Boris Becker has only been out of prison for five days. Now the 55-year-old has given an interview for the first time during prime time on SAT.1 – and hasn’t skimped on the details.
Boris Becker keeps fighting back tears during an interview with moderator Steven Gätjen.
Boris Becker has changed optically. The bleached hair has become darker, imprisonment in England has made him slimmer. Dressed all in black, the moderator sits across from Steven Gätjen. On Tuesday evening, the German private broadcaster SAT.1 will broadcast a previously recorded interview with the former tennis star.
Becker tells in detail about the verdict and the time in the two prisons. He seems relieved to be a free man again. Still, he fights back tears. When he starts to cry, the interview has to be interrupted.
Although he still hopes for a suspended sentence, Becker says goodbye to his girlfriend Lilian de Carvalho before the verdict is announced. He tells her that she doesn’t have to wait for him. She has his back.
In the interview, Becker explains his two greatest fears of prison: that he will not be given a solitary cell and that he will be raped in the shower. Both fears turned out to be unfounded: Becker was assigned to a solitary cell because it was feared that a violent cellmate might attack him because of his notoriety. And the showers are divided into individual cubicles so that the inmates cannot molest one another.
“I was just a number”
However, the solitary cell is the only privilege Becker enjoys due to his celebrity status. “I wasn’t called by my name. I was just a number». Its is A2923EV.
In several situations it is said to have become dangerous for Becker in the detention center. He tells of a fellow inmate who threatened to kill him. Several prison inmates are said to have stood protectively in front of him. They befriended him and asked if he could teach them English and math.
The only visitors he gets in the detention center are his family. Well-known friends like Liverpool football coach Jürgen Klopp are not allowed to see him; The risk that something could happen to the celebrities in the detention center was too great.
«A German sanctuary»
Review. In 1985, at the age of 17, Boris Becker became the youngest champion and the first German to win the Wimbledon tennis tournament. From then on, Becker and tennis enjoyed great popularity in Germany. The TV presenter Thomas Gottschalk said to him during an interview: “You have become a German sanctuary”. Becker wins a total of six Grand Slam titles, plus gold in doubles at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.
Time and again it turns out that the eccentric Becker does not have a lucky hand when it comes to financial matters. The tennis star already evaded taxes in the millions in the 1990s. In 2002 he had to appear in court for the first time and was found guilty. Becker has a criminal record, but he does not have to go to prison.
In 2017, Becker asserted in an NZZ interview that it was “insane to believe” that he was bankrupt, although a few months earlier a London court had declared him insolvent.
Twenty years after the first conviction, Becker has to appear in court again. The accusation: He had delayed insolvency proceedings against him. This time, Becker can no longer avoid prison: a London court sentenced him to two and a half years in prison. In April 2022, Becker was sent to Wandsworth Prison, which has a bad reputation due to poor hygiene conditions and permanent overcrowding. In May he is finally transferred to Huntercombe Detention Center, which has a lower security level. The media reaction to Becker’s conviction ranged from pity to malice.
Because the prison was overcrowded, Becker was released early this December and deported to Germany – nine days before Christmas Eve. Becker only finds out in prison that he cannot stay in England after he has served his sentence and that he is about to be deported to Germany.
According to information from the “Bild” newspaper, Becker should now receive a sum of more than half a million euros for the exclusive interview on SAT.1.