PHOTOGRAPHY: BENJAMIN EAGLE; NATHAN AZOPARDI; GEOFF SEARLE; CURTI
S JEHSTA; BEN HARRIES
the poster boy for F1, and I wanted to bring
some of the fun and glamour back into motor
racing. These teams were lifestyle brands, at a
time when they didn’t understand that.”
Gumball was born after a failed attempt
to buy Tyrrell, the British team that Jackie
Stewart raced for in the 70s. Cooper decided
to mine his contacts and stage a road race
as a kind of moving, automotive knees-up.
“I look back on our launch party, when
everyone from Kate Moss to Madonna came,
and I think ‘wow, how did I get them there?’
But that was really just the scene I’d been
immersed in for a decade,” he
says. The first rally was from
London to Rimini and back,
and Cooper’s friends drove
the 50 cars.
Now in its 20th year, the
rally has grown. In August,
150 cars and 300 drivers will
journey from London to Tokyo
via Italy and airlift in four 747
cargo planes to Osaka. The
format is well established:
staged routes with stop-ofs at
glamorous locations for parties
and cultural events (in 2008,
the trip from San Francisco
to Beijing incorporated 24 hours in North
Korea, where the state put on a performance of
150,000 people for the Gumballers). Celebrities
regularly take part – Jodie Kidd, Hugh Hefner,
Quentin Tarantino and Snoop Dog have all
entered. This year, Lewis Hamilton, Adrien
Brody and Cypress Hill will be returning, as
will David Hasselhof, who previously drove
Kitt, the Knight Rider car, which apparently
stole the show in China.
Entrants pay a fee rumoured to be around
$100,000 and get their own vehicles to the
starting line. The drivers then complete 3,000
miles, broken up by events put on by Cooper’s
team. Send-of and arrival are dramatic
afairs and Cooper has managed to close
of both Regent Street and Times Square,and to hold his 2002 finishing party at the
PlayboyMansioninLA.Manybringbrand
new supercars, but Cooper encourages the
presence of eclectic motors, his ideal starting
gridbeing“avintageMiniCooper,nexttoa
McLarenF1,nexttotheBatmobile.Mydream
carisaJaguarD-Type,”hesays.
Whataboutboats?“I’veneverownedone.
Because my favourite cars tend to be design
classics,inboattermsanythingRivaworks
forme.ButthenatthesametimeIappreciateIN CONVERSATION WITH... GLENN SPIRO
Glenn Spiro, former senior director at Christie’s turned sought-
after bespoke jeweller, tells Zoe Dickens how personal taste
inspires his designs, why you should always buy what you
love and the advantages of looking outside traditional auction
EXCLUSIVELY ONLINEhouses. boatint.com/glenn-spiro“Anything Riva works for me.
And I appreciate some of
these absolutely futuristic
stealthy speedboats”some of these absolutely futuristic stealthy
speedboats. I did get to hang out on a Wally,
for example, and they’re the next level.”
Now 45 and married, with four children
from a previous marriage, you sense that
Cooper may be mellowing. What he really
wants is “to put on a show”, he says.
Certainly, this entertainer has done
well. Sitting in his oice among his Pearl
drum kit and collection of F1 crash helmets
(he has around 50 belonging to the likes of
Senna, Fittipaldi and Schumacher), with the
ejector seat from a Vulcan bomber serving
as an armchair, Cooper is the picture of the
successful entrepreneur. He still owns 100 per
cent of the company, which Forbes has valued
at $300 million. Maybe that name his parents
gavehimwasprescientafterall?B
gumball3000.comCooper arrives at the
Gumball 3000 event at
the Amsterdam Arena.
Below right: the entrepreneur
is married to Grammy-