As miserable old crone 92-year-old billionaire Bernie Ecclestone faces another court hearing, more cheerful old crone 92-year-old billionaire Rupert Murdoch is forced into a payout reports Matthew Steeples
Today hasn’t been a good day for two creosoted, verging on crocodile-like skinned 92-year-old billionaires. Both Bernie Ecclestone and Rupert Murdoch are again roasting on the coals.
After moving more like Max Clifford than Mick Jagger at his last appearance at Southwark Crown Court in January, the bestie of the non-sweating, Pizza Express loving Prince Andrew that is the diminutive dwarf-like Ecclestone was dragged back to the same court again this morning.
Arriving in a frankly common and more suitable for a desert in Dubai white coloured Range Rover, haggard Ecclestone – whom I am reliably told was supposedly nicknamed ‘The Grinch’ by those once very close to him – clambered out after his latest wife, Fabiana Flosi, wandered off far ahead. Curiously, relations between the two looked rather similar to those, in fact, of Donald and Melania Trump; distant and anything but dissolute.
Meanwhile elsewhere, it was announced this very same day that Rupert Murdoch – freshly free of his very, very, very short-lived engagement to a clearly beyond wacky woman named Ann Lesley Smith – has agreed to a £635 million ($787.5 million, €720.5 million or درهم2.8 billion) settlement with voting equipment firm Dominion over lies over the 2020 U.S. elections. Pennies to him in real terms, but facing further suits of even more substantial natures this opposingly brilliant but much maligned billionaire seems to also have a lot of other woes on the way.
For Murdoch, this payment may have been a relative ‘walk in the park, but I’d argue Sky’s hit series Succession has nothing on these two old crones – Roy Logan eat your heart out; the ‘fall years’ for these two have finally arrived.
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.
BOG OFF BERNIE! BERNIE ECCLESTONE’S WORST MOMENTS
A poisonous penny-pinching dwarf and well-known as a “coffin dodger,” Bernie Ecclestone – a bestie of the man who paid £12 million to a woman he claims never to have met Prince Andrew – couldn’t give a damn about anything other than money. He’ll mouth off in support of anyone who might help him get just a little bit more, but really should just be told to bog off!
On President Vladimir Putin:
“[He] should be running Europe… He should be in Brussels running Europe… We should get rid of Brussels and he should just be in charge.”
“Honestly, I think the guy who be running Europe, impressed me more than anything, is Mr Putin because he’s a guy that says he’s going to do something and does it… [He’s] a first-class person.”
“He does what he says he’s gonna do, he gets the job done. I mean people don’t understand exactly what he wants to do… He wants to put Russia back to what it was.”
“I was with [Putin] after the [2014 Sochi Winter] Olympics on the top of the bloody mountain… We had a meeting, just the two of us, and we came out and we were walking along and people were coming up to him asking for an autograph… That’s what people think of him.”
“If someone had a machine gun and was prepared to shoot Putin, I would stand in front of him because he’s a good guy. He’s never done anything that isn’t doing good things for people.”
On President Putin’s intolerance to gay people in Russia:
“When I was at school, if you did something wrong, the teacher used to say: ‘Go and get the punishment book and the cane. Go to your headmistress and get a few whacks or something.’ That’s what he does.”
On President Donald Trump:
“I think he’d be fantastic [as President of the United States of America]. I’m sure he’s much more flexible than most of them. If he’s made a mistake, he’s more likely to say: ‘It was a good idea at the time.’”
“He has done a lot of good things for the world.”
On Adolf Hitler:
“Apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done… He wasn’t a dictator.”
On Jewish people:
“They have a lot of influence everywhere.”
On black people:
“In a lot of cases, black people are more racist than what white people are.”
Of democracy in the United Kingdom:
“If you have a look at a democracy it hasn’t done a lot of good for many countries – including this one.”
Of his crackpot suggestion that the now late Max Mosley, son of the late Fascist Oswald Mosley, might have been Prime Minister of Great Britain:
“[He would have done] a super job… I don’t think his background would [have been] a problem.”
On Brexit:
“I’m 100% an outer.”
On his wealth:
“I’ve got enough I can do with my money.”
On following the rules:
“I never stopped breaking the rules.”
Asked if immigrants had made a contribution to the UK:
“They have not.”
On who is worth speaking to:
“Anyone who doesn’t speak English isn’t worth speaking to… I’d rather get to the 70-year-old guy who has a lot of cash.”
On journalists:
“I can’t remember a single occasion when I have been kind to a journalist.”
On social media:
“I think the change that is currently taking place is very short-lived, as these social media people are starting to think it is not as good as they thought.”
On waiters and prostitutes:
“Waiters are like hookers, never around when you want them.”
On women:
“You know, I’ve got one of those wonderful ideas… Women should be all dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances.”
“What I would really like to see happen is to find the right girl, perhaps a black girl with super looks, preferably Jewish or Muslim, who speaks Spanish.”
On women participating in Formula 1:
“I don’t know whether a woman would physically be able to drive an F1 car quickly, and they wouldn’t be taken seriously.”
On Lewis Hamilton:
“I don’t find him particularly engaging… He’s not particularly you would say black.”
On the corrupt criminal and disgraced banker Gerhard Gribkowsky:
“Dear old Gribkowsky… I don’t blame him because I would have probably done the same if I could have done it. He found the weak spot, found some leverage and used it. You can’t blame somebody for doing that.”
On the individuals who kidnapped his mother-in-law:
“If I get upset, how could it help?”
On his business career and his family’s Bambino Holdings offshore trust:
“I’ve got the highest position there is. So high that when I look down, I can’t see anything.”
“Maybe the most serious thing I regret was giving my shares to my ex [Slavica Radić], because when she them all in a trust for her and the kids, I lost control.”
