You know the old adage about how wealthy men only get rich by looking after
the pennies? Step forward Bernie Ecclestone, multi-billionaire chief
executive of Formula One. His income from F1 is at least £15,000 every hour,
but parking fines annoy him as much as everyone else.
So when Petra Ecclestone, his youngest daughter, came home with a ticket
earlier this year, he got to work. Petra, 19, had left her Range Rover Sport
in a bay in Mayfair, paid for the parking over the phone by credit card, and
couldn’t see what she’d done wrong. “When I get a parking ticket I get told
off [by my father],” she says sheepishly. “So I’m like ‘It’s not my fault’ –
and this time it actually wasn’t, so my dad complained, and he is a busy
enough person, so to like call himself and complain [is a big deal].”
Wait a second: Bernie Ecclestone haranguing the local council about a £100
parking fine? “Yeah, yeah, I know!” laughs Petra, tossing back her long mane
of Barbie-blonde hair. “My dad hates stupid things that will cost money.
Although I think he may have just paid it in the end.”
It wasn’t the first time he has intervened to sort out his daughter’s car
problems. Petra’s first set of wheels was supposed to be a £78,000
pearl-white Audi R8, one of the first to roll off the production line.
Bernie returned it after she failed her test for the third time, in 2006.
When she finally passed, on her fourth attempt, a year after her 17th
birthday, he bought her a more modest BMW X3, probably thinking it was a
safer option. Petra crashed it anyway, pulling out of a parking space. “I
called my dad. I was straight on the phone and asking, ‘What do I do?’” She
now has the Range Rover – “a white one with huge black rims” – although she
prefers taxis (“no parking”) and one day she hopes to drive something with a
little more pizzazz. “I love Lamborghinis, I love the Ferrari Enzo, the
Mercedes SLR, but in London it’s hard to drive them,” she says. “A) people
are jealous and they’re going to scratch your car or do something like that,
and B) it’s not that practical.”
When Petra’s father is not railing against Mayfair traffic wardens, or sending
her car to the body repair shop, he is, she insists, “a really nice guy”. “I
think people don’t really know my dad and kind of judge him. He’s a really
good family man. Obviously everyone is different in business and he’s quite
hard and stern at work, that’s the way you’ve got to be.
“He’s also not very sociable, he doesn’t really like going to social
functions. We like to stay in and watch the horseracing together. I guess
he’s a home bunny like me.”
If you’ve seen pictures of Ecclestone’s youngest daughter out on the town,
dressed to kill in a body-con dress, her long, Monaco-tan legs balanced on
skyscraper heels, you might find that hard to believe. She’s currently
gracing the cover of Tramp, the luxury lifestyle magazine, where James
Stunt, her 27-year-old boyfriend, is featured inside as one of the UK’s “top
100 socialites”, talking about how he blows £5,000 a night on partying and
drives a Lamborghini, a common sight on the King’s Road, with the
numberplate S7UNT.
Yet Ecclestone insists she is happiest curled up in the sitting room of his or
her Chelsea pad with their four dogs: Lola and Sumo, the bull dogs, Rocky,
the boxer, and Coco, the cavalier king charles spaniel. “I’m actually quite
shy,” she says. “I was the quietest one at school. I wouldn’t really speak.
My boyfriend has like this amazing personality, he can speak to everyone. I
just don’t have that. Maybe I’m more like my dad. My dad is quiet, he
doesn’t really show himself, he just keeps it inside.”
Ecclestone is perched nervously on the edge of a sofa in the Lanesborough
hotel, not far from the offices of Form, her new menswear label. It is
inspired by the style and spirit of F1 drivers such as Ayrton Senna and
James Hunt and was launched with the help of Edward Sexton, her father’s
Savile Row tailor, and, of course, a tiny sliver of her father’s vast
fortune. Her first collection, a surprisingly grown-up range of simple,
relaxed, but well-cut pieces and chunky knitwear, went on sale earlier this
month, exclusive to Harrods, and is currently outselling Christian Dior, her
neighbour in the lower-ground menswear department of the Knightsbridge
emporium.
