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It was a reminder to continually -embody a phrase that feels like an app-ropriately inappropriate way to begin talking about Jordan, the late, great Formula One team owner and pundit, who died last March at the age of 76. “Excuse my language so early on,” I say when talking to Marie Jordan, his wife, whom he married in 1979, “but it was obviously the key phrase of his life – F**k the begrudgers.” Marie is quick to chime in, telling me: “You can believe I’m well used to that. Don’t even hesitate the next time you want to say it.” Ice well and truly broken. Undoubtedly, FTB was a core ethos of the man known to his friends and -colleagues as EJ, the much-loved -Dubliner who touched every corner of the F1 paddock over 30 years. The outpouring of emotion and tributes at his death after a year-long battle with bladder and prostate cancer highlighted not just his accolades, but the wider impact of his style of uproarious shrewdness in a mishmash of business and sport. “You don’t change your spots,” -Marie says of the man she met, through an ex-boyfriend, at a disco in Dublin. Even in the mid-1970s, FTB was instilled deep inside. “You also know from seeing him on television that he didn’t hold back. He was never afraid of anything or anyone. “When he was a pundit, he didn’t need that job. So whether he got attacked and spoke out, positive or negative, he didn’t care. It made him quite a dangerous man to have in that position.” To those of a younger generation, Jordan is best known for those half-dozen years as an integral cog in the three-pronged presenter formation alongside Jake Humphrey and David Coulthard at the BBC. Yet Jordan’s main achievements in the sport are not just those that are listed for all to bear witness – handing -Michael -Schumacher his F1 debut at Spa in 1991, for instance – but his unshakeable principles of life, signed and sealed with an indomitable quick Irish wit and vibrancy. These principles, 25 of them in total, are the basis of a new book based on Jordan’s high-octane lifestyle. Full -Throttle, Lessons from a Life of -Motorsport, Money and Mischief, is written by close friend and manager Keith O’Loughlin. “It wasn’t just the begrudgers,” O’Loughlin says. “It was anyone who said something was impossible. A no to Eddie just meant you needed to ask the question and challenge. “He’d rally against people saying no to him and just say, ‘I’m doing it, f**k you’. He was incredibly determined.” A sponsor would walk in and Eddie would immediately say, ‘I’m going to pull your pants down’ It was the basis for Jordan’s mantra of never sitting still. Having realised a career in accountancy at Bank of Ireland was a little too mundane, he took up karting before launching his own team, Jordan Grand Prix, in 1991. Not always the quickest, by any means, but the team adorned in yellow and their ebullient boss could never be ignored. F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone knew that better than most. Quickly spotting Jordan’s acute and relatable business style, he sent his protege off on errands to China and Bahrain at the start of the century as negotiations concluded to stage a grand prix in those countries. Ecclestone came to rely on Jordan as a man who could get the job done. Not that such trust necessarily -extended to Marie. “I tried to stay away from Bernie, I found him calculating,” she says. “At the very beginning, I needed a full-time paddock pass. And Bernie said to me, ‘But what about the other girl that comes in?’ I said, ‘You effing bastard’. “But Eddie just rubbed people up the right way. Whenever I deal with a corp-orate person, I’m always surprised at how straight they are. But Eddie was the opposite, completely irreverent. “A sponsor would walk in and Eddie would immediately say, ‘I’m going to pull your pants down’, And that’s it – he’s got control already.” Even beyond the sale of his team in 2005, Jordan immersed himself fully in the globe-trotting F1 circus. His outspokenness lent itself perfectly to punditry, even in his final years, as he presented a podcast called Formula For Success – leaning perfectly on another well-used acronym – alongside -Coulthard. Perhaps his most notable final deal was acting as Adrian Newey’s -manager for the F1 design guru’s move from Red Bull to Aston Martin earlier this year. Newey and Jordan formed a friendship in Cape Town, a city that became Jordan’s spiritual home, with a house overlooking the sea in Clifton. Not that it slowed him down, as such. “Six weeks before he passed, he was on stage with Mike and the Mechanics, playing the drums,” O’Loughlin says. Jordan was famous in his heyday for concluding F1 weekends performing with his band, Eddie and The Robbers. “He was still doing the podcast as well. He’d always say, ‘Don’t tell the mammy’ [Marie]. He would have a Red Bull, go on the podcast and be amazing,” O’Loughlin says. We got his principles by osmosis, and all we want to do is share them Marie and O’Loughlin are keen to expand Jordan’s long-lasting legacy. The Eddie Jordan Foundation is not a “charity focused on giving out money”, as O’Loughlin says, but “helping anybody of any age who has a business idea”. He adds: “We got his principles by osmosis, and all we want to do is share them.” Most ubiquitous among them all are the restlessness and drive that were present right to the end. “The day after he had his prostate removed, he was out in Monaco speaking to Adrian [Newey] about the move and the deal,” Marie says of his final weeks. “He stayed strong through most of it, until about February. But he didn’t want to stay like that – it was all or nothing.”
