Becker, that cupboard moment (and DNA test)

Daily Mail 4 November 2003


Boris Becker has broken his silence over the sordid encounter in a broom cupboard which destroyed his marriage, left him with an illegitimate daughter and cost him £20 million.

The tennis star described how he went out drinking in London while his wife checked into hospital in the mistaken belief that she was giving birth prematurely.

He had sex with Russian model Angela Ermakowa in the cupboard at the Nobu restaurant in Park Lane. And he put the incident out of his mind until, eight months later, he was stunned to receive a fax informing him that he was about to become a father again.

Becker, 35, makes the revelations in his autobiography, Stay A Moment Longer, which is being serialised in a German paper. He says he does not think "men are made for monogamy". Fateful evening

The fateful evening came in June, 1999, after he crashed out of Wimbledon to Pat Rafter in the fourth round and decided to retire from the sport.

Becker said he had "cried my eyes out" as he thought back to his three Wimbledon championships, and felt the need to go out for a few beers with friends.

However his wife Barbara, seven months' pregnant with their second son, wanted him to stay at their hotel with her. "She couldn't and wouldn't understand that she suddenly wasn't first in my priorities," said Becker. "I said, 'Just once more with the lads, Barbara, just once more to say farewell and then it's only you'. That didn't work. We rowed for two whole hours. Suddenly she was in pain and decided to check into hospital."Direct look

Becker said he told his wife to call him if the baby was really on the way, then hit the town. By 11pm he was at the bar in Nobu and spotted Miss Ermakowa.

"She looked directly at me, the look of the hunter that said, 'I want you'.

"There she was again, walking twice past the bar. And again this look. A little while later she left her table for the toilet. I followed behind.

"Five minutes small talk and then straight away into the nearest possible place and down to business.

"Afterwards she went off, I had another beer, paid and went back to my hotel. As there wasn't any news from the hospital I went to bed around 2am.

"In the morning I went to Barbara: the pains were a false alarm. We packed up our things and left England.

"As to the consequences of the previous evening I didn't have a second thought." Fax arrives

The following February his secretary handed him a fax in his Munich office. It read: "Dear Herr Becker, We met in Nobu in London. The result of that meeting is now eight months old."

Becker says: "I didn't have a clue what I should do. But I knew she was saying, 'In one month's time I am going to have a child'. I felt the ground shift under my feet."

Becker secretly flew to London, where he met Miss Ermakowa.

"The tone in her voice was clear: if I wasn't prepared to accept responsibility she would make public what had happened and I would end up like Mick Jagger who was in the papers over his love child with a Brazilian model.

"On March 22 in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital came a baby called Anna into the world. I decided to accept this child if the doctors said she was really mine.

"I had taken a jump into an uncomfortable situation. It wasn't a crime but I didn't want to be blackmailed if she wasn't mine.

"Naturally I felt great shame. How should I tell my wife or my son Noah?" Come clean

Becker says he decided to come clean to Barbara in September at the family home in Munich. "I took my heart in my hands and told her everything, every detail, and how and why it came about.

"She was naturally very surprised. She couldn't believe it had happened like it had happened. I said, 'Now you have every right in the world to go. I love you still and if it is possible I would like us to stay together'.

"Two days she thought about this, then said, 'I don't know how, but we will get over this'. I was relieved."

In February 2001 a DNA test confirmed that Anna was his baby and the "tension" increased at home to a point when Becker decided he could no longer cope.

"Every time we discussed things there was this killer argument - what happened in London. I couldn't handle this and my other problems all together any longer."

He spent close to £20 million on his divorce from Barbara and providing for Anna.

He met her just before her second birthday. "Anna was completely normal. She didn't jump on me but she had trust. For over an hour we played together."

Becker, who narrowly avoided a jail sentence in Germany last year over tax evasion, now lives in Switzerland.

He says he visits his daughter every couple of months "and I have normalised the relationship with her mother. We talk about Anna and her future. I want to learn how to love my daughter."