The tax case. The daft things he’s said about women. Putin. To the wider world Bernie Ecclestone is what they might call ‘toxic’ these days, like the mad uncle you only see at Christmas who says wildly inappropriate things. Already more than five years since the Liberty Media buy-in triggered his Formula 1 exit, Ecclestone increasingly appears to be a man out of his time. And at 92, nearly out of time too.
Which is why the release of a new eightpart documentary on his life, through the prism of his own Formula 1 memories, is so intriguing. The series, called Lucky!, centres on a stark, striking close-up of Ecclestone’s face: white hair, white goatee, bright blue eyes (no specs, which is revealing in itself ), signature white shirt, set off against a bright white background. Spooky. There are no other ‘talking heads’. Ecclestone speaks directly to camera as if he’s addressing you personally, to give his version of F1 from 1950 onwards.
No one deserves to more, of course, as the single most important and influential figure who shaped what we know today as ‘effwun’ in his own image. By definition
