1 interview, 12 roles: Boris Becker’s game for attention was virtuoso

It’s an evening of superlatives. Interviewer Steven Gätjen can’t decide whether Boris Becker is simply “Germany’s most famous ex-convict” or the “world’s most famous prisoner”. Anyway, both sound significant. And what does Boris do? He delivers. “Open, emotional and honest” (Becker). He was behind bars for eight months for bankruptcy offenses, originally it should have been thirty, but these eight will also be enough for at least one movie, one miniseries and one book. Because Becker offers such a wide range of tearful feelings and existential experiences on Sat.1 that he is thought to be the first German to ever serve a prison sentence.

Boris has no problem admitting his guilt. Gätjen tries to discredit the judge by saying she is “a hard judge in England”. No, says Boris, “I almost have to protect her”, she found him not guilty, the jury did. And the judges were very young, “half under thirty, they didn’t even know who Boris Becker, the tennis player, was.” Incorruptible young people.

April 29, 2022 is the birthday of Becker’s girlfriend Lilian, or in Gätjen’s words “the love of your life”. It will also be the day Becker is sentenced. Crying, he says goodbye to Lilian and his son Noah. Before that he bought Lilian white roses. In the days leading up to the bad day, he often told her she was a young woman with needs and a future and not to wait for him, but she replied, “Honey, don’t talk like that!” “Two minutes”, Boris says in a choked voice to Gätjen, he needs a break to cry, it creeps up on him, Lilian is sitting in the background on an upholstered staircase.

A2923EV was his number in Wandsworth Prison, according to Gätjen, just about the most dangerous, dirtiest prison in England. Unfortunately, Becker prepared “with many films” for the trial and imprisonment, “they did not help me”, he was afraid of double cells and showers, of “murderers” and “child rapists”, to get food in the canteen one stabs one knife in the back, because he was blackmailed and because other prisoners sold stories about him to the press.

You can tell by looking at him: the man has lost weight. The man no longer has Grindelwald’s white blond haircut, but has had his hair dyed a slightly muted honey shade. All in all he looks scarred but excellent, he says the imprisonment was good for his health. What was there to eat, Gätjen wants to know. Rice. Potatoes. Rice. Potatoes. A bit like in the jungle camp. Sometimes with a little sauce. On Sunday with some chicken. “You’re so hungry, you eat everything.”

Portraying the ups and downs of prison life, Becker slips into Charles Dickens mode. On his first day at Wandsworth, he meets “Jake, Russell and Billy”, three tough guys with a good relationship with the prison administration. “I will never forget that, those three saved my life”, because “the prison world is something completely different”. Becker is now crying again, it’s about a fellow inmate in Becker’s second prison, in Huntercombe, who has been in prison for years and wanted to kill Becker, but then Becker’s “blood brother”, “Black Ike”, came and arranged everything, and on in the end, his aggressor threw himself on his knees in front of Becker, begged his forgiveness, and finally everyone hugged.

The other three give him cakes for his 55th birthday. He has never experienced anything like this. They eat the cakes together. He has never experienced such cohesion in freedom as in prison, “like when you were in the war together, like when you fought together to survive. We needed each other.”

Jürgen Klopp, Ion Tiriac, Johannes B. Kerner and “a few more” familiar faces want to visit him, it is not possible, the security risk is too great. “Michael Stich wrote me a three page letter, found great words.” scream. He saves seven and a half pounds a week to make phone calls, but he can’t make international calls until three months later, after interfering with the German ambassador. What George Orwell said in “Animal Farm” then applies: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” It would be interesting to hear Jake, Russell, Billy and Ike’s thoughts on this.

It’s great that Lilian van Becker looks so good, he earns a lot of respect from his fellow inmates when he visits prison.

“It took a prison to get closer than we ever did to freedom,” says Becker of his weekly phone calls with daughter Anna. He did not want “such a delicate girl” to visit him in prison. Just as he did not want little Amadeus to visit him, his brothers advised him against all this.

He has been married twice. With Barbara, whom he still loves. And with Sharlely, who is still not doing well. But he also prefers not to say anything about it: “I’m not the type to talk negatively about an ex-relationship, a gentleman doesn’t do that. I studied a new philosophy in prison called stoicism.”

He can do everything now. He teaches in prison. English (!), math (!!), philosophy (!!!) and sports. Young detainees see him “as a father figure”. Detention is both money laundering and money laundering of Boris Becker. In fact, he could be running a high school on his own now.

He learned two things: I can’t spend more than I own. And: I can’t trust everyone anymore and only sign contracts when I really understand them. Sounds reasonable, normal people know that.

“I have ideas, but I have become cautious about statements about my future,” he says, and that Lilian told him that he was not allowed to say anything about their life together. But he hopes they stay together “forever and ever of course”. He sees himself in old age (tears, “Two minutes!”) “surrounded by my children, hopefully a few more to come.” Good luck!