Flavio Briatore interview: Supermodels, Formula 1, footy and pizzas

I’M RACING towards 50 and the years are being medium kind at best, so it is plainly time for me to start dating supermodels. Luckily, I’m lunching with Flavio Briatore, who’s got form. His present girlfriend is 20-year-old Benedetta Bosi. Previous squeezes include Naomi Campbell, Heidi Klum and Wonderbra model Elisabetta Gregoraci. Oh, and Emma Heming Willis and Kat Mack. And Annemarie Warnkross. And some others.

Briatore once said that, since “it takes the same amount of effort to get a beautiful woman as an ugly one, you might as well have a beautiful one”. So I’m in good hands. I tell him of my plans. “Good luck,” he deadpans. Can he get me an introduction? “To which one?” Any. He pauses. Laughs. “I don’t really do this kind of job.” That’s OK, I wasn’t going to pay you. Another ponder. “On the other hand, I don’t work for nothing.”

Briatore is easy-going company, with an Italian accent so thick it could slice pizza. Which is what he wants to talk to me about. His Crazy Pizza brand is a new part of his Billionaire Lifestyle empire. He has one restaurant on Paddington Street in Marylebone, another in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, with a third soon in Monte Carlo.

He is looking for new sites in London and Paris, perhaps three, four or five more restaurants here. “London is a very civilised town,” he says inbetween mouthfuls at the Marylebone joint. Pizza isn’t particularly crazy, it’s been around, I note. Nor do you have to be a billionaire to eat it. This is missing the point. The point of Flavio’s billionaire lifestyle is that it is a portfolio of nightclubs and restaurants that offer the very best service, that lets you live like a billionaire, even though you aren’t one. The rich celebrities that adorn the walls are all eating pizza. His Crazy Pizza is different in that it is very thin with basically no yeast — “better for your stomach”, he says. “All we do is pizza and salad. The concept is different from anyone else,” he says. “Everyone eats pizza, it is a universal food.”

The grub is delicious, but it’s not the most interesting thing about him. Briatore is one of those tycoons doomed to be thought of as colourful, in the gossip pages more than the business ones. Born in 1950, he made fortunes from restaurants and insurance before setting up Benetton franchises, later moving into Formula 1, where he met and became best friends with Bernie Ecclestone.

For three years to 2010, he part owned Queens Park Rangers, an adventure covered by the documentary The Four Year Plan, which might have been subtitled How Not To Run a Football Club. Do the fans think he did a good job? “Maybe,” he shrugs. “The fans believed they own the club. We done the best as possible. Myself and Bernie when we sold QPR, we were happy to sell… it was very interesting. Tony Fernandes (the new owner) is a very good guy.”

More controversially, he was convicted of fraud in Italy, getting a prison sentence he has fought for more than 10 years to have overturned. He says: “We won one case. Another case is with the judge, it will clean up Flavio Briatore completely. It is 10 years now, all this stuff.” Does it annoy him that “this stuff” follows him around? “Not really,” he says, plausibly. Maybe if you were Flavio, it wouldn’t bother you either. Briatore has just flown in on a private jet from Monte Carlo, a place, I tell him, described as a “sunny place for shady people”. He shrugs again, “I know it’s a sunny place. The advantage is the weather. The schools are very good.” There is no tax advantage to him, he claims.

How rich is he? It’s hard to say, estimates vary. But a few hundred million dollars, for sure: “I’ve enough to pay the restaurant bill. To pay for the best doctor in the world. To fly on my plane.” He shares the plane with three other Monaco residents, he says, and claims that deal means it costs the same as travelling first class. He was born in Verzuolo, an area near Turin in Northern Italy, once saying that when he returns he has had enough after three days. “Three hours,” he corrects. “You see the same people in the same bars, maybe less because someone died, people talk the same rubbish and no one improves, it is very sad… people talking about the same nothing.” Is Italy a good place to do business? “Italy is more ‘if you know’ (the right people), in Italy meritocracy means nothing.”

Does he deal with banks much? “We don’t need banks. The banks are very simple. If you need the money, they don’t have it. The banks help big groups, the smaller company… it is a disaster.” “If you want to be successful, nothing is easy (in Italy). I have done everything outside of Italy. Italy in the last 40 years, I have never had a bank account, never got a mortgage from an Italian bank.” As for the UK, “Brexit is a mess. I know a lot of people leaving the UK, bankers etc… I don’t know how (Brexit) is better.” One of the celebrities on the wall is Donald Trump — an old friend. What’s he like to deal with? Dead straight, he says. Completely trustworthy. I sort of think he’s joking, but it is hard to be sure.

Life has been pretty good to Flavio Briatore, I offer. He shrugs again: “I have had very good girlfriends. I have a good relationship with all of them.”