Eddie Jordan was like the missing member of Rolling Stones – I will miss him dearly
There will be a blizzard of scarcely believable stories paying tribute to Eddie Jordan at this sad time – and for a very long time to come. We may have lost Eddie, but we at least have that to look forward to.
People who knew him, or even those who had never met him, will be keen to add to what he said, or who he was, or what he did for them. None of them will say he was an awful person, or that he didn’t care, or that there was some malice lurking beneath that gregarious exterior. Indeed, there was no boundary between his exterior and his interior. Eddie was unashamed of who and what he was. We all envied him his lack of restraint, even though it could make you wince with embarrassment on most occasions.
Eddie was a Tigger, ‘T-I-G-G-E-R!!!!’. He bounced from place to place, never resting. He had the energy of a nuclear power station. He was to social convention what a wrecking ball is to a tower block. He just didn’t care for stupid rules and niceties. He’d cut the ‘crap’ right out and be alarmingly direct and familiar without ever being impolite.
It is like he knew we were all afraid to be ourselves and his job was to get us to come out of our shells and join the party. In this regard, he was the super concentrate of Irishness; wily, beguiling, deceptive, gregarious and wild. No one could keep up.
I just had a message to console ourselves from his long-suffering ski guide, Jean-Louis. The pair were made for each other. Jean-Louis would ski flat-out, never looking behind to see if his client was still there, and EJ would yell at him to hurry up and stop talking whenever we stopped. It was chaos. The blind leading the blind. But that was the world of Eddie. Keep up or die!
Yes, I won a race with EJ. That was a wonderful experience, but it was just one of many. He’d always joke with every driver he met “I FOOKIN MADE YOOO!!!’ But with this one I had the perfect retort, because he knew I had cracked it for him: his first grand prix victory. He generously admitted that I showed Jordan GP how to win. This made our bond very special, because I never had to buy his blarney anymore!
We had bumped into each other along the long road to the top many times, so I knew him too well. And he loved that I could call his bluff.
God, he was cheeky. But the work really got in the way of a beautiful friendship. Whenever the small matter of a couple of a million quid was involved, EJ became a rabid rottweiler. In our negotiations for my first contract with him, held late into the night a Gallaher’s head office in Brooklands, he was literally screaming and jumping up and down like Rumpelstiltskin. The money seemed to derange him. But he had risked all, his home and his family, to be where he was and he knew the value of money. When you’ve fought your way out of a small town south of Dublin to get to be in F1, you don’t squander millions on a ‘two-a-penny’ racing driver like me. So, I bought a Lear Jet with the proceeds. That annoyed him, to be sure!
But as I was saying, the work got in the way. The serious business was having fun.
After the race at Silverstone in 1994, Eddie’s cousin and friends had brought over their ‘stage truck’ and EJ invited everyone to play in the band. And I mean everyone. No one had any idea what we were doing or what we were playing. It didn’t matter. We’d done our job. Time to party.
Rockin’ and rollin’ was Eddie’s love, although he had some strange ideas about music. And drumming! I never felt comfortable with ‘Tainted Love’ being on the set list. But that’s just me. Living in Dublin together we were surrounded by musicians, and the fame that came with the territory of F1 was like a perpetual spotlight for Eddie. He acted and looked like he was the missing member of the Rolling Stones. And, it has to be said, he carried it off.
And all the while his wife Marie kept the whole thing centred. If Marie was the sun, Eddie was a comet, in a wildly elliptical orbit. He’d be whizzing round one minute and then hurling off into outer space the next. And between them they raised millions for charities, using their huge social cache to attract the high rollers.
Last November, even though he must have had enough on his plate fighting his disease, he went out of his way to raise some funds for my personal charity. I had never asked for his help, but typically he had insisted he did this. I sensed he had an idea this would be goodbye, but it was never spoken.
There will never be another Eddie Jordan. How could there be? Thank you EJ. Bon voyage my friend.
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