The launch party on October 2 included guests such as Princess Beatrice and
Boris Becker, as well as the ever arresting sight of her mother Slavica, 6ft
2in tall and an ex-model from Croatia, alongside the 5ft 4in Bernie (Petra
is 5ft 8in). Bernie reportedly spent most of the night readjusting the
publicity boards to make sure they were all facing in the right direction.
“It’s not like he’s like a fashion guru or something,” says Petra, sounding
for a split-second like any other teenage daughter. “He can’t really help in
that way, but he helps in the business aspects of it. I can call him up at
any time, as a dad, and ask him about the situation and he answers, but he
doesn’t stick his nose in where it’s not needed.”
Bernie’s tastes are modest, Petra says. “Because my father hasn’t changed his
style in like 40 years, he doesn’t see why mine has to change once every two
months. He’s like ‘Can’t you just wear the same stuff?’”
He drives an “old Lexus”, though he does have two private jets and a
motoryacht, which the family takes out most summers to visit Slavica’s
family in Croatia (Petra speaks fluent Croatian). “When I was little I
thought everyone else was travelling in the same way as me,” she says. “For
me it was normal.”
When she turned 16, her parents gave her the apartment below their penthouse
in Chelsea, although even Bernie can’t get the building staff these days,
and the renovations have only just been completed three years on. “I thought
I was going to be in there, doing my A-levels, but I just moved in two weeks
ago,” says Petra. “It was a school before, and they redid it and it took for
ever.”
With her doll-like pretty face and Louboutin-clad feet, it’s tempting to
jealously write Ecclestone off as just another spoilt little rich girl, but
she insists it’s not like that. “There are negatives, like not knowing who
you can trust and like when my parents were mugged,” she says of a
terrifying incident in 1996, when she was eight years old. “People came into
the house and beat my dad up, really badly, because he went to hospital. I
came downstairs and saw my mum crying and there was blood everywhere and my
dad wasn’t around. So kind of from that you get scared really easily. I was
scared to be in the house alone.”
Ecclestone might look like Britain’s answer to Paris Hilton, but the only time
she is anything other than charming is when I point out the possible
similarity between herself and the American heiress. “I don’t really see any
similarity apart from that we’re both blonde,” she says bluntly. Petra and
Tamara, 24, her elder sister, now a television presenter, did film a
half-hour pilot for a reality TV show modelled on Hilton’s The Simple Life a
while ago, but she is now hugely relieved it was canned.
One of the reasons she decided to design menswear – “rather than a funky
womenswear range” – was to go against people’s expectations. “My name does
open some doors and it closes some,” she says. “I was the one who called
Harrods up, I didn’t get my dad to call, and he could quite easily have
called them and said ‘my daughter’s got a clothing line’ – but no, I called
myself and I kept calling until I spoke to the right person.”
Bernie, who will celebrate his 78th birthday on Tuesday, started out selling
motorcycle parts after the second world war. Petra will never have to work
as hard as he did to make a living, never mind a fortune, but she’s starting
to realise “how hard it is to actually make money for yourself”.
“I respect money much more now I’ve started working,” she says. “My parents
had to make it themselves. It’s different when you’re born into wealth and
you just don’t comprehend how it all started and how hard it was to make the
first £100. I feel that’s why my parents are grounded. [That’s why] my dad
still counts every £100.”
MY STUFF...
ON MY CD PLAYER
I’m listening to Duffy’s album [Rockferry]. I just really like her voice
ON MY DVD PLAYER
I’ve just bought The Wire [the American TV series]. I’m finding it hard to get
into, but everyone tells me it takes a few episodes and then you’re hooked,
so I’m looking forward to that
I WOULD NEVER THROW AWAY
The teddy bear my parents gave to me in hospital just after I was born
PETRA ECCLESTONE: MY LIFE IN CARS
AUDI R8 Ecclestone was given a £78,000 R8 by her father – but he
returned it when she failed her driving test for the third time
BMW X3 This was Ecclestone’s first set of wheels after passing her test
on the fourth attempt
RANGE ROVER SPORT Ecclestone now drives this luxury 4x4. Hers is a
white one with black wheel trims
