Three-time Wimbledon winner, Boris Becker, served eight months in prison for hiding £2.5m of assets and loans in a bankruptcy fraud case.
The German has since been released from prison and was subsequently deported from England as well.
Reflecting on his time in prison, Becker regaled horrific stories. He called out people who normalize going to jail and opined it is very different from media depictions.
‘Whoever says that prison life isn’t hard and isn’t difficult, I think is lying,’ Becker remarked. ‘It was a very brutal … a very, very different experience to what you see in the movies, what you’ve heard from stories.’
Becker encountered ‘murderers, by drug dealers, by rapists, by people smugglers, by dangerous criminals’.
‘You fight every day for survival. Quickly, you have to surround yourself with the tough boys, as I would call it, because you need protection.
‘I’m a survivor; I’m a tough cookie. I’ve taken the incarceration, but I’ve also taken the glory and if anything this made me a stronger, better man.’
