S7 EP1: Boris Becker on encountering Diddy, mind-games with Nadal and his spell in prison

15:04Louis Theroux:admirer of Tupac. Oh, Tupac Shakur? Of course. So one of the famous songs he has is Me Against the World.

15:11Boris Becker:Yeah. Yeah.

15:13Louis Theroux:You like rap? I used to like rap from the 90s. You like Lil' Kim? Well, Lil' Kim had one or two good songs. One was called Slippin', which I really liked. If you want to get into rap a little bit. Let's do a bit of 90s.

15:30Boris Becker:Notorious B.I.G.?

15:31Louis Theroux:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like... Who else? I was always a big fan of Jay-Z. Jay-Z. I love Jay-Z. Did you meet Jay-Z? Yeah, met him a couple of times. He's a big tennis fan. I met Beyonce as well. Is she nice? Very nice. Very cool couple. You wouldn't associate Boris Becker from West Germany with rap music like that, but I always had a bit of an eclectic taste. Did you meet Diddy? I've met him. I spent a lot of time in Miami. Did it surprise you when the stuff about the freak-offs came out? No. I mean, if you know Diddy, if you live in Miami, if you are invited on the weekends to parties, you have a choice of saying yes and you have a choice of saying no.

16:27Louis Theroux:Nobody really talked in detail what happened, but they went for hours and I called them freak-offs. And you put your two cents together what happened there, okay?

16:36Boris Becker:I feel like the freak-offs are getting conflated with the parties because the freak-offs took place in hotel rooms, I think, with Cassie. And then he would bring in male sex workers and there would be drugs and they would take days.

16:50Louis Theroux:The parties were parties. The parties were parties, but even the parties, they took sometimes a day or two. Really? Yeah. yeah yeah I mean how do you know that well well you know when you when you you know talk to someone on a Saturday afternoon and you talk to them again on the juice day and you say damn I just got out of it then then they were like what yeah it just took forever we just didn't leave then then you know they're they're longer than just a night and of course nobody ever says what they've done in those 48 hours of course but But naturally, an espresso Red Bull isn't strong enough to make you survive the two nights.

17:33Louis Theroux:No. But Miami, again, Miami in the 90s.

17:39Boris Becker:And sexual activity, do you think?

17:42Louis Theroux:I don't know what. I mean, I've never been a guy of going to a long party because, you know, what's the point? You never met Epstein, did you? No, no. I mean, you're opening all boxes now. No, I never met Epstein. No. I did meet. He had a Miami connection. I know. I did meet Andrew. Did you? I did meet Andrew. I mean, I met the royal family many times. What would you say about Andrew? Look, we are on air now, and I don't think I should talk about the subject. It's so brand hot now and brand new. That's our clickbait headline. Boris Becker on P.

18:25Boris Becker:Diddy, Epstein and Prince Andrew. That's going to break the internet.

18:29Louis Theroux:Exactly. He's not called Prince Andrew anymore. Oh, you're right. He's called Andrew Mountbatten Winsor. Yes. So, yeah.

18:38Boris Becker:Do you feel bad for him?

18:41Louis Theroux:I shouldn't be talking to you about this. I mean, you're leading me into something that I shouldn't be commenting. My life is full enough, right? I shouldn't be the one that pointed at others and criticized others for their mistakes. I knew you'd say that.

18:56Boris Becker:That's why I felt comfortable asking the question because I knew you had the poise to give the perfect answer. I should say, by the way, Alex Gibney is a very well-known American, a very respected American director. He's definitely one of the top directors of documentaries in America, if not the world.

19:13Louis Theroux:Can I say a word about the other one? So the other one by ITV, I would call it a hoax. because I went with a very good legal team against it because there were so many facts portrayed that are wrong.

19:28Boris Becker:Well, we might be able to put some of those to bed. So one of the narratives that comes out from watching those, and I just want to, because everything you said could be true, and in addition, it could also be true. I don't mean to sound like it's not. But in addition, it could also be true that you were maybe reckless. Where I'm going with this is one of the quotes that Gibney gives in promoting the film, he said, what made him great, meaning you as a player, didn't serve him well in real life. You have to be a little bit crazy to do what they do. I think meaning top tennis players or athletes.

20:02Boris Becker:And Lillian, in a different quote, she said something similar. She said, in order to be a champion, you have to believe you're invincible. That probably brings you to a level where you think you're untouchable in real life. so I wonder if there's a part of you that is naturally a bit reckless a bit of a gambler someone who maybe risks too much where the odds aren't good enough or looks for the edge

20:28Louis Theroux:look I think in order to become the best in what you do you have to go past your own limitations you have to go further than you think you can go in order to get to that last point and make that last serve and just come back from two cents to love. If you wouldn't believe in your own strength, you would never do that because it's not logic. A lot of people have tried and a lot of people have failed. So in order for me to be the best tennis player in the world, I have to cross borderlines. Okay. That is an attribute that I have by my DNA. What kind of borderline?

21:04Boris Becker:You mean pushing the envelope? What do you mean by crossing borderlines? Because that could sound like kind of transgressing.

21:11Louis Theroux:No, no, no, no. Just not accepting no for an answer, for example. So that worked very well as an athlete. Now, in real life, we all have our borders, right? There's the law. If the red light, you have to stop and all this, which I do. But if I'm in business and I see an opportunity to make this business successful, I go as far as necessary and as far I have to go. Now, it's good and bad. With this character trait, you may say, I've survived prison, and I'm living probably the best life I've been living the last 15 or 20 years. Now, if I would give up easily, if I would accept no easily, if I would always believe what you tell me, I wouldn't be in this position to be at almost 58.

22:03Louis Theroux:So it goes both ways. Now, I see why people want to do a documentary about it, Because some of the things that I've done, nobody has done. The good and the bad. But I think it's a character trait of mine that I don't accept no for an answer. Otherwise, I would have never been the best. Are you reckless? No, I'm not reckless. But I'm not afraid.

22:26Boris Becker:I think there's a difference.

22:28Louis Theroux:I'm not afraid also of falling down. I can't accept not trying. That doesn't mean I succeed all the time. That sometimes I get a bloody nose. But I'm not afraid of trying if it means I have to fall down.

22:45Boris Becker:One of the things in the ITV documentary was your ex-wife, Lily, said that you kept horses in the bedroom of your finca.

22:53Louis Theroux:Well, how could you imagine that?

22:55Boris Becker:In order to evade taxes on horses.

