready access to machines ranging from the latest Velocette using an explosive methanol-based fuel to a five-stud double-knocker 350 Norton JAP engine fitted to a Triumph frame, which he raced on the grass track at Brands Hatch and at its first tarmacadamed practice session in 1950, Ecclestone was able to freely indulge himself in his hobby of motorcycle racing. Once he had been no more than a face in the crowd. Now he could afford to compete. In his immaculate leathers he became a frequent competitor at Brands Hatch, during which time he developed a friendship with a south London car dealer called Jimmy
Oliver, who, before dying of prostate cancer at the age of 89 in January 2000, spoke of the ‘kid’ who approached him at Brands Hatch in 1948 looking for a particular American car.

  Oliver, then aged 38 and the successful manager of a Tankard & Smith car showroom in Peckham, south London, and who raced a 250cc Velocette himself at Brands Hatch, said: ‘This kid, who was about 18, says to me, “I understand you’re in the car business. I’ve got a customer who wants an American car. Have you got anything?” The following week he turns up at my showroom in Peckham to have a look at a Hudson “straight eight”. “That’ll do,” he says. He took it away on a sale-or-return basis. We did that in those days. I knew then that he was going to turn out to be a right whizz-kid.’ Compton was convinced that Ecclestone’s size was a major factor in his early business successes. ‘I am sure it gave him quite an advantage because you couldn’t believe this kid could be so smart. Of course, people soon discovered otherwise.’

  Ecclestone’s skills on the motorcycle track, though, lacked the necessary fearlessness to ensure even modest success. It was, he decided, too dangerous. He claimed to have woken up in hospital once too often. Four wheels seemed a safer bet. It led to him racing at Brands Hatch and Silverstone in 500cc single-seater events – the cars consisted of little more than chain-driven double-knocker Norton engines – which later became Formula Three. Ecclestone had a brand-new Cooper, bought through the new-found partnership, with the cockpit designed for his slight build, as were his driver’s overalls by Lewis’s of London. The immaculate condition of both car and driver came to hallmark his pre-race appearance – early signs of an extreme compulsion for order and cleanliness that came to pervade every area of his life. At the same time, it generated, then and later, some innovative thinking: he arrived at Brands Hatch with a racing tender, the first of its kind, to transport his car and equipment, with the company name of Compton & Ecclestone emblazoned along its sides to promote business. ‘Everything about Bernard,’ said Compton, ‘had to be that way – organised and professional. Going into racing was, in fact, a way of getting our name known. It worked. Everyone in the south of England knew us.’

  The highlight of his motor-racing career probably took place in 1950 when he drove alongside a promising young driver called Stirling Moss in a support race to the first-ever World Championship Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1950. Moss vaguely recalls Ecclestone ‘being around’, but that he ‘wasn’t that active’. Although Ecclestone continued to race irregularly up until 1956, any aspirations he might have had to pursue a career in motor racing effectively came to an end at Brands Hatch in 1953, when he collided with his friend and fellow car-dealer Bill Whitehouse. Ecclestone was said to have gone flying over the heads of spectators. Whitehouse scrambled out of his car to wind him up: ‘You better pretend you’re dead, Bernie, you’ve killed one of the spectators.’ When help reached him, he refused to be touched until the medics arrived, but he sustained nothing more serious than severe bruising to his ego. Whitehouse, a more talented driver, took part in the British Grand Prix in 1954, but three years later, at the age of 48, died when his car, a Cooper works car, burst into flames after an accident at a Formula Two event in Reims, France.

  Ten months after Ecclestone celebrated his partnership with Frederick Compton, he entered into another: he married Ivy Bamford, a brunette three years his senior and the daughter of a retired carpenter’s assistant, who workedled as a telephonist at the local GPO exchange and whom he had known since their early teens. Ecclestone and Compton had become such good friends that Compton and his wife, Jean, acted as witnesses to the marriage at Dartford Registry Office on 5 September 1952, while Ecclestone accepted an invitation to be godfather to their daughter, Jennifer. With business going from strength to strength, the newly married couple were able to buy the Comptons’ old house, a substantial 1930s-style four-bedroomed semi-detached in Pickford Close, Bexleyheath, a few minutes’ drive from Compton & Ecclestone, and for which Ecclestone paid £10,000. Two years later they moved further up the social scale when they purchased an imposing four-bedroomed detached house in Danson Road, Bexleyheath. It was while at Danson Road that the Ecclestones had their only child – Deborah Ann, born at Bexley Maternity Hospital on 9 September 1955.

