4 Thursday November 25 2021 | the timestimes2
Happily the taunts hurt less now. “I
don’t really pay attention because I
love myself so. I used to take it in but
you develop with age and kind of grow
into your own person.”
The Player, Boris writes, is for his
children so they may eventually
understand him better. Has Elias read
it? “Yes. I mean, I didn’t read it
recently. Everything I know of my
father I know as a person. I don’t
really need to read it.”
Boris wrote that he hoped all his
children would become friends and six
years after it was published he had
another son, Amadeus, by his (now
divorced) wife Lilly Kerssenberg,
whom he met in a Miami pizzeria
celebrating Elias’s sixth birthday. Did
they all become friends?
“Yeah. My little brother and my
sister both live in London, but
whenever I see them it’s just great. I’m
a big brother to [Amadeus] and it’s
beautiful to see him growing up, seeing
what he’s listening to and what Marvel
movies he likes. He loves Spider-Man
and I love Spider-Man. It’s just
beautiful to see my brother grow up
into his own person.”
And Anna is his age? “Yeah. She’s
21.” And she’s a model as well? “Yeah.”
Are they alike in other ways apart
from being beautiful? “Yeah. She’s
very funny. She has a great, great
sense of humour, but also, honestly,
she is so charismatic.”
Maybe she should be on Tatler’s list?
“I mean, that’s not really my call.” If I
know sisters, I say, she will probably
tease him about it at some point.
“Yeah, maybe,” he says doubtfully.
He must call me back, which after
five minutes he does, but only to say
he is running out of time. And with
that, in so far as he has ever been fully
there, Elias is gone.Elias Becker.
Above left:
with his father
and mother,
Barbara BeckerBoris Becker’s son: I’m
on the most eligible list.
It may be my charisma
her friends how beautiful he was.
“But,” he goes on, “in the last five
years I didn’t really need any
assistance knowing that.”
His exercise regimen comprises
pull-ups, squats, “pistol squats” and
stretching. “I also try to bring some t’ai
chi to my practice.” He observes “a
veggie and low-meat consumption”
diet. “Spinach may not taste the best
when you’re eating it raw or anything
like that, but I guess that’s what
Popeye was trying to promote, or the
cartoonist of Popeye: that we should
be eating this food, you know?”
In his 2004 autobiography, The
Player, Boris Becker wrote that the
young Elias had “both feet planted
firmly on the ground”. Yet Tatler gives
space to Elias’s spiritual side. “I would
say that started with my mom because
she provided a backbone of yoga and
meditation at a very young age and
sun salutations before school.”
He believes in “manifesting, which
means wanting something so hard you
eventually get it”. He gives an example
from lockdown. “I decided I am going
to make myself the most strongest I
have ever been in my life.” This he
achieved, he concedes, with a great
deal of working out.
Is he like his father? “I definitely am.
I think I’m realising more and more
the things he taught me when I was
young. Looking at interviews when he
was my age, he was just very quiet and
he really cared about becoming the
best. And I’m applying that every day,
and putting a lot of — sorry for
cursing — the bullshit out of the way
by not really focusing on the glamour
or anything like that.”
I ask him about racism. His father
has said that his three older children,
who are all mixed race, experienced a
racist incident “at least once a week”.
Elias is vague but says such abuse
happened to him, especially in his
childhood. He went on Black Lives
Matter demonstrations locally last
year but was curtailed by the
lockdown. His brother is an expert
on it all and has taught him so much.I
n June 1999 Boris Becker, the
German tennis prodigy who won
Wimbledon aged 17, retired from
the game for good. That day, the
evening of his fourth-round
Wimbledon defeat to Pat Rafter, he
returned to his hotel and rowed with
his wife, the model Barbara Feltus,
who was heavily pregnant with their
second son. Two hours later Feltus
went into what appeared to be
premature labour and was taken to
hospital by a friend. Becker said he
would join them if things got serious.
Later that night, at the Japanese
restaurant Nobu, he impregnated a
waitress called Angela Ermakova in, as
he writes in his memoir, the “nearest
suitable corner”. In September Feltus
gave birth to Elias Becker, and the
following March Elias’s half-sister
Anna Ermakova arrived. By the end of
that year Feltus had filed for a divorce
that would cost Becker £11 million. The
boys saw their father, but were brought
up by her in Miami.
