New book: prisoner A2923ev: Boris Becker writes about prison

The screams don’t let go of Boris Becker. They would have hit him the most in prison on the first night. “Scream that sounds like someone was in pain,” writes the 57-year-old. “As if someone needed help. As if someone dies.” In his new book “Inside” he tells how he was in Great Britain during his detention.

Boris Becker, a name in Germany can hardly be larger. The victory in Wimbledon in 1985 is just 17 years old. The child prodigy that wins three times at the best known tennis tournament in the world.

A private life that often gets into the headlines. Heights and depths, lived under the eyes of the world public. On April 29, 2022, the Southwark Crown Court in London sentenced him to two and a half years in prison after not properly stated in assets in insolvency proceedings.

Why he was sitting on the dock? “Because I made mistakes and misjudged things, some of them understood it quickly, but only other than it was too late,” he writes in the book, which he wrote with the British sports journalist Tom Fordyce.

Life as a prisoner A2923ev

The book describes on about 340 pages how Becker grabs his things before the verdict was pronounced (training suits, Barack Obama’s autobiography and an aftershave that will be relieved of him later) and contains a Wimbledon tie. How he is examined when he was taken in custody (“They asked me to spread their legs”) and have to find their way around. Inmental number A2923ev.

Initially housed in the notorious Wandsworth prison, in which the writer Oscar Wilde once already sided, he spends his time in a moldy cell. Stays afloat with breakfast television, breathing exercises, teaching and calling at his beloved Lilian.

“It was about bare survival, nothing more. Try to eat, try to sleep,” writes Becker. According to his own statements, he loses several kilograms of weight, later comes to the Huntercombe prison, where he helps in the fitness room and visits a philosophy course on stoicism.

Becker is warned of dangers; Try to stay away from some prisoners and understand unwritten codes. Device in difficulties after a lost poker game. He has to suddenly deal with himself in the cell.

The relationship with Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro becomes an anchor for him. In the dedication of his book, he calls her the “woman who saved me”. In the meantime, the two are married and Becker are expecting his fifth child with Lilian. She and his mother Elvira, who had now died, are the reason why he is here today. “I love both of you.”

“Nobody said” Bum Bum “”

Sometimes the privilege of previous life shimmers through. For example, when Becker admits that he did not know how to use a kettle, or if fellow inmates are not initially interested in his tennis career (“No nickname, nobody said” Bum Bum “). Then the book provides an insight into the head of a person who had a great success early on.

Did you want to have this fame yourself? What does that do with you? Where are the circumstances? And where your own responsibility?

Becker tells how the financial worries grew in his life. Alcohol, women, paparazzi. Reports how friends let him down. “I was once the best tennis player in the world. I once had more money than I would ever need,” he writes. That was a matter of course. “But who was I now?”

How his life looks like the prison

After more than seven months in custody, Becker is deported to Germany. “Bobbele” leaves England in a friend’s private jet and is a free man. The first beer, the first pizza.

“As far as money was concerned, I had less than nothing,” he writes. He lost a finca in Mallorca, a house in Leimen, an apartment in London and a million pounds on his bank account and was still owed to the insolvency administrator five hundred thousand pounds. “You have to imagine that: you are sitting in jail for seven and a half months, and when you get out, they still want more of you.”

Becker now lives in Milan, Italy, and he wants to present his book at a premiere in Berlin on Thursday. How much money he gets for the book deal is not known.

Becker’s lessons from custody

“Inside” fascinates because it takes the prison. Because it describes the case of a world star, whose ambition and earlier relationship with competitors like Andre Agassi (“He is the superstar. And I can hardly cope with that, because I need the audience”). And because it takes a look at the interpersonal relationships that arise behind bars.

But it also looks as if the book should show: Boris Becker from the past no longer exists. A purification with the subtitle “Win – lose – start again”. One of the lessons: judge less about other people and deal with themselves.

As an elite player, you are used to just looking at the next competition. “The bad things behind you? Ignore them. Pack them away,” says the book in one place. In prison, however, he started re -evaluating things and rethinking his previous life. “The prison,” Becker writes, “never let go of you.”