Boris Becker reveals fellow inmates saved his life while serving time in UK prison: ‘I was a nobody’ | Tennis News

Boris Becker has revealed that fellow inmates saved his life while he served time in prison, admitting he “was a nobody” behind bars in his first interview since being released.

Becker, 55, served eight months in UK prisons – in Wandsworth and then Huntercombe – for bankruptcy offences after having his two-and-a-half-year sentence shortened under a fast-track deportation program.

Now back in his native Germany, the tennis great and six-time Grand Slam champion has opened up for the first time on his experience, and revealed that he twice had his life threatened.

“I thought I would lose my life in Wandsworth,” Becker told German broadcaster Sat.1, per Bild. “Someone, a murderer I later found out, wanted my coat and he wanted money and he said he would kill me if he didn’t get it.

“Then in Huntercombe, another murderer said they wanted to kill me. My food tray was shaking.”

A tearful Becker said prison authorities appeared to have tried to ensure his safety, allocating him a single cell and getting three experienced inmates or listeners to guide him in his new life behind bars.

“[The inmate] underestimated that other inmates would come to my help and threaten him,” Becker added. “They saved my life.”

While Becker intends to stay in touch with some of the friends he made, he also admitted he was the “loneliest I’ve ever been in my life”.

“In prison you are a nobody,” the German, a three-time Wimbledon winner, said. “You are only a number. Mine was A2923EV. I wasn’t called Boris, I was a number. And nobody gives a **** who you are.”

For Becker, who rose to stardom in 1985 at age 17 when he became the first unseeded player to win the men’s singles title at Wimbledon, the prison sentence was a heavy blow.

Asked about the judge’s statement that Becker had shown no humility, he acknowledged in the interview that “maybe I should have (been) even more clear, more emotional.

Becker also admitted fault.

“Of course I was guilty,” he said of the four out of 29 counts he was convicted on.

Now he hopes to turn a new page and avoid the mistakes he made in the past, many of which he blamed on laziness and bad financial advice received from others.

“For years I made mistakes, I had false friends,” he said. “I think this time in prison brought me back.”