Bernie, Bahrain and Beelzebub
The story of Faust is one that appeals greatly to the human imagination: a man does a deal with the devil whereby he enjoys fame, wealth and magical powers on earth in return for eternal damnation in hell. The trouble always is that the man is never terribly pleased about fulfilling his side of the bargain when the devil eventually comes to claim his soul.
A version of the story which I thoroughly enjoyed when it was released as a film in the late 1980s is Angel Heart. In it a private investigator in New York called Harry Angel – played by Mickey Rourke - is engaged by a mysterious, darkly dressed man called Louis Cyphre (Robert de Niro) to find a missing man called Johnny Favorite. According to Cyphre, Favorite owes him a debt which he is keen to have repaid. Angel then embarks upon a bizarre adventure to New Orleans involving voodoo, sex and much murder. At the end the awful truth emerges that Favorite had made a deal with the devil to achieve fame and fortune as a singer for his soul. To escape delivering his end of the bargain, Favorite changed his identity, moved from Louisiana and disappeared. But not quite. Angel was Favorite all along and Louis Cyphre (an unsubtle alias for “Lucifer”) knew it and had now come to claim what was rightfully his.
As I read with incredulity at the weekend that the Bahrain Grand Prix had been restored to the 2011 FIA Formula One World Championship Race Calendar, the scales fell from my eyes. Like Johnny Favorite and every other derivative of Faust, Bernard Charles Ecclestone has enjoyed a life of power and luxury like none other. Gnome-like, very ugly and now decrepit, Ecclestone moves from young statuesque blonde to young statuesque blonde as soon as the looks and allure of the former begin to fade. Each new and improved version is never older than 30 or shorter than six foot. In the meantime, he has kings, presidents and prime ministers on speed dial on his mobile phone. If Ecclestone demands “jump!” the invariable response is “how high, sir?”
But Ecclestone has always known that the remorseful day would come one day; the question was always when. Well, the question will soon be answered. Mephistopheles has sent Ecclestone a few messages to indicate that the day will soon be upon him.
Bernie Ecclestone has been in control of Formula One for eons, but it all nearly came to an end in the early part of this century when the company he controlled it through spectacularly hit the buffers. The banks which had lent money to the company quickly assumed control and began looking around for a buyer of the business. The banker in charge of doing the deal, a German gentleman called Gerhard Gribkowsky, got to know Ecclestone in the process of seeking out a buyer and came under his magic spell. When Gribkowsky eventually found a team of investors who were prepared to take F1 out of the hands of the banks – a private equity group called CVC Capital Partners – he insisted on including Eccelstone in the sale as part of the overall package. CVC did not mind too much because Eccelstone assured them that he would pay them a massive amount of money which was guaranteed to increase year on year by an eye-wateringly large percentage. To keep the cash flowing in and increasing, Ecclestone had to keep finding new people each year with deep enough pockets to satisfy his arrangement with CVC. The best way of doing so was to sell the rights to host Grands Prix in exotic locations around the world.
The first message from Mephistopheles came in January this year. Gribkowsky, the German banker was arrested by the Bavarian constabulary, allegedly for receiving €50 million from Ecclestone in 2005 as a present for having secured his continued stewardship of Formula One. Ecclestone denies all knowledge of any of this but poor old Gribkowsky has not been permitted to pound the immaculate streets of Munich ever since the beginning of the year.
The second message from Mephistopheles came in February when the Arabs in North Africa and the Middle East decided enough was enough and they were going to get rid of the expensive and bothersome chaps who had been running their countries in a ghastly fashion and generally making miserable the lives of the Arab people. Once the revolution spread to Bahrain it became inconceivable that a race could be held there.
Suddenly there was a gaping hole in the pot of money Ecclestone was to deliver to CVC and he had somehow to plug it.
The final message to Ecclestone from Mephistopheles was delivered by…..none other than Bernie Ecclestone himself! At the end of last week, Ecclestone signed a deal to have the Bahrain Grand Prix held during the last weekend of October.
I said it on this blog on 8 March 2011 and I will say it again now: the Bahrain Grand Prix is dead. Bernie does not realise that his efforts at exhuming its coffin from its concrete grave deep in the Arabian desert will be the end of him as F1’s impresario and could well be the beginning of the end of Formula One itself.
Each racing team will have signed an agreement with Ecclestone’s company to participate in all of the races in the 2011 FIA Formula One World Championship Race Calendar. These agreements will almost certainly require the attendance of each team at the Bahrain Grand Prix within its new slot at the end of October but I can assure you of this: most of them will not go. The costs to each major team of attending the Bahrain Grand Prix vastly exceed any damages they may be forced to pay for breach of contract.
I will leave you with a mental image which will demonstrate the certainty of my argument. Imagine an advertising poster containing two images, one above the other and some text between the two. The top image is split into two halves: the first picture shows a cavalcade of Grosser Mercedes Benz Offener Tourenwagens travelling slowly through the Brandenburg Gate along the Kaiserdamm. In the lead Mercedes with the top and all the windows in a down position sits Adolph Hitler in the right rear seat. To his immediate left sits Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Commander of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) and President of the Prussian Council of State. Along the street are Nazi soldiers giving the Heil Hitler! Salute. Alongside this disturbing photograph is a picture of the two representative vehicles of the Mercedes 2011 Formula One team. Beneath it are the words: “The company which produced these beautiful cars....”