Many people emerge into a happy
adulthood from worse starts in life.
Nevertheless, I find myself unprepared
for just how happy the now 22-year-
old Elias Becker actually is. The
occasion for our chat is his appearance
on the cover of December’s Tatler,
which has anointed him its fourth
most eligible bachelor in an annual
“little black book” feature.
“Track him down in Notting Hill
eating tacos with friends, DJ-ing in
his New York apartment, or tending
his pet goat LeBron,” Tatler
commands. “When I first read it, I was,
like, ‘Wow, this is cool,’ ” he says over
Zoom. “I never really viewed myself in
that way. I never view people as
eligible or not eligible. It’s not the way
I think. It was just a huge honour to
have that compliment.”
Technically, having no serious
girlfriend at present, he is an eligible
bachelor. In practice he is too focused
on his career — actor and model first,
then director — to distract himself.
He is doing auditions in Los Angeles
this week.
Does he know why he made the list?
“I have no idea. It may be just charisma
or just because I met them. They’re
nice people, so maybe they liked me.”
Precisely how beautiful he is today I
cannot say for he keeps his phone’s
camera off. Recalling the stir his
parents long ago made by appearing
nude on the cover of the German
magazine Stern, I jocularly ask if he is
perhaps naked even as we speak. “It is
not that.” Given the noises, my guess is
that he is shopping.
Did his parents tell him he was
good-looking as he grew up, or did
they keep quiet? “No, I mean, they
couldn’t really keep it quiet. I just have
to look at myself. But it wasn’t really
something that I viewed as the only
thing that mattered.” His mother
would embarrass him by explaining toS
ome people are protesting
against the plans by Center
Parcs to build its sixth
British holiday resort in a
wooded area of
outstanding natural beauty
in West Sussex. Why, they
ask, should we be
bulldozing some of the last patches of
ancient forest left on the planet to
create a giant complex of roads, car
parks and lodges that makes for a
“forest experience” to benefit the
middle classes in a parody of
environmental policy thus far? The
Woodland Trust, Sussex Wildlife Trust,
CPRE Sussex, Sussex Ornithological
Society and RSPB have issued a joint
statement against the plans.
As ever, these environmental
campaigners are missing the point.
Sure, Center Parcs seems like a canny
business model that can be
summarised in two words: “Boden
Butlin’s”. It looks like they have
monetised the middle-class shame
that their children, like every British
child, adores cul-de-sacs, steamy
chlorinated leisure centres and pesto
pasta at Café Rouge. Babies aren’t
born snobs; they are genetically
programmed to appreciate the good
life, which for them is living in a cul-
de-sac that’s walking distance from a
leisure centre. And if they are unlucky
enough to be born into a middle-class
family who can only relax into this
simple pleasure by shelling out £3,000
for a cabin in a sinisterly well-ordered
compound, well then that’s just the
price they have to pay.
But don’t be fooled. I suspect what
Center Parcs has been doing since it
launched in Britain in Sherwood
Forest in 1987 is building bunkers to
withstand the climate apocalypse.
Right here, among us. It’s a genius bit
of forward planning, and one day you
may be grateful. That’s if you can
afford the £67 million it will cost to
shelter at Center Parcs from the storm
of environmental catastrophes caused
by cutting down the forests (you can
also book archery for your child at
£748 a session while you wait).
Let me explain. Before I had kids it
did not cross my mind to go to Center
Parcs. Four years postpartum, though,
friends started confessing they had
been and for every sceptical question
I had, they answered: “There’s even a
ball pit in the Café Rouge.” So, like
“stowing a human poo in my pocket
during a public toilet-training
emergency”, this was added to my list
of the character-annihilating surprises
of parenting. A ball pit in Café Rouge
sounded amazing.
And then I encountered my first
shock. I imagined the whole thing was
built under a geodesic dome. I thoughtCenter
Green campaigners
want to block a
new Center Parcs.
Don’t they get that
it’s paradise, asks
Helen Rumbelow
His father didn’t want to mould him
into a tennis star, Elias Becker tells
Andrew Billen
Did my
parents
tell me I
was good
looking?
They
couldn’t
really
keep it
quiet
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