MOTOR SPORT/Interview with Eddie Jordan: Johnny Wattersonon the former Grand Prix maverick whose story is appearing in book form
Eddie Jordan has arrived in Dublin hawking his wares. The king dealmaker flew in to push the book, to see the family, to cast his shadow across the myriad of other projects he has undertaken during the long goodbye from Formula One.
"I came to see my ma. She was 90. Just happened to have a book for sale so . . . Nah, I thought I'd get it all on paper before it became a complete blur," he quips.
Jordan is the man who promised so much after he gatecrashed F1 in the 1990s. He was the Lilliputian taking arms against the Brobdingnagians of the motor trade.
Jordan begged for tyres. Ferrari clicked their fingers and a mechanic in Milan would send five new engines to Sao Paolo. He always knew and met the challenge but in the early days he was a fighter.
"Would I do it again?" he asks rhetorically. "Never. I'm writing in the book - An Independent Man - that it was a miracle to survive it. Once you get away with it you are fortunate. I was lucky to come out the other end alive, sane and not bankrupt."
Jordan always placed himself on the shelf alongside the big guys. Now he is one. He was the personality who came with the car into an otherwise faceless world of geeks and nerds more comfortable with telemetry and aerodynamic profiles than communication.
He was the energetic Irishman who could sign up Michael Schumacher behind the compound portaloos during practice, then sell him the next day and keep his Jordan showband playing the stadiums.
But the giants got bigger and as they multiplied Jordan struggled just to tread water. He got out. So, here he is: the goatee, the glasses, the knockabout, relaxed style laced with opinions ranging from admiring to irreverent but never nasty.
Jordan launched the car and the car launched Eddie and he is still moving in that orbit where wealth and celebrity merge.
He has a piece of Celtic. He encouraged Gordon Strachan to move in when Martin O'Neill left. He built a home in London University Hospital for kids with cancer. He did "a bit of caddying" for Paul McGinley. He's chairman of the first World Championship of Motorsport rally taking place in Ireland in November.
Why? Because Max Mosley promised him he would give Ireland an international event and Jordan wants to make that happen properly.
He sprang eight kids from jail, lived with them for four months and made a documentary while they rebuilt a burnt-out car.
Jordan, for all his villas and penthouses, is burning no hole in a rocking chair.
"That was a sensational part of my life," he says of the documentary. "The raw deal so many people had through no fault of their own . . . You have to get into the minds and the hearts of these kids to realise . . . I went home with one of them every Monday night and if we had to live in a box under a bridge then we did that, or if we had to steal a car, which was easy. One minute 14 seconds is what it used to take. They break in, drive it down the road and set it on fire.
"I had an agreement, which was immunity from the police because we were making a very serious programme about trying to help these people, who only know a life of crime.
"It's perfect for sports people because the one thing that these kids do is admire sports people.
"Even then it was difficult. There were times I was threatened . . . You just ride it out and that's what happened."
It's a Jordan quality. He is a pragamatist who has always ridden the wave. He also believes in things. He believes the documentary was important, that a millionaire can affect the lives of chronic recidivists. He believes the World Championship rally will showcase Ireland in a good way. For that you'd want him in your corner: his can-do expertise and an ability to go directly to big names and seek favours, which give him, well, a pole position.
Jordan's heart remains with motor racing but the umbilical cord has been severed. He's out there now. A whirl of energy. On the look-out.
Winners only, of course.