22:57Louis Theroux:Well, how much bullshit is that? Seriously. Can I swear on this? Please. Do I have to mind my language? I mean, have you ever seen such a load of bullshit in your life before? just think logically how big a bedroom has to be to hide horses in there let alone she's talking about the Finca and Mallorca the bedrooms are on the first floor so how should the horses get onto the first floor and then to avoid paying taxes of paying taxes what? so that's just one element and thankfully for laughing that's just one element of the BS that's been storied about me in that particular documentary Thankfully, it was not a success.

23:40Louis Theroux:People didn't believe it. It wasn't watched, so it's not even worth talking about it. But that's what I'm dealt with. If my name isn't Boris Becker, there isn't even going to be a documentary about it, right? The other one was...

23:53Boris Becker:I mean, I know you've got an answer to this one. Hiding horses.

23:56Louis Theroux:I've heard that too. This is crazy.

23:58Boris Becker:At a certain stage of the insolvency proceedings, you announced that you actually had a passport from the Central African Republic and that you had diplomatic immunity, therefore, from the case.

24:12Louis Theroux:Well, the first part of your question is correct. The second part is not correct. I never asked for immunity in my insolvency case. It was a business deal that I was offered. Yes, the passport turned out to be fake. The passport turned out to be fake. And at the time, it was about the auction of my trophies. I had a problem with that. I had a problem that the trustee had the right to auction off my trophies that I put all my blood, sweat, and tears about it. They had no financial value other than to me, that he had the right to sell them. He fetched a lot of money for it. But that legally it was possible, and that pissed me off.

24:59Louis Theroux:And I thought, which way could I stop this auction? Then this business idea came, and I thought, maybe I can stop the selling of my trophies, which it was stopped for about six months.

25:12Boris Becker:By becoming African?

25:13Louis Theroux:No, no, no. To have an immunity against this particular point. Through the passport. Through the passport. That was the whole point. Once it was clarified that it was a fake passport, I was the first one to say, do what you want with the trophies. Hopefully you get a lot of money for it and so forth. So that was stopped. Now, in hindsight, that was foolish. Of course it was foolish, but I got my emotions in the way. I don't think any trustee should ever have a right to touch any of my trophies. I think it's really wrong. But there you go. That was a mistake.

25:46Boris Becker:Do you know offhand how much one of your Wimbledon Cups would have gone for?

25:50Louis Theroux:Funny enough, nine trophies, even the Wimbledon ones, are missing. It's a little bit suspicious. Well, part of the prosecution was that for each missing trophy, they had a case against me. Now, the explanation for me was that as a teenager, you win Rimbledon not because of the trophy. You win because of the title. You win because you want to win, not because you want to keep the trophy and so forth. Trophies matter only when you can't win them anymore because they're too old. You want to show them to your kids. So I never knew who I gave these trophies to, probably my manager at the time. I asked him, he didn't have them either.

26:33Louis Theroux:Some were sold, I think, no? There were a lot of important trophies. I won a lot of trophies in my life, right? So a lot of important... Should we talk about how many trophies you won? I mean, that might be...

26:44Boris Becker:Well, we don't have... How many Masters do you... You won, how many... Come on, let's just quickly... We've got this. 49 ATP singles titles. That's in singles, yeah. Grand Slam victories, six, three Wimbledons, one US Open, one Australian.

27:03Louis Theroux:No French Open? Well, six as a player and six as a coach. Sometimes also if you Google Wikipedia, they don't talk about my… Six as a player, six as a coach.

27:12Boris Becker:Exactly. So you don't know how much a Wimbledon trophy that you won would sell for?

27:17Louis Theroux:No, all these trophies, memorabilia, they call it coins.

27:22Boris Becker:Olympic coins because you won doubles didn't you in Barcelona?

27:27Louis Theroux:Yeah, all this was sold for 750 ,000 pounds. Having said that, I would say the nine most important ones are not part of it. And they're still not to be found.

27:42Boris Becker:Ion Tyriac, he comes up in the Gibney documentary, he looks a bit like kind of 70s medallion man he's got a big mustache hairy chest which is yeah yeah let me remember yeah and kind of and I suppose it was the 70s when he was looking like that so that's fine but he was a Romanian tennis player who became your coach or advisor coach

28:07Louis Theroux:because I wasn't making any money yet at 15 and 16 but then he quickly became also my manager

28:15Boris Becker:And he comes across as a voice of reason and he claims that I think he said early on look take whatever five ten percent of your money play with it have fun go crazy just remember the other stuff don't take risks with it keep a ton of it in the bank keep most of it in the bank accruing a stable rate of interest. He's that's one of the things he said he said and then he's also described you as the most stubborn human being I ever met.

28:43Louis Theroux:Let me just clarify the first point. No, I didn't have any financial issues in my tennis career. His issue was we could have earned more. But I wasn't playing for money. I wasn't playing for profit. I was playing to win. It drove him crazy. He said, go to Hong Kong for two nights, go to Morocco for two nights, we'll make a fortune. And I said, but it has no meaning to me. See, that's been always a confrontation between us, a healthy one. Because he comes from nothing. So for him, money is everything. But I come from something. So again, we clashed on this philosophy that money for him was everything.

29:23Louis Theroux:Money for me was never everything. And am I stubborn? Of course.

29:30Boris Becker:So lovely. In all the documentaries, there's one bit of archive they always seem to use where you look like you're about seven or eight years old and you win. You play this long baseline shot across the court and then you go, hey, it's amazing.

29:45Louis Theroux:Do you know the one I mean? Yeah, I was nine. I was nine, yeah, yeah. At that age, were you thinking,

29:51Boris Becker:I'd like to play tennis as a professional? No.

29:54Louis Theroux:You just weren't. It's very young to be thinking about that. No, no, no.

29:57Boris Becker:Is there something about tennis? You know, Naomi Osaka's been public about mental health struggles. Other people have struggled. It comes across in Andre Agassi's book very strongly. He talks about how much he hates tennis. That's sort of the leitmotif of the book. And it's a lonely sport and you're there, you're not really even allowed to be coached while you're out there, correct? When you're on the court.

30:18Louis Theroux:Nowadays, the rules are changing a little bit. So you can coach a player when he's on your side of the court, but he's not really on the court coaching.

