I was born on a kitchen table, started selling sandwiches out of a suitcase, and now I'm an F1 billionaire

Picture the scene. 1930s Suffolk. A small hamlet etched with rolling fields of wheat and a quintessentially English churchyard.

No, I’m not pitching a new Sunday night period drama to the BBC. Instead I’m offering a vignette into the beginnings of an F1 billionaire.

Bernie Ecclestone is one of F1’s most entrepreneurial minds. A former racing driver and Brabham team owner, Ecclestone steadily acquired control over the sport until his vice-like grip was prised away by the advent of Liberty Media in 2017.

The ‘F1 Supremo’ will always be remembered for his instrumental role in expanding the sport onto a global stage, bringing vast amounts of wealth into F1 after the sale of it's television rights and transformed it's stars into global icons.

Ecclestone’s enterprising spirit was evident from a young age, and on his 95th birthday (October 28) he shared the beginnings of one of the world’s most well known and affluent business magnates.

Ecclestone’s upbringing

The scene moves on. A modest house and one of the few settlements in the sleepy village. The year is 1930, the air is crisp and the nights are getting darker. There, through the kitchen table, you can see a baby being born. On the kitchen table.

"I was born on my grandmother's kitchen table in one of the eight simple houses in our small English village,” Ecclestone recounted his origins to Bild.

Far from being blessed with the astonishing wealth that sets up most billionaires, the Ecclestone family had no money, an obstacle young Bernie was determined to overcome.

“We had no money, so when I was still at school, I got a suitcase, bought all the rolls at the train station, and sold them from the suitcase during recess before school. That's how I made my first money,” he explained.

By rolls, Ecclestone means sandwiches, baps, butties, barms (whatever your geographical location predisposes you to say). You can imagine a young Bernie, short trousers and a sweater vest, selling his sandwiches while ‘Run, Rabbit Run’ crackles on the wireless.

Eventually, the Ecclestone family moved to southeast London in 1938 – at this stage I imagine a steam engine chugging frantically through the English countryside, the carriages shrouded in a plume of smoke – where Bernie would remain with his family during the Second World War.

At the age of 16, which would have been after the war, Ecclestone left school and set himself on the course that would lead him towards Formula 1.

"At 16, I left school and began an apprenticeship in a chemistry lab. I quickly realized it wasn't for me. I bought old motorcycles, repaired them, and resold them,” Ecclestone said.

“Things went well – I paid my boss with the money I earned, moved my motorcycle shop into a nearby used car dealership. Things went well again: I paid off the used car dealer – and by 19, I had made my first million.”

The Beatles hadn’t even wobbled their mop top before Ecclestone could call himself a millionaire, and by the 1950s he had caught the bug for racing.

However, as with any story, Ecclestone was faced with a disappointment, a challenge he had to overcome by altering his path completely.

An attempt to compete in F1 in 1958 was rendered unsuccessful after Ecclestone failed to qualify for the British and Monaco Grands Prix, instead turning his attention to driver management.

Amongst the drivers he managed was champion Jochen Rindt, who posthumously won the title in 1970. To this day Ecclestone names Rindt as one of his four ‘real friends’. The list also includes Max Mosley (former FIA president), three-time world champion Niki Lauda and current Alpine executive Flavio Briatore.

"Of course, many 'friends' came and went," he said.

"But I had real friends, please wait a minute, maybe four. Yes, four."

"Three of them are no longer here."

So we conclude the origin story of Bernie Ecclestone. The 95-year-old remains one of F1’s most controversial yet enigmatic figures, and it cannot be denied his life story holds much dramatic appeal.

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