I still love him but dad behaved VERY badly towards my mum... Tamara Ecclestone lifts the lid on her parents’ £2bn divorce (Look away now, Bernie!) 

Tamara Ecclestone didn’t have a clue her dad, Formula 1 billionaire Bernie, was seeing a woman young enough to be his granddaughter – 31- year-old Brazilian Fabiana Flosi – until she read about it in the gossip columns.
Needless to say, she was knocked for six. ‘I wonder how he’d feel if I started dating a 75-year-old man?’ says Tamara, 26. ‘It’s something I don’t really like to think about. I just can’t understand it. Maybe there’s something going on behind closed doors that people don’t see.’
I bet there is. She laughs, before screwing up her very pretty nose. ‘I don’t even want to go there,’ she says. Her 22-year-old sister Petra and Croatian mother Slavica, 52, who divorced the diminutive tycoon after 24 years of marriage in 2009, are none too impressed either.

Heiress: Tamara did not meet her dad's 31-year-old lover until his 80th birthday - but they hardly spoke

‘Does my sister think it’s weird? Absolutely,’ says Tamara. ‘Does my mum think it’s weird? Absolutely.
‘I didn’t meet her until my dad’s 80th birthday party last October. It was really hard to see him with someone who’s so unlike my mother.’
Did she speak to his lover? ‘Not hugely,’ she says. ‘I don’t have a relationship with her.

  

‘My mum’s been so dignified. It hasn’t been easy for her seeing her ex-husband parading around the world with someone she could have given birth to, but she’s never said, “I find it revolting.”
She’s behaved like such a lady, whereas he’s behaving so badly. Some of the comments he’s made of late – the ones I’ve read – well, I just don’t know where he’s coming from.’
Tamara is referring to the recent biography of her father, No Angel, in which her mother is portrayed as a volatile, controlling woman who manipulated Ecclestone into marriage following Tamara’s birth.
‘That was one of the hardest things I’ve had to read,’ she says. ‘I know what a good person my mum is. I’ve no idea why he would say what he did. My mum always talks about how much in love they were when they got married, a year after I was born.

Can't understand it: Tamara cannot get her head around billionaire F1 boss Bernie's choices

‘I was so hurt. He’s my dad and I’ll always love him, but I was surprised he’d want his child to read that. Even if you want to hurt your ex-wife, she’s still the mother of your children. Hate her if you want, but there has to be some respect.’
Tamara’s the sort of girl who wears her heart on her sleeve and is upset as she says this. She has been deeply affected by her parents’ separation.
To the outside world, the divorce was about money – pots and pots of it – particularly when it emerged Bernie had put most of his vast £2.4 billion-worth of assets in his wife’s name. But for Tamara, it was the ‘darkest period of my life’.
‘Just because you have money, it doesn’t mean you don’t go through the emotions everyone else does,’ she says. ‘I don’t think any child ever dreams of their parents going their separate ways.
I find myself thinking, “God, there’ll never be another family Christmas.” We used to have such homely Christmases in our house in Switzerland.
My mum cooked; my dad decorated the tree. It’s very sad for me to think there won’t be any more. Money doesn’t stop the upset and turmoil.’
But we’re not just talking loose change here.
Tamara is, of course, one of the richest girls on the planet. I’ve read that she’s a ‘spoilt brat’ with a propensity for spending that makes Paris Hilton look thrifty. Her parents have just bought her a £45 million house in London’s swanky Kensington.
At 18, her parents bought her a £2 million Chelsea mews house, where I’m meeting her today. There’s lots of expensive black slate and shiny glass, and, in the courtyard, a car turntable – it turns your car in the direction you want to drive (Tamara isn’t very good at reversing).
So, yes, I’m expecting to meet… well, you know the sort: silicone breasts and sawdust for brains. Only Tamara isn’t at all like this. In fact, she’s so sweet-natured, so unspoilt you want to give her parents some credit.
We’re here to talk about the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity fundraiser Tamara’s organising as creative director of the official Formula 1 party, to be held at London’s Natural History Museum in July.

Happier times: Bernie with Tamara's mother, Slavica, in 2005

There’s also her work for animal rights charity PETA and a planned reality TV show featuring her and, possibly, Petra.
Her parents’ divorce has rather galvanised Tamara – that and the discovery that her phenomenally successful father is fallible after all. Tamara was on holiday in the Maldives with her boyfriend, stockbroker Omar Khyami, 37, when she read that extract from her father’s biography.
‘I think that made it even more surreal – being in paradise with my boyfriend and reading that,’ she says. ‘But it’s not something I can really talk to my dad about. I don’t have that sort of relationship with him where I can tell him how I feel.
‘I can tell my mother anything. I can cry in front of her, but I don’t think my dad would understand that. He’s so in control of his emotions, I don’t think he deals with people who aren’t.

Still going strong: Tamara with her stockbroker boyfriend Omar Khyami

‘It was my mother who kept the marriage together. She might as well have been a single parent. She drove. She cooked. She cleaned. Her parents were divorced, and she says she always dreamed of having the perfect family, of being the best mother she ever could be.
‘Dad’s priority was work, while Mum definitely chose us above following my dad’s career and going to all the races, because she didn’t want to leave us. We never had nannies, not even an au pair. My mum wanted him to be a little more hands-on as a father, but it must be so hard to strike a balance for someone who’s running a billion-dollar business yet whose kids want you to watch them at high jump.
'At the time, I didn’t think there was anything missing, but if you asked me now, would I want more from the father of my children?, the answer is “probably”.’
Omar, she says, is chalk and cheese to her dad.
They’ve been living together for almost a year and she’s desperate to marry him. She wants ‘a big family’, ‘a Labrador’, ‘the dream’. ‘There was so much love in our family. There was fighting too. Sometimes I think that when the arguments stop, it’s when you don’t care any more.’
She remembers an ‘ordinary’ childhood in the family’s four-bedroom Chelsea home, where she baked brownies with her mum. Yes, of course, there was also the ski chalet in Gstaad and summers on Bernie’s yacht in the Mediterranean, but, as Tamara points out, ‘I didn’t know any other life than the one I had. Money gives you freedom and luxury. But I wasn’t aware my life was different to anyone else’s.’
Really? Surely the fact her family were loaded didn’t pass her by? ‘It’s something you don’t really think about,’ she says. ‘I suppose I did a bit more when my parents got divorced and there were so many conversations about money. It was said to be one of the biggest divorce settlements ever, but it was my mum paying my dad because for tax reasons she had the money.
'My dad trusted my mum, so the money was in her name. They didn’t go to court. They  came to a really fair conclusion. I don’t think my parents ever thought they would get divorced.’
Why did they? ‘Mum told me she wasn’t happy. She felt she’d done her job holding the family together and it was her time now. I guess my dad wasn’t the easiest person to be married to. What makes it easier for me to accept is that it wasn’t  about another person, because she hasn’t dated anyone else since. It was about finding herself. She’s learnt to be happy alone.’
Tamara seems to feel happier too. After leaving school with four A-levels she had a crack at further education but ditched her psychology degree at the London School of Economics.
She has since tried modelling, working for her father’s F1 magazine and TV presenting. But now, she says, she’s determined to make a real success of her life.
‘I felt in the shadow of the Ecclestone name. I felt if I didn’t do anything, that was better than trying hard and failing. I’ll never be as successful as Dad, but I’m OK with it. I just want to be proud of something I’ve done, and luckily I’m beginning to feel that way.’

Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity Official F1 Party, 6 July. Visit www.gosh.org or http://www.tamaraecclestone.com/