30:27Boris Becker:But is there something that's, I mean, it's kind of obvious in some ways, but what would you say about what tennis demands from its athletes that's different from other sports? it's you know

30:41Louis Theroux:obviously it's an individual sport so it's mentally very challenging to be always on par to have the motivation to be convinced about your own strength that is very very difficult that's why you have so many ups and downs with careers lonely, I mean every week in a different place yes the hotel room can be nice

31:01Boris Becker:you're on the tour, week in, week out all through the year, Australia Asia, America, Europe

31:07Louis Theroux:Correct. So again... How many are in your entourage? It depends how wealthy you are. If you're an Alka Rasmussen sinner, I think he's got about eight to ten people in his entourage. When I was playing, I had a lot of people in my entourage. I think Djokovic had a lot of people. So you have to afford that. But this becomes your family because this is the only close people you have traveling the world.

31:33Boris Becker:Become friends with the other players?

31:35Louis Theroux:Not when you're a good player.

31:37Boris Becker:No, no, no.

31:39Louis Theroux:Again, it's a very... I mean, the locker room, you're sitting next to your opponent, the guy you're playing in the Wimbledon final in half an hour. I mean, no other sport has that. Why do they do...

31:50Boris Becker:So you're in the locker room about to play the match of your life, let's say, or certainly the final of Wimbledon, and you're both in the same locker room together.

32:01Louis Theroux:No other sport has that. Why do they do that? Tradition. Really? Tradition, it's been like this since the beginning of tennis. Do you talk to each other? You do gossip a little and small talk. You don't really go into depth. You can't also open up yourself because then you know, okay, he's got a weak moment or he's struggling with the wife or he's struggling with this, so you don't want to share stories with your toughest opponents. Of course not.

32:29Boris Becker:Psychological games playing? Of course. Like what?

32:32Louis Theroux:Yeah, staring each other out, you know, looking at each other, who blinks first, who walks away, who takes more space in the locker room, who puts his entourage next to him a little bit just to spread the muscles, as we say. You know who was very good at that? I was Nadal. When I was coaching Djokovic, I mean, Nadal came with his entourage and he just blocked the whole corner just to say, this is my… In the locker room? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the thing.

33:01Boris Becker:It was claimed that when you played Agassi one time and he was going out with Brooke Shields, you began flirting with her in the crowd and that it blew his concentration.

33:12Louis Theroux:That's in your documentary. Well, I wasn't going to comment too much on Alex's work. But what's true is that it was a particular match for Wimbledon, a semifinal, and he was beating my ass badly, sat in a break or so. and I was trying to find a way to get into his head. And at the time, he was dating Brook and they're sitting in the player's box and I was trying to do eye contact just to disturb him a little bit. With Brook? With his box, with his box. And Brook was sitting there in the middle. I don't think you can call it flirting, but I was just trying to get him off guard. Guess what? It worked.

33:51Louis Theroux:I won the match in four. So there's a lot of mental warfare going on and I'd like to think I was good at that.

34:00Boris Becker:He says he could tell where you were going to serve by the tongue movement. Well, think of this logically. You're serving left, your tongue went left. If you're serving right, your tongue went right.

34:09Louis Theroux:I hate to break a great story. And he's from Las Vegas after all. But I mean, a tennis court is 33 meters long. I really think that he has the eyesight to look into my mouth while I'm serving up where I don't even know where I'm serving. So he thinks that with the movement of my thumb, it's a nice story, I love the book he wrote, but factually wrong.

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36:08Louis Theroux:When I was younger, I always wanted to be either an astronaut or an athlete.

36:14Boris Becker:I was a fast runner. I thought maybe I could make it to the Olympics or be blasted off into space. As it happens, neither of those dreams came true. I had to settle for being an award-winning documentary maker and international celebrity. Ah well, we've all had big dreams and it's never too late to make them happen. This is your sign to stop holding back and go for it, especially if your dream is to run a business, because Shopify is making it easier than ever. It's there to support you every step of the way, from designing your website to marketing to product descriptions to sales. The list goes on and on.

36:49Boris Becker:So give it a shot. Turn those dreams into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S. That's shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S.

37:20Boris Becker:So there's some legal business to deal with, and there's some ladies' business to deal with. Okay. On the legal stuff, just to get it out of the way. So you were convicted on a case. It was financial stuff. Like initially, and again, I didn't follow this closely at the time, which is like Boris Becker's in the news, there was tax evasion. That was around 2002. They alleged, well, they convicted you on avoiding taxes by claiming that you lived in Switzerland, whereas they said you actually lived in Germany.

37:54Louis Theroux:You got two years suspended on that. I have to sometimes correct, because most of the stuff that's been rolled by me, and that's why now and then I have to write a book, is that it's actually factually incorrect. Did I get it wrong already? So I was convicted of tax evasion because I was using the guest room of my sister's apartment in Munich. Yes. And the Munich authorities claimed that was my home, and therefore they convicted me of actually living in the guest bedroom of my sister and not in my three-bedroom apartment in Monte Carlo. Now, I did have some stuff, but the rules are what they are, and so it's correct that they convicted me of this very terrible-sounding word, tax evasion where the fact was I used my sister's guest bedroom once too many times.

38:48Louis Theroux:Correct.

38:48Boris Becker:Yeah. You got two years suspended on that. Correct. Then 2022 comes post-bankruptcy you're accused of breaking the insolvency act basically hiding assets in order to not pay your creditors. Yeah. That's the contention.

39:07Louis Theroux:I have to correct you a little bit. I mean you're reading you're reading.

39:10Boris Becker:No, no, I was just, I didn't mean to, I wondered if I got it wrong again.

39:14Louis Theroux:No, no, no, you got the headlines right. But what it actually means, because I was going to ask you, do you know why I was actually incarcerated? I was accused of 29 separate points. Of 25 of them, I've won. And the four points that I've lost is that I did a technical error by telling the trustee three weeks later than I was told that I had a home in Germany, which I owned 100%. I thought because my mother was living in there, she owned it half, that this home had a mortgage, that I took money out of my business account, which was legit, to pay personal expenses again, so I wasn't hiding it. And the last bit was I had shares in a sports startup company.

40:13Louis Theroux:The shares were valued at 9 ,000 pounds. Again, it took me three weeks to clarify that. And because of those three weeks, the headline is I was hiding assets. I wasn't hiding assets. Whether that was correct or not, I went, because of that, for 30 months into prison originally.

40:35Boris Becker:He was found guilty on four counts out of 24, including hiding 825 ,000 euros in a business account, failing to declare ownership of a German property, you mentioned that one, and transferring large sums to his ex-wife's accounts. No, that's not correct. No, no. Okay. No, no. Okay.