And then underneath is a picture of heavily armoured battle tanks bearing down on unarmed crowds in Manama, Bahrain...
and just above it are the words:
“...is also the company which happily condones this!
I will leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions.
Gitau
6 June 2011
A version of the story which I thoroughly enjoyed when it was released as a film in the late 1980s is Angel Heart. In it a private investigator in New York called Harry Angel – played by Mickey Rourke - is engaged by a mysterious, darkly dressed man called Louis Cyphre (Robert de Niro) to find a missing man called Johnny Favorite. According to Cyphre, Favorite owes him a debt which he is keen to have repaid. Angel then embarks upon a bizarre adventure to New Orleans involving voodoo, sex and much murder. At the end the awful truth emerges that Favorite had made a deal with the devil to achieve fame and fortune as a singer for his soul. To escape delivering his end of the bargain, Favorite changed his identity, moved from Louisiana and disappeared. But not quite. Angel was Favorite all along and Louis Cyphre (an unsubtle alias for “Lucifer”) knew it and had now come to claim what was rightfully his.
As I read with incredulity at the weekend that the Bahrain Grand Prix had been restored to the 2011 FIA Formula One World Championship Race Calendar, the scales fell from my eyes. Like Johnny Favorite and every other derivative of Faust, Bernard Charles Ecclestone has enjoyed a life of power and luxury like none other. Gnome-like, very ugly and now decrepit, Ecclestone moves from young statuesque blonde to young statuesque blonde as soon as the looks and allure of the former begin to fade. Each new and improved version is never older than 30 or shorter than six foot. In the meantime, he has kings, presidents and prime ministers on speed dial on his mobile phone. If Ecclestone demands “jump!” the invariable response is “how high, sir?”
But Ecclestone has always known that the remorseful day would come one day; the question was always when. Well, the question will soon be answered. Mephistopheles has sent Ecclestone a few messages to indicate that the day will soon be upon him.
Bernie Ecclestone has been in control of Formula One for eons, but it all nearly came to an end in the early part of this century when the company he controlled it through spectacularly hit the buffers. The banks which had lent money to the company quickly assumed control and began looking around for a buyer of the business. The banker in charge of doing the deal, a German gentleman called Gerhard Gribkowsky, got to know Ecclestone in the process of seeking out a buyer and came under his magic spell. When Gribkowsky eventually found a team of investors who were prepared to take F1 out of the hands of the banks – a private equity group called CVC Capital Partners – he insisted on including Eccelstone in the sale as part of the overall package. CVC did not mind too much because Eccelstone assured them that he would pay them a massive amount of money which was guaranteed to increase year on year by an eye-wateringly large percentage. To keep the cash flowing in and increasing, Ecclestone had to keep finding new people each year with deep enough pockets to satisfy his arrangement with CVC. The best way of doing so was to sell the rights to host Grands Prix in exotic locations around the world.
The first message from Mephistopheles came in January this year. Gribkowsky, the German banker was arrested by the Bavarian constabulary, allegedly for receiving €50 million from Ecclestone in 2005 as a present for having secured his continued stewardship of Formula One. Ecclestone denies all knowledge of any of this but poor old Gribkowsky has not been permitted to pound the immaculate streets of Munich ever since the beginning of the year.
The second message from Mephistopheles came in February when the Arabs in North Africa and the Middle East decided enough was enough and they were going to get rid of the expensive and bothersome chaps who had been running their countries in a ghastly fashion and generally making miserable the lives of the Arab people. Once the revolution spread to Bahrain it became inconceivable that a race could be held there.
Suddenly there was a gaping hole in the pot of money Ecclestone was to deliver to CVC and he had somehow to plug it.
The final message to Ecclestone from Mephistopheles was delivered by…..none other than Bernie Ecclestone himself! At the end of last week, Ecclestone signed a deal to have the Bahrain Grand Prix held during the last weekend of October.
I said it on this blog on 8 March 2011 and I will say it again now: the Bahrain Grand Prix is dead. Bernie does not realise that his efforts at exhuming its coffin from its concrete grave deep in the Arabian desert will be the end of him as F1’s impresario and could well be the beginning of the end of Formula One itself.
Each racing team will have signed an agreement with Ecclestone’s company to participate in all of the races in the 2011 FIA Formula One World Championship Race Calendar. These agreements will almost certainly require the attendance of each team at the Bahrain Grand Prix within its new slot at the end of October but I can assure you of this: most of them will not go. The costs to each major team of attending the Bahrain Grand Prix vastly exceed any damages they may be forced to pay for breach of contract.
I will leave you with a mental image which will demonstrate the certainty of my argument. Imagine an advertising poster containing two images, one above the other and some text between the two. The top image is split into two halves: the first picture shows a cavalcade of Grosser Mercedes Benz Offener Tourenwagens travelling slowly through the Brandenburg Gate along the Kaiserdamm. In the lead Mercedes with the top and all the windows in a down position sits Adolph Hitler in the right rear seat. To his immediate left sits Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Commander of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) and President of the Prussian Council of State. Along the street are Nazi soldiers giving the Heil Hitler! Salute. Alongside this disturbing photograph is a picture of the two representative vehicles of the Mercedes 2011 Formula One team. Beneath it are the words: “The company which produced these beautiful cars....”
And then underneath is a picture of heavily armoured battle tanks bearing down on unarmed crowds in Manama, Bahrain...
and just above it are the words:
“...is also the company which happily condones this!
I will leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions.
Gitau
6 June 2011
posted by Gitau at 9:49 pm
1 comments
