“You are nobody in prison”
Boris Becker in the Sat.1 interview with moderator Steven Gätjen
Source: dpa/Nadine Rupp
On Tuesday evening Boris Becker speaks in a TV interview about his time in English prison. Before the broadcast, the first statements from the tennis idol are known. Becker says he had to learn a “very expensive lesson”.
DThe time in prison changed tennis star Boris Becker according to his own conviction. “I think I’ve rediscovered the person in me that I used to be,” said the 55-year-old in an exclusive interview with broadcaster Sat.1, which will be broadcast on Tuesday evening (8:15 p.m.). “I learned a hard lesson. A very expensive one. A very painful one. But the whole thing taught me something important and good. And some things happen for a good reason.”
In an interview with moderator Steven Gätjen, the athlete said about his months in prison: “You are nobody in prison. you are just a number Mine was A2923EV. I wasn’t called Boris. I was a number And they don’t give a fuck who you are.”
Becker was sentenced to prison by a London court at the end of April for failing to properly declare parts of his assets in his bankruptcy proceedings. He was released on Thursday last week. Moderator Gätjen, who visited Becker in preparation for the interview in the English prison, said about him: “I think he’s really willing to clean up and clarify a lot of things.”
When he visited him in prison, “a very slim Boris Becker greeted him with a smile on his face,” said the moderator. He continued to report that he experienced the tennis hero as “surprisingly tidy”. His personal impression: Becker “really took it with him” from prison.
As Gätjen described in a broadcaster’s message on Monday, what he remembered most was Becker’s description of the first days in Wandsworth prison. “It’s not just people who have committed financial crimes who are incarcerated there, but also sex offenders, murderers and people who have committed major robberies. Boris Becker told me that he was very afraid of ending up in a collective cell,” says Gätjen.
Becker also reports on the last hours before his return to Germany. “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 themselves and asked: Are you ready? I said, ‘Let’s go!’ I had already packed everything.”
Becker had to serve less than eight months of his two and a half year sentence for bankruptcy offenses. He benefited from a British regulation that allows foreign prisoners to be deported to their home country early.