40:50Louis Theroux:And I can show you, obviously, I don't need to come with the evidence, but if you want to, if you want to clarify whether I was correct, that's exactly in documents in the court. In all these decisions, I don't want to say or claim that it wasn't my fault. All these decisions was my responsibility, and I take full accountability. It's just the actual points. It was on case four where what got me the 30-month was that I took not 850 ,000, but it was 382 ,000 points. The reason I know it in detail is because I was convicted for it, so I know exactly. to pay child support, to pay personal expenditure and so forth, which I had to do by law.

41:40Louis Theroux:That's what I did. And I told the trustee this three weeks after he asked me. That's the God honest truth. That's what I did. And thank you for clarifying that. No, but it's important because it wasn't tax evasion, right?

41:58Boris Becker:Or it wasn't... The 2022 one was not. No, no. The Insolvency Act. Yeah, yeah. So that's the headline. The headline is correct. What does it mean? And if you zoom right out and you try and make sense of this, the Wunderkind, 17, wins Wimbledon. You have your tennis career. Well, I'm just trying to kind of make sense of it all, really. Do you think you were unlucky? Do you think there was some part of you that was perhaps, well, you were obviously breaking the law, but in ways that perhaps you were either naive or you were trying to bend the law a bit in your own mind. You had a lot of obligations, right?

42:40Boris Becker:You had child support at that time. Was it four children? Yeah. And across three relationships, that's a lot of outgoing expenses, right? Obviously, you also have a lot of income, certainly during the tennis days and then afterwards, presumably endorsements. Were you bad with business? How do you, when you zoom right out and try and make sense of what took place, how do you do that? What's the best explanation? I know that's a big question.

43:14Louis Theroux:Well, it's a very important question because, you know, I did write a book about it because it's not answered in a sentence or two, but I'm going to do my best. First of all, I'm responsible for the good and the bad that happened in my life, okay? The good was I was a very successful tennis player. I won the champion, the number one and everything. And I earned a lot of money. Now, how much did I earn? I think this is where... I can tell you that if you like. Well, I know better what I've earned than you were going to tell me. I Googled it. Well, that's my problem. Yeah. Because I've Googled myself a long time and most of the stories about Boris Becker on Google is wrong.

43:52Louis Theroux:Now, how much money did I walk away in 99 when I quit my tennis career? Me, in the pocket, and believe me, I'm giving you the truth.

44:02Boris Becker:Okay, so according to Wikipedia, your total prize, that's not funny. Well, if you Google Wikipedia, right on Boris Becker. Yes, it says 25 million prize money, and then you add endorsements onto that, and you're going to get easily double that, right? No. Between 50 and 75 million, I'm guessing.

44:20Louis Theroux:No, first of all, that's the wrong guess. On Wikipedia.

44:22Boris Becker:Those are euros, although I can't remember.

44:24Louis Theroux:Well, let's get to the nitty-gritty on this, okay? Please. On Wikipedia, if you Google my name, I have three kids, not four kids. So starting with a very factual, important information that it's easy to verify. Just give you an idea how many wrong things there are on Wikipedia. They've never seen my bank account. They've never seen my tax returns. And they've never seen me paying commissions to any of my managers. I'll give you an example with price money. So out of this$25 million prize money, half of it is gone with taxes right away. So it's not$25 million, we're starting with$12 million. Again, it's a lot of money for most people, but it's not$25 million.

45:07Louis Theroux:Now my endorsements at the time weren't in pounds or weren't in euros, they were in Deutschmark. I walked away with around 30 million Deutschmarks, which is about 15 million euros. which is a hell of a little money, okay? But it's not 50 and it's not 100. Within the first year after my retirement, I had a very expensive divorce. Half of it is gone. So out of the 15, I have maybe left half, okay? So because I had a high child support for three children, which I love dearly, over 15 to 20 years, depending on their age. The chart support was in a good five-figure range every month, and that's net.

46:01Louis Theroux:Naturally, after my tennis career, I didn't have the income anymore. How could I? But I had the outgoings.

46:08Boris Becker:Well, you would have had endorsement income.

46:11Louis Theroux:Yeah, but nothing even close to when you are a Wimbledon champion, when you're number three in the world, nothing even close to that. So I'm giving you the honest thought.

46:19Boris Becker:So your income went off a cliff after you retired from tennis in 1999?

46:24Louis Theroux:No, I wouldn't call it a cliff. It's just that it tapered down. Just the incomings were less, the outgoings were fixed. So fast forward 15, 20 years later, I had assets. I had three large houses, but my cash was a lot less because of my outgoings. so that's why I ask a private bank in England for a loan against my future income which was all legit

46:54Boris Becker:this is in the book isn't it yeah it's all in the book it's all just remind me how much the loan was

46:58Louis Theroux:for how much was the loan the launch I got a five million five million euro loan which I paid back a million and a half it was at 25 percent interest this is where the fight broke out but you you're You must have business advisors say that's a very high rate of interest. Again, I cannot, you know, I can easily blame my business advisors then, but it's my fault. Maybe you can call it naive. Maybe you can call it, you know, very difficult, especially in my playing days where people were correcting me or would tell me, no, I get that. But I was badly advised to accept the loan under such high interest.

47:42Boris Becker:I don't mean to laugh I'm not very good with money either I don't think you're very good with money

47:48Louis Theroux:I think I'm very good with earning money I didn't have but not so good with business I think earning money is business would you call earning money not business or is it for fun not really because a boxer could earn

48:01Boris Becker:enormous amounts of money but they might be terrible with the money you look at athletes in general people who make they earn huge amounts and this is the whole problem well this is the challenge faced by young athletes they have this huge income don't they but a limited window of opportunity so from 18 to 26 they're earning money but they're not

48:21Louis Theroux:good with business no let's say but I'm no longer 26 so in my 30s and 40s of course I became better with money but I didn't study business I didn't study the law so you surround yourself supposedly with smarter business managers than you are. Again, it's my fault. I'm just giving you now the facts because emotionally I'm way past it. I've accepted it. I took accountability. Maybe I'm a better man today because of it. My life is very different today than it was in the years prior. But it's just because when you go on Wikipedia or you went on Google, most of it is actually factually not correct about Boris Becker.

49:07Boris Becker:We've talked about the legal stuff. I know you're happily married now and you've got a baby on the way. I don't want to embarrass your wife. Nevertheless, I have to put this out there. Do you think in a general way you've learned anything about your relations with the opposite sex?

