Towards the end of his first season in Formula One, Eddie Jordan often feared he was driving headlong towards bankruptcy. Debts and problems were piling up and running costs were always threatening to race out of control. One of his drivers was sent to prison. Another, the future world champion Michael Schumacher was pinched from his grasp after just one auspicious race.
Somehow he survived, kept control of his fledgeling team and - with a series of astute deals and inspired pulicity coups - battled on to establish his name and his team as one of the powers in the ultra competitive world of FOrmula One motor racing. Thanks to a lucky knack of combining his Irish humour with one of the sharpest business brains in the sport, he proved he deserved to belong.
Deals were popular with Jordan all through his life. As a schoolboy, he traded comics and excelled in sport. Later he worked in a bank and sold carpets and smoked salmon at the weekend to make ends meet. Those who knew him then saw that he was something different and destined for something special.
He was a wheeler-dealer in the playground, an ambitious dreamer and a gifted hustler who went on to reject a career in dentistry and then give up on banking. Jordan did not want a nine to five job with prospects. He wanted thrills, excitement, risks, big rewards and a lot of fun along the way. And that is what he got - and more - as he carved a unique niche for himself as the first Irishman and last privateer to break into the secret world of Formula One and claim membership of the Piranha Club.
In Eddie Jordan the Biography, Timothy Collings reveals how this extraordinarily driven man became so successful, why he was determined to reach the top and how he achieved his ambitions. He traces Jordan's life from his Dublin childhood, his happy schooldays and his adolescence to his discovery of motor racing and single-minded efforts to succeed as a Formula One team owner after abandoning a brief career as a driver. It is a tale of humour and humility, pain and the pursuit of perfection, friends and families. A human story of hard work and laughter shafted through with the inimitable wit of a native Dubliner blessed with a mind as sharp as a razor and a gift of the gab that has often left his listeners' faces aching with pleasure as they cried for mercy.
Hardback 336 pages.