Book Review - No Angel: The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone

Very few people actually know the secret behind Bernie Ecclestone’s life from a second-hand car salesman on Warren Street to becoming the F1 supremo. And as the title of the book by Tom Bower very correctly suggests, he is “no angel”. While going through the 350-odd pages, one is enthralled by the cunning nature with which Bernie won crucial deals. His theory was simple – let the other person put the price on the table first and get him/her at a disadvantage straight away.

Apart from being portrayed as the super dealer, his fractious relationship with ex-wife Slavica is well documented. That the author has had significant internal access is proved by the fact that he is able to quote Bernie throughout the book and also able to put before the reader some extremely heated and personal conversations between the couple. Ironically though, that same marriage lasted for more than two decades.

Tom Bower should be applauded for:

Being able to get so much access into the otherwise very covert lifestyle of the man who made Formula 1 as it is now. On top of that, he has also described Bernie’s childhood about which many do not know much. Apart from Bernie, the book has frequent quotes from other prominent people such as Max Mosley which is good to see. The partnership between Max and Bernie is one of the main themes of the book which has been covered over a very long period since Bernie entered F1 as FOCA representative in the early 70s until 2010. How they ‘conspired’ together to gain an advantage and extract maximum amount of money from the sport provides for a very engrossing read.

Where he fails:

Where the author fails, he fails miserably. One of the reasons for that is at many points, he has not got his facts right: we shall come to that later. Coming to the book as an overall, the problem is that after covering Bernie’s childhood and his car dealership days, it kind of loses its plot. There are numerous accounts of the deals Bernie made but where they make it difficult for the reader to follow is that they are all mentioned in a haphazard way. At one moment, Bernie is dealing with ITV for the TV rights in the 80s and then suddenly, the story switches to his personal life, and then again back to his involvement in the sport. This continues throughout the book and is exactly what prevents the author from being able to captivate the reader for long. No surprise then that it didn’t become a bestseller.

Next where the author errs heavily and the storyline loses a significant amount of credibility, is when he gets some facts glaringly wrong. He mentions that Jack Brabham won the championship 3 times from 1962-1970 which is far from the truth as Jack won only one championship in his eponymous car in 1966. On another occasion, it is written that Niki Lauda was not told about the fan at the back of his BT46B car fitted at the 1978 Swedish GP. Is he joking? Only a blind person would miss such a big fan! On reading carefully, one might find even more factual mistakes but the two listed here are the biggest and no one would miss these at least.

Final Verdict: There are better books on Bernie Ecclestone such as Bernie’s game by Terry Lovell which documents Bernie’s life in a similar fashion with the added advantage of almost no twisted historical facts. But unfortunately that book is out of print. So if one remains wary of the mistakes in this book, it is not a total disappointment after all.

Rating: 6.7/10