The Dictator

Adolf Hitler, Oswald Mosley, Andy Warhol and Max Mosley, what have all these men got in common? Give up?

The answer is the 78 year old billionaire, Bernie Ecclestone. Pourquoi? I hear you erstwhile Burgundians cry? Well, I will tell you.

The Formula One boss has provoked outrage by reportedly praising Adolf Hitler’s ability “to get things done“. The outgoing head of Formula One’s governing body expressed a preference for “strong leaders” like former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Max Mosley.

Mr Ecclestone went on to say “In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but 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… In the end he got lost, so he wasn’t a very good dictator because either he had all these things and knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it . . . so either way he wasn’t a dictator.”

What is it with short people and world domination? I believe it is known as the “Napoleon Complex”. Being tall myself, I have had no need to study in any great depth the psychological conditions that afflict the diminutive, so I might be wrong.

Ecclestone Towers?

Mr Ecclestone said democracy “hasn’t done a lot of good for many countries, including this one“.

He also said the West had been wrong to depose Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, saying: “He was the only one who could control that country.”  Actually, he might have point there.

Labour MP Denis Mac Shane, chairman of the all-party inquiry into anti-Semitism, said: “If Mr Ecclestone seriously thinks Hitler had to be persuaded to kill six million Jews, invade every European country and bomb London then he knows neither history and shows a complete lack of judgment.”

At this point, you are probably wondering where the late Andy Warhol comes in to all this? His connection is purely visual. Personally, I cannot tell them apart and here’s a photo to prove it. One of them is Andy Warhol and the other is Bernie Ecclestone – separated at birth or what?

Ecclestone and Warhol

Bernie Ecclestone admires Max Mosley, whose father was Oswald Mosley (leader of the black shirted British fascist movement), who in turn admired Adolf Hitler. Thus, the connections are complete. Andy Warhol was the red herring, not that there’s anything red about this lot.

I am probably going to alienate myself with the vast majority of my treasured and valued audience now. I am going to state that I have failed to see the entire point of Formula One, the love of Mr Ecclestone’s life. I can understand that a one-off event featuring a race between the fastest cars on the planet around a circuit might have some limited appeal. But, as I understand it, they have a total season of Grand Prix. Whereby, the exact same “set” of drivers races the exact same “set” of cars on a race track. The only variant in all of this is that they do it on a different racetrack each time, in Melbourne, Shanghai, Silverstone, Monte Carlo, you get the drift… It’s like being forced to watch the Williams sisters playing tennis every single week in a different venue. Eventually, it would seem utterly pointless. Besides, I never see the point of a “sport” whereby the only separation between the “winner” and the “loser” can often be a few hundredths of a second. Ho hum…

Anyway, I have been practicing hard for the Tour de France as you will see from this photo of me taken on the second stage of the tournament. I have the honour of the prestigious green jersey today; the yellow jersey continues to elude and is always several hundred kilometres out of reach.

Stefan III of Bordeaux