49:30Louis Theroux:I mean, a quick answer is yes, but relationships are difficult. I'm not the first one that was divorced. I'm not the last one that's going to be divorced. My first marriage lasted 10 years. My second marriage lasted 13 years, so it's not that quick. It could have been longer, but it's also not six months. You're supposed to learn, right? You're supposed to learn, but we're people. We make mistakes. Nobody's perfect. I think I'm making a lot less mistakes now than I've done 20, 30 or 40 years ago, yes.

50:08Boris Becker:You've said there was a way it used to be with me and women. I could see it in their faces. I want to be with you because you're famous. I want to be with you because you're rich. And then that led you to question, you go on, was Barbara in love with the Wimbledon champion and everything that came with it? Then I would have to ask the same question of Sharlili. or was it ever just the boy from Lyman?

50:32Louis Theroux:Well, one thing is for sure, I can't prove it. But it's very, very legit for me to ask that question. Hypothetically, if both of these women, and they're the mother of my children as well, I want to emphasize that, were they in love with the superstar, the famous guy, the rich guy, or were there in love with the boy from Lyman from a small town. Now, one thing I'm sure is that when I've met Lillian, I wasn't rich anymore. I was physically impaired. I may have a famous name even then, but she didn't care much about Tennessee, actually didn't know me on my first night. So I can, you know, hand on the Bible, I can say she didn't fall in love because of the wealth.

51:22Louis Theroux:I didn't have any. Because of the fame, I didn't really have any. And physically, I'm not in a better shape now than I was at 25. So the contrast of my three wives is the first two married the famous rich guy and the last one didn't.

51:46Louis Theroux:But look, in order, in order, I'm a big believer in my life in karma and I'm not convinced I was always in control even of my strength I mean who wins one but the 17? Nobody but then who would do some of these mistakes that have done otherwise now important to say is that and even the judge had to agree with that that the mistakes I made were not intentionally so I wasn't hiding money under the bed but there were still mistakes. So you can say maybe I didn't have the best advisors, maybe I was too stubborn myself, maybe I was too full of myself. Fast forward I think prison seriously grounded me because when you lose everything including your freedom you're bound to have only your personality and your characters, everything else is gone and you have to deal with your character and your personality with other very dangerous inmates.

52:51Louis Theroux:And if you're not strong, if you're not smart, if you don't even read the room, they're going to bully you, they're going to assault you, people even get killed in prison. Okay, so it was a very dangerous place. It's easy in hindsight to say, I'm thankful for it now because it just stopped the old life and I I got a chance for a new life. At the time, it was living hell. And when I went in there, I didn't know I was going to leave after eight months and five days or 231 days. Because when I went in there, I thought I have to be there for at least 15 months. And then there's maybe house arrest and you're on license in the UK.

53:30Louis Theroux:So all of this happened while I was inside. I came out earlier than I was expected, the deportation to Germany. When I was in there, I wasn't in the cards. because I was trying to continue my life in the UK. But the consequence would have been I would have had to stay longer in prison, which I didn't want to. The consequences of the deportation is that I can't go back to the UK at the moment. I'm working with the authorities. Hopefully it'll happen soon. But if it's not going to happen, I've been living in freedom the last almost three years. So I'll take that.

54:05Boris Becker:I do want to talk to you about life in prison. I'm still thinking a little bit about your two ex-wives. It was quite a heavy thing that you said, suggesting, questioning whether they were in love with the real you or was it the trappings of success, right? Correct. They might hear that and think, how dare you? You know, like the years that I put in, or you never gave me the chance to show me that I could be loyal at your lowest ebb. or they think you know because charlotte implies that you may have strayed from the family bed in the documentary in one of them and i don't know barbara i'm always struck by how in those you know when you're playing her invest the sense of her emotional investment in your success and and also the nature of the infidelity that took place which was pretty brutal she was in hospital pregnant going through contractions and that was when the infidelity took place right you could

55:05Louis Theroux:And then she stuck with you for a bit afterwards. That's not true. There were no contractions. She was in hospital, but there was no contractions.

55:15Boris Becker:Either way, I imagine they'd hear this and think, like, we put up with a lot, and that's not fair to characterize it in the way that you did.

55:25Louis Theroux:Fast forward.

55:29Louis Theroux:We settled in a divorce. I cheated on her no doubt about that we managed to have a relationship that's built on respect she's a wonderful mother to my two oldest boys she actually moved to Milan he's here as well so we moved on from that but you and Barbara this is For me and Barbara. There were a couple of scenes after our divorce. Again, it's so long ago, I have to really think hard what happened, that weren't so nice from her, without getting too much into detail, but she had the power because I was the bad guy. She got a nice check out of it. She got a nice monthly support out of it. And she realized that nobody's perfect.

56:28Louis Theroux:I like to call myself a good father. I really looked after my two oldest, even though they weren't living in Europe at the time. They moved to Miami. So 25 years later, we really consider each other a close-knit family, regardless of what happened. With my second wife, it's a lot more complicated

56:52Louis Theroux:because for once, if I say that, for once, I wasn't a bad guy. Again, so much happened in the last year, two years. But once a child is involved, I think we both, regardless of who's guilty and who's not guilty, we should both be a bit more considerate. So I think I'm the balanced one here. I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm very lucky, blessed, fortunate to be giving a new chance in life with my wife, Lillian. We're expecting our first baby.

57:24Boris Becker:So I didn't expect that eight years ago.

57:28Louis Theroux:when the shit hit the fan in 2017, how low can you go? How low can you be?

57:33Boris Becker:Was that 2017 when the shit really hit the fan?

57:36Louis Theroux:Yeah, 2017, 2018, this is when all this happened. When you were 50. Yeah. 50, I thought my life as I know it is over. Really?

57:50Boris Becker:You said maybe I needed to go to prison. I was on the wrong path. I was not a happy camper in my mid-40s. I was eating too much and drinking too much and hanging with the wrong people correct who were the wrong people?

58:06Louis Theroux:the wrong advisors

58:08Boris Becker:the wrong business

58:10Louis Theroux:were you partying a lot? no I'm not I'm not well you took

58:14Boris Becker:I mean not drug drugs but obviously sleeping pills and painkillers when you were playing but not recreational drugs

58:22Louis Theroux:ask one athlete whether he's never taken any painkillers and ask one athlete when he can't sleep in an overnight flight to Australia. Everybody takes a sleeping pill. So that's A, not a crime, and B, very common if you live that lifestyle. But I'm not a recreational, not even weed. I'm not even a weed smoker. I smoke cigars. I've never touched weed in my life.