  By now Compton was little more than a figurehead in a partnership that had come to be totally dominated by the overwhelming young Ecclestone, who could be seen in the showroom, neatly turned out in suit and tie, standing next to rows of motorbikes whose front wheels were positioned at precisely the same angle, complete with oil drip trays and covers over the number plates. Compton found himself in awe of Ecclestone’s methods of dealing with both suppliers and customers. ‘He’d come back with two lorry-loads of motorcycles after seeing them all priced up and saying to the seller, “I’ll give you £2700 for the lot.” He’d do that in seconds. It was instantaneous. His brain was like a calculator.’ He was equally quick in responding to a customer’s request for a demonstration ride. There was no need, he would tell them. The motorbikes were covered by his personal guarantee, and that was good enough. Another former associate confirmed Ecclestone’s ‘high reputation for being an instant wheeler-dealer, someone who would make decisions very quickly. People would not quite realise the deal they’d done until they had done it. He was known for being extremely astute and very quick.’

  The future looked bright indeed for Compton & Ecclestone, but the frantic pace at which his young partner operated took its toll on Compton’s health. He developed a stomach ulcer which left him seriously ill. ‘I couldn’t live with the speed of Ecclestone and his methods of business. I wasn’t doing any business at all in the end. It wasn’t his fault, but I had become a useless object,’ said Compton. He became so ill that he lost all interest in the business. He willingly accepted an offer from his partner to buy him out, although he was unable to recall the details. ‘I think I must have sold him at least half the stock.’ Despite his illness, Compton was shrewd enough to retain the freehold of the property, charging his tenant a rent of £1500 a year. There was, he said, no legal documentation of the sale. ‘It was quite incredible what one did in those faraway days.’ It was not, he conceded years later, the best deal he could have struck, ‘but I was very unwell at the time, so I was only too pleased to get out. But I don’t want to knock Bernard because it was my fault. I accepted these terms.’

  Compton moved successfully into property investment and art dealing, while Ecclestone, by November 1955, was the sole owner of Compton & Ecclestone, a situation better suited to a temperament that insisted on being in control of every area of business. His success continued apace, so much so that by the following year he and his family moved to Barn Cottage in Parkwood Road, Bexley, an impressive five-bedroomed house. The Ecclestones’ time at Barn Cottage was notable to his sister for two incidents. The first demonstrated his obsession for extreme orderliness. Marian said: ‘He had a well-stocked bar, and he walked in one day and saw where the cleaner had disturbed one of the miniatures – the label wasn’t quite facing the front. He walked over and straightened it. There were dozens there and yet he spotted that one.’ The other incident demonstrated his business opportunism. When a friend discovered, on leaving Ecclestone’s house, that one of his car tyres was flat, he saw the chance for a quick sale. ‘Instead of helping him to replace the tyre,’ said Marian, ‘Bernard sold him his own car.’

  By the mid-fifties Ecclestone was ready to move up a couple of gears, to dealing in cars as well as motorcycles. In August 1956 he acquired a business called Hill’s Garage situated in Crook Log, Bexleyheath, about quarter of a mile from Compton & Ecclestone. Nineteen months later he acquired another car company, James Spencer Ltd, and its owner, Jimmy Spencer, a middle-aged motor dealer who enjoyed a smoke and a drink and would die of a heart attack nine years later, became a director. Hill’s Garage became James Spencer (Bexleyheath) Ltd, although Spencer would not enjoy for long the prestige of the company name. In August 1959 he departed suddenly in uncerta
in but apparently acrimonious circumstances, according to both Spencer’s widow and daughter.

  At her home in south London, 85-year-old Mrs Ethel Spencer said she believed her husband ‘wasn’t very pleased with something that had taken place, but I wouldn’t know what, because we never discussed [his business] at home’. Spencer opened his own company, called Chris Steel Cars, in Bromley, Kent, with his son-in-law, Roger Wilson. In 1971 the business folded and Ecclestone, said Wilson’s widow, Sheila, was interested in buying it. But her husband, who, she added, knew of the cause of the partnership split between her father and Ecclestone, was not interested in selling the business to Ecclestone. ‘Roger said, “Over my dead body.”’ Mrs Wilson did not know the reason for her husband’s attitude towards Ecclestone. ‘There always seemed to be some underlying thing we didn’t know about.’ On Spencer’s departure, Ecclestone appointed his father to be manager of the showroom and a director of the company, a position Sidney held with a number of his son’s other enterprises.

  Towards the end of the fifties, with the British motorcycle industry hitting a serious slump, Ecclestone decided to dispose of Compton & Ecclestone. He had by now, incidentally, also acquired his former employer’s business, Harcourt Motor Cycles, a much smaller premises, from where he sold sidecar motorbikes. The buyer was 37-year-old businessman John Croker, who, among other interests, owned a hire-purchase finance company, a company importing washing machines from Italy, and car showrooms in Chadwell Heath, Essex. East London-born Croker met Ecclestone through two fellow car dealers, Victor White and Harold O’Connor, both of whom were close friends of Ecclestone’s with a penchant for vicuña overcoats, cigars and silk monogrammed shirts.