Tennis star Boris Becker has said he was a “nobody” at the London prison where he served eight months of his sentence for bankruptcy-related crimes before being deported back to his native Germany last week.
In his first interview since his release, Becker told German broadcaster Sat.1 that he wasn’t known by his first name in prison but instead was “just a number”, adding: “They don’t give a s*** who you are.”
The sportsman suggested that it had been a “very expensive” lesson, in which he claimed to have “rediscovered the person [he] used to be”.
“I learned a hard lesson. A very expensive one. A very painful one. But the whole thing has taught me something very important and worthwhile. And some things happen for a good reason,” Mr Becker said.
The 55-year-old was jailed for two-and-a-half years in April for hiding £2.5million of assets and loans to avoid paying debts. Becker had been declared bankrupt in June 2017 – while owing creditors nearly £50m – over an unpaid loan of more than £3m on his estate in Majorca.
Having lived in the UK since 2012, Becker had been expected to serve half of his sentence behind bars but was released on Thursday morning and deported.
Speaking about his last hours in jail, Becker said: “I sat on the edge of my bed from six in the morning and hoped that the cell door would open. They came at half past seven, unlocked the door and asked: Are you ready? I said: ‘Here we go.’ I had already packed everything.”
“You’re nobody in prison. You’re just a number. Mine was A2923EV. I wasn’t called Boris. I was a number. And they don’t give a s*** who you are,” Becker said in the interview broadcast between 8.15pm and 10:30pm local time on Tuesday.
Becker spent the first few weeks of his sentence in Wandsworth prison – just three kilometres from Wimbledon Tennis Club, where he was champion on three occasions, the first as an unseeded contender aged just 17 years old, in 1985 – before being transferred to Huntercombe prison in Oxfordshire.
In excerpts published by the tabloid Bild, Becker said the food in Wandsworth was bad and that the portions were too small, while leisure activities were too few. He also said there had been a lot of violence.
After retiring from professional tennis in 1999 having won six grand slams, Becker worked as a coach and a BBC commentator, while also engaging in a wide range of investments and celebrity poker games.
During his trial, Becker said that payments for an “expensive divorce” and debts had swallowed up his career earnings.
Under the terms of his release from prison as a non-British citizen, Becker has been banned from visiting the country – where his son still lives – for the next decade, according to The Guardian.
Former tennis player Boris Becker arrives at Southwark Crown Court in London