58:46Boris Becker:For loneliness, there was women, whiskey, or both. That was basically, for loneliness, there was women, whiskey, or both. Was that during your tennis playing years? No, no.

58:55Louis Theroux:I was a very good boy when I was playing tennis. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had the success. But then I would say in my 30s, I drifted away from the path naturally because as an athlete, you have to be so disciplined. You have to be so on the clock all the time that you can't let yourself go. It's impossible. I think I let myself go in a disciplined part in my 30s and I started to pay the price in my 40s. Now, the mistakes don't happen overnight, right? The mistakes happen over, in my case, probably over 10 to 15 years. And it started in my mid-30s of having my first divorce in my early 30s. Naturally, you want to do something you weren't able to do before, meaning you meet attractive women and just having beautiful dinners and a nice glass of wine.

59:54Louis Theroux:And of course you want to do that. I think most people would have done that. Now, that leads to trouble. That would be about 2000, right?

1:00:01Boris Becker:Because 99, you retired. Is that right? 2000, did you separate? And then you're then 32, 33, and you're basically trying to find your new role in life.

1:00:12Louis Theroux:Exactly, exactly. That's not so easy. I think most athletes have their problem, have their dilemma. Me too. I think I was settling down nicely with my wife, Charlie Lee.

1:00:25Boris Becker:She was a Dutch model, we should say. Very beautiful woman. She was. As are all your, as is Liliane and Barbara.

1:00:33Louis Theroux:Well, that's always a question of taste, you know. All, I'm not white. So thankfully, you call them attractive. If you were racist, you call them ugly, right? So I started to have a certain type, and I stuck with it throughout all my adult life because I find them very beautiful. And yes, they're beautiful inside and out. So the story goes.

1:01:02Boris Becker:In preparing for this interview, I discovered, perhaps I was naive, that you experienced a degree of, I guess, racism by connection, secondhand racism, from the German public when you started your relationship with Barbara.

1:01:22Louis Theroux:Well, it continued because people were racist against my older son Noah, still out today. Really? Yeah, he had some issues, so I had to defend him.

1:01:33Boris Becker:Anonymous trolls?

1:01:35Louis Theroux:No, not only anonymous trolls. There was actually one, funny enough, judge, who was also a politician, for a right-wing party called AFD. It's a bit like the Reform Party in Asia Farage, you know, similar.

1:01:51Boris Becker:I think Farage would deny that, but I think Tommy Robinson might have some outreach with him.

1:01:56Louis Theroux:Well, somewhere in between, maybe, somewhere in between. So he called my son, a Negro, on Twitter. So I was able to sue him. He lost his job as a judge and he had to step back. So that was quite an important message. So people are a lot more careful when they talk about color in my family. I'm very defensive on that, naturally. Again, there's not much on Wikipedia. You can Google that, right? and not much my positioning on race. So I don't know who's running Wikipedia, who's running Google. Maybe it gives it away. Yeah, so there's a different side.

1:02:38Boris Becker:What do you mean there's not much in Wikipedia and Google about your positioning on race?

1:02:42Louis Theroux:No, no, there's a lot about how much money I lost and how much my divorce. And there isn't much about my position politically. There's not much about the fights that I've had defending my black family. What would you want to say about that? It's a fact that's completely under the radar. When you Google me, you're a professional, you've done your job. That never comes up. That usually comes up at the end of the conversation when we got through all the facts of what you can read or not read about me. usually it is, oh we didn't know about it and I'm like, well you never asked me about it but you can naturally see that I have a decision made in my family life and you can see that all of my children are mixed race so you have these quick headlines and by these headlines and by white people talking about it I see the real lack of education and lack of culture which bothers me, because that's an important side of me because I'm a proud father of all my children and some are darker than others.

1:03:53Louis Theroux:That doesn't mean they're less black.

1:03:57Boris Becker:So your relationships you feel have educated you in certain respects.

1:04:03Louis Theroux:Look, my father Carl Heinz, he was an architect but he was also a politician for Conservative Party. His favorite musician was Satchmo, Louis Armstrong, the black sax player. Trumpet. Trumpet, yeah. And his favorite athlete was Muhammad Ali. So I grew up with a black musician playing in a household and a black boxing superstar being idolized. So that's where I have it from. My mother, I don't know whether you know that, she's a refugee. She's a survivor of World War II. She's from the Czech Republic and she was in a refugee camp in Germany when she was 10 years old.

1:04:49Boris Becker:She was in the Sudetenland, famous from history because it was

1:04:53Louis Theroux:Hitler reoccupied it and that was what Neville Chamberlain famously acceded to in his attempt

1:05:00Boris Becker:to appease the Nazi party or the Nazi regime.

1:05:04Louis Theroux:So that's my mother and my father's favorite artists and musicians are black. So that's my base. There's none of it in Wikipedia and Google either. Should we talk about prison a little bit? Yeah.

1:05:19Boris Becker:Thank you.

1:05:23Boris Becker:We should say you started out in Wandsworth Prison. You were there about four or five weeks. Yeah. And then they moved you to one called...

1:05:30Louis Theroux:Huntercombe. Huntercombe, near Henley. For foreign nationals. It's for foreign nationals.

1:05:35Boris Becker:And you learned something about prison life. And you adapted to it. Correct. What would you say was the set of skills that you needed to survive in prison?

1:05:47Louis Theroux:Well, first of all, prison is very dangerous. You know, you think you're in a safe place. No, your most dangerous place I've been in my life. In both prisons, by the way.

1:05:57Boris Becker:They don't tell you that before.

1:06:00Louis Theroux:I was surprised in H &B Wandsworth that they didn't really have the wings where you go, okay the pedophiles on wing B and then the dangerous criminals is on wing A. Everybody was sort of, everybody, who's checking? Who's checking? So it was pretty much, especially when the canteen opens, everybody comes together, then they sit together and then maybe they go back to their cell. But it was very not in order, as I would say. And the same thing actually in Handicombe, where you had literally a cell was a pedophile and the next cell was a sex offender and the third cell was me. Really? So that is disturbing.

