Three untold stories that illustrate the real Ron Dennis

F1

Ron Dennis’s calm and reserved air has led some to make entirely incorrect assumptions about him. Matt Bishop recalls experiences of working in F1 with the former McLaren boss which disprove his cold image

Ron Dennis in F1 paddock in 2016

Frederic Le Floc'h / DPPI

Author

Matt Bishop

I am a gay man. When I arrived in Formula 1 as the editor of F1 Racing magazine the best part of 30 years ago, I was literally the only openly LGBTQ+ person in the sport. We are still very rare, but I am no longer “the only gay in the Formula 1 village”, as I was widely dubbed in F1 paddocks soon after the gay comedian, actor and writer Matt Lucas had included in his hit TV series Little Britain the character Daffyd Thomas, who regularly proclaimed himself “the only gay in the village” of Llanddewi Brefi, Ceredigion, Wales. Why am I telling you all this, you may well be wondering? Because, having been a journalist and editor for the first 15-or-so years of my time in F1, in 2008 I joined McLaren as its comms/PR chief. Soon afterwards, people began to ask me whether Ron Dennis, the McLaren chairman, was homophobic. As it happens, I have been asked the question quite a few times over the years, perhaps because Dennis is not only indefatigably heterosexual but also, the opulence that his great wealth affords him apart, very conventional. Well, it so happens that he is not remotely homophobic, and, since the question has always slightly irked me whenever I have been asked it, it seems a good idea to set the record straight (so to speak) in that regard.

So let me tell you three illustrative and interesting stories, none of which you will have heard before. When in January 2018 Dennis threw a belated and enormous farewell-to-McLaren party, for 3500 colleagues and ex-colleagues, hiring out London’s famous Royal Albert Hall in its entirety so to do, he invited not only me but also my husband Angel Bautista, posting us separate invitations, one addressed to Matt Bishop and the other to Angel Bishop. No, even though we upgraded our 2010 civil partnership to a marriage in the August of 2015, by which time UK law permitted same-sex marriage, Angel has never taken my surname, any more than I have ever taken his, but that is not the point.

HoF Ron Dennis

Aside from his F1 and business achievements, Dennis is nothing if not conventional, but has also shown great compassion

The point is that Ron wanted to show me that he had remembered that Angel and I were married, and addressing two separate envelopes in that manner was his quiet way of indicating that he respected our union. Indeed he always had done, just as he had always been chatty and friendly with Angel whenever they had met, and indeed he was still friendly and chatty with Angel when only a few weeks ago he dined at Lilienblum, the City of London restaurant that Angel manages. We went to Ron’s Royal Albert Hall party, which included a private performance by the Cirque du Soleil, and we were seated in one of its most glitzy loggias, which was well stocked with a complimentary private supply of chilled vintage Champagne. Many F1 people significantly more eminent than we, were in the stalls, sans refreshment. We attended the after-party, too, to which only 300 people had been invited.

From the archive

In 2009 Peter Boland, who had been Dennis’s in-flight butler on his Bombardier Challenger 604 – his large twin-engined $30-odd million private jet – had his 15 minutes of fame when he took his ex-boss to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal, his beef being that he believed that Ron had fired him for being gay, despite his being straight. A perplexing platform on which to base a private legal action against a stubborn multi-millionaire, it was made more difficult still for Boland by his decision to represent himself instead of hiring legal counsel. The two-day hearing, which took place in a small and tatty court room in Southampton, was sometimes unnerving and occasionally hilarious, especially when Boland cross-examined Dennis, haltingly and incompetently, surprising everyone by accusing him of racism as well as homophobia. He could support neither allegation. It was an ordeal that Ron found both humiliating and infuriating, so much so that the judge occasionally had to tick him off for his failure to accord his maladroit cross-examiner an appropriate level of deference, which admonishments the F1 legend did not enjoy.

I attended both days, driving to and from the court alongside Ron in the back of his chauffeur-driven S-class Merc, and we always knew we would win, not least because not only was I openly gay but also – a slam-dunk winner this – so too was Jamie Siggs, the in-flight butler whom Dennis had appointed to replace Boland when he fired him for reasons completely unrelated to homophobia or racism.

Matt Bishop and Ron Dennis arrive in Southampton for employment tribunal hearing

Bishop and Dennis arrive at the Southampton employment tribunal

Alamy

In the end Boland withdrew his suit, and the hearing came to an abrupt end. I then wrote the following statement for Ron, which we gave to the attending journalists and they used in their reports: “This case has been hurtful, irritating and unnecessary, in the sense that no impropriety ever took place, which Mr Boland now concedes. Equally, Mr Boland accepts that I have never said or done anything either racist or homophobic. Moreover, every action taken by my colleagues and me in connection with Mr Boland’s dismissal was done with the intention of minimising the negative impact of that dismissal on his reputation and employment record. Had he not embarked on this unsuccessful and injudicious legal action, which he has anyway now abandoned, those goals could have been achieved.”

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In the late summer of 2013, as part of an ongoing comms/PR effort to depict McLaren Group as a brilliant exemplar of a new luxo-tech revolution within UK plc, since it now encompassed not only McLaren Racing but also McLaren Automotive and McLaren Applied Technologies, I persuaded Ron to allow me to invite a group of MPs from the All Party Parliamentary Motor Group, then chaired by my friend Richard Burden, the Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019. Ron asked to vet the list of MPs before I emailed them our invitation. As he scanned it, his eyes stopped at the inclusion of Nigel Evans. “Isn’t he in a bit of bother?” he asked