1:06:47Louis Theroux:That's why you need to have a group. What you quickly need to do in prison is, if you can say that, is read the room. Like who is the loudest, who looks the toughest, who has a group around him, and you want to be associated with them because that's your protection. so that's one of the abilities I maybe had is to quickly understand who's in charge and for some reason they liked me or they respected me

1:07:20Boris Becker:in both places do you think being Boris Becker is an advantage or a disadvantage

1:07:26Louis Theroux:well they didn't know that I was a tennis player Boris Becker they only saw me on TV and they thought I was a famous personality they didn't really know why. Again most of these prisoners, I was on the older ones, most of these prisoners were younger, a lot younger than me. So when they're 35 or when they're 30 or 40 maybe you don't really remember 1985. It plays in my favor I think. If I was just a famous personality I don't think I was put in danger as if they knew that I had this body of work as a tennis player and maybe maybe you know a lot of money or connections and so

1:08:06Boris Becker:forth right a high-profile inmate would normally be put in protective custody

1:08:11Louis Theroux:correct but there's no way it wasn't that organized in and I mean it's a it's a common knowledge that you know English prisons are overcrowded to a point where

1:08:21Boris Becker:it's ridiculous could you tell yeah it was once with particularly or both of

1:08:26Louis Theroux:them once were more because it was much larger person about 2 ,000 prisoners in there. 2000. Yeah and it's sort of it's the first prison I mean there's one in the southwest which is Wandsworth there one in the northeast so once you are you're convicted and you're sentenced you go in either one for a time being until you transferred to your final prison or your final destination.

1:08:52Boris Becker:From Wandsworth. So Wandsworth's what do they call a reception center?

1:08:57Louis Theroux:I don't know if want to really call it the reception center but it's sort of a a base where everyone goes and then

1:09:03Boris Becker:depending from there they go they go go to another but even even having said that there's many there's

1:09:09Louis Theroux:many prisoners who stay a long time because it's the overcrowding it's just everyone everywhere is so busy that that uh you know it's it's they can't make a difference anymore what crime you've done whatever cell is available the next inmate goes in because of the problem it's in for people we

1:09:28Boris Becker:have an international audience believe it or not who may not know ones with is in southwest London SW 18 is the postcode just one digit off SW 19 which is the postcode for Wimbledon and they're about two miles two and a half miles apart aren't they yeah it's been made of that strange symmetry I don't know what sense you make of that but it is weird isn't it

1:09:51Louis Theroux:I suppose you're there 30 years on

1:09:54Boris Becker:35 years on from winning Wimbledon I mean thinking about it are you is that what's taking place

1:10:01Louis Theroux:it's an incredible difference yet it's so close to each other the onceworth roundabout you go far left to Wimbledon and far right you go to onceworth prison so I mean I've been on the roundabout 10 ,000 times, usually going left and the one time I had to go right and it's just a couple of miles from each other, meaning the best place I can imagine is Rumpet and Sender Court and then the worst place I've ever been, it's H &P Wandsworth. So only two miles apart and you philosophically, you can just, you know, this book is partly about that, it's just how contrast lives are within within a couple of miles.

1:10:45Louis Theroux:And, you know, I've experienced both.

1:10:50Boris Becker:It's almost a cliche of this kind of narrative that your friends, quote-unquote, abandon you, right? And I'm just, I don't mean to make light of it. Like, you talk about Andrew Castle, the tennis player and TV presenter, I think, writes you a letter. Jurgen Klopp, does he express an interest in making a visit? But it's deemed that it'll be too disruptive. Correct. There'll be too many Liverpool fans going crazy, I guess.

1:11:12Louis Theroux:Or just the fact that it was a very popular, you know, again, security is an issue in both prisons. So when family and friends visit you, the room is open for all criminals and their families. And, you know, the police is just by numbers very small. So if one guy next to me wanted to get hold of Jurgen Klopp, nobody could have stopped him. But why would they want to get hold of Jurgen Klopp? random security gave me something just the director of the prison really?

1:11:47Boris Becker:I never thought about that

1:11:48Louis Theroux:and we're talking really dangerous criminals I mean they wouldn't hold back I mean some of them are inside for 15, 18, 20 years you know for them it makes no difference

1:11:59Boris Becker:this is I've forgotten the name of it again

1:12:03Louis Theroux:that was the second one, Huntercombe this is Huntercombe, we were friends he called me and I called him back I did. Yeah.

1:12:09Boris Becker:Well, he can't call me. You used to be the most popular German person in Britain, but I think Jurgen Klopp might be now.

1:12:15Louis Theroux:That's absolutely fine. Don't you think? I love him. I love him. But he's done for Liverpool. It's amazing. No, he wanted to come. He tried twice. And the director just said, it's your right. But for security reasons, please forgive us for not allowing this, because we don't want to risk his safety, nor do we want to have an uproar in prison. So for the popularity or safety reasons, I mean, once you're in this visiting hall, it's you and 16 other dangerous criminals.

1:12:46Boris Becker:Andrew Castle wanted to visit and you, again, you said, I don't want him to, but not for his safety. It was more, it felt like you just didn't want, it would have been a strange, what, mixture of contexts. Like you're a different Boris in there and you didn't want to mix it up with the BBC commentary colleague.

1:13:02Louis Theroux:colleague no i didn't want to you know you're in your bubble you're in your routine and i didn't want to break out of that of course i i loved i loved seeing my wife and and my my two oldest boys but even that was difficult because i felt sorry for them i i i what but they had to visit their father and their husband in a fucking prison i mean who likes that right uh so i didn't didn't want this to happen too often yes of course my wife insisted and how was it um it was lovely was lovely for me but then I go back to myself and they go back to to their freedom you know so it's uh for those two hours you feel great but then you you go back to the darkness and they go back to the light so it was tough for them and it was tough for me but I didn't want to have any other friends uh because what I'm going to put on a story a face I'm going to tell them how good I I am.

1:13:54Louis Theroux:No, I wasn't good. So I didn't want to play any role. And I actually, I'm not playing. I've made a decision of being always the way I am since I'm out. I'm not playing any roles anymore. If sponsors don't like it, if you don't like some of my answers, I don't care. I'm going to tell you my truth, whether you like it or not. And it serves me well. As a sportsman and as a celebrity, as a phenomenon, of course you go into various roles and you want to please this and you want to... I stopped that. I am who I am now and that's the end of it.

1:14:32Boris Becker:It must be strange at times waking up thinking, like, is this real? Because it does feel like a movie at times. I don't know if they're going to make a movie out of it.

1:14:40Louis Theroux:I've had some requests already. It feels like a film.

1:14:43Boris Becker:The strangeness of one of the most famous and celebrated athletes in the world ends up in a prison just a few miles from the site of his greatest accomplishment and, you know, age 50. And it must have been surreal. Did you not think, is this really real?

1:15:01Louis Theroux:Well, no. Feeling sorry for yourself? No.

1:15:05Boris Becker:Or at least seeing your wife having to look at you and thinking, I feel so awful that my wife and my kids have to see me like this. It must be strange.

1:15:16Louis Theroux:Well, it was really strange since I went Wimbledon. My life has been surreal ever since. And being in prison, again, felt surreal, weird. But it really fits my story a little bit. And ultimately, the circle of life that came together, which started in July of 85 and then finished in a way in H &P once where I said, okay, and now what? Now what? It was very cathartic almost of shedding all my excess, call it excess luggage, excess layers of who was I and what I have become. I want to go back to who I really am. and those 231 days it didn't have to last that long to learn the lesson sometimes I was in there and I said I got the message, I got the message I'm going to be different when I'm out and I still have to serve three months but philosophically speaking it really, I think that first part of my life is complete now and I'm happy I'm in a different part now because of that I don't think my life would have been good today if I wouldn't have gone to prison.

1:16:46Louis Theroux:Seriously, look it was a shit time okay and it was embarrassing and you know losing all your money is all that but maybe it was necessary to have a second part of my life that's now better, healthier, a little wealthier and all that. Maybe I was on a losing streak and that was the end of it. That's how I feel. You know, as a man, I'm sure you're happily married and everything is good, but I wasn't. You know, I turned 50 and I was like, my second marriage is going to pieces. This time is not my mistake, but it doesn't make it better. It goes to pieces. Maybe I'm not made for relationships. Maybe it's me.

1:17:32Louis Theroux:It was never difficult for me to have relationships, as they say, but to have a commitment like maybe it's me, maybe I'm not good at it. So you're going into acceptance mood. You say, maybe that's it. And then out of a completely blue moment, I meet this girl who doesn't even know that I was a tennis player because she's too young for it and slowly falls in love with me. and I go, why? I have nothing to offer you but my personality, my character. She says, here we go. And now, seven years later, we talked, we were married, but we're having our first baby. I mean, if that isn't the movie, I don't know what this is.

1:18:20Louis Theroux:So because of all of that, I feel like I'm really blessed. I'm lucky. I'm lucky to sit here, to come from the hospital. we're going to have a great, great dinner tonight and we'll have some good wine, that I can do that now. I mean it. Ten years ago I couldn't do that. So things happen for a reason. I'm a strong believer my life is like that. The winning and the losing and everything else, and I feel like in this book is really a story that's unique, very personal. I mean, I've opened up my pants. I mean, I've said how it is. Now, you can Google some of my things and maybe Google doesn't even get it.

1:19:04Louis Theroux:And Wikipedia, you start it off like this. But I say it how it is. And it serves me well now.

1:19:22Boris Becker:Welcome back. What a great conversation. Am I complimenting myself? maybe, but I think I'm mainly commenting, complimenting Boris, and he brought his A-game. I joked at the beginning that an interview is a bit like a tennis match, and I think this one, it's not for me to say it'll go down as a classic, or even to say who won. It's not zero-sum like that, but some good rallies. Okay, forget the metaphors getting tortured. Zooming out, for me, the grand narrative behind this conversation, maybe the paradigm is that for athletes, maybe I said this in the chat, they have this extraordinary first 5 to 15 years of their professional lives, like ages 18 through 30, let's say.

1:20:15Boris Becker:I mean, you could say that's true for people in general. Those are key years, but for athletes more than anyone, their earning potential, their exposure to life, the way in which temptation is set before them and the extraordinary things they achieve. All of that is supercharged and then they've got another 60, 70 years to live, right? And what do you do with that? It must be strange. So that's definitely something Boris had to deal with. And he made mistakes, I think he would agree, and he's tried to learn from them. do we ever learn from mistakes i sometimes wonder you know this idea oh i've arrived now um i figured something out i'm wise actually we are always sort of self-overcoming what i was struck by among other things was and again i mentioned this in the chat his physical debility.

1:21:16Boris Becker:He came in struggling to walk, bearing the war wounds of a life spent punishing himself on the court. He was known for his very physical playing style, boom, boom, Becca. There were certain dives, lunges that he attempted that others probably would have pulled out of, and the bill came due for that in later years. He said, I pulled my pants down for the book and I was happy to inspect what lay beneath to metaphorically cradle his manhood, to tell him to cough and turn to the left and diagnose what was going on. I was looking underneath the hood, if you like, Hood is an expression. I'm thinking about cars now.

1:22:13Boris Becker:What were you thinking of? The manhood. Hello, is anybody out there? We went out for dinner afterwards. Boris bought me dinner. That's what we call a journalistic disclosure. It did not affect my professional objectivity. It was an enjoyable evening. talking about more of life, Shea Boris and his world. I said at the beginning I'd been arrested. I was arrested for trying to buy marijuana, ladies and gentlemen. Stay away from it. In Washington Square Park in maybe 1998. 1998.

1:23:07Boris Becker:I didn't do porridge. I got a ticket and then I had to go out on assignment and I couldn't make the court date. And then I think I went back to the police station when I got back and they said, you're a fugitive from justice. I'm like, well, that's not good. But I paid my fine and I think I cleared my name. I also got arrested while making an episode of Weird Weekends about black nationalists in New York and I took part in a demonstration against police brutality and I rode down with some other protesters to the to the New York jail and spent a couple of hours in jail doing my bit for social justice you're welcome anyway it's always nice to talk to someone outside the world of show business as well so other athletes please uh get in touch We would love to talk to you.

1:24:03Boris Becker:You don't need to have been to prison or be convicted on serious charges. Just being outstanding in your field. That's about it for this episode. I'll leave you with credits. The producer was Millie Chu. The assistant producer was Man Al-Yaziri. The production manager was Francesca Bassett. The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse production for Spotify.

1:24:35Boris Becker:This episode is brought to you by Shopify. When I was younger, I always wanted to be either an astronaut or an athlete. I was a fast runner. I thought maybe I could make it to the Olympics or be blasted off into space. As it happens, neither of those dreams came true. I had to settle for being an award-winning documentary maker and international celebrity. Ah well, we've all had big dreams and it's never too late to make them happen. This is your sign to stop holding back and go for it, especially if your dream is to run a business. Because Shopify is making it easier than ever. It's there to support you every step of the way, from designing your website, to marketing, to product descriptions, to sales.

1:25:17Boris Becker:The list goes on and on. So give it a shot. Turn those dreams into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S. That's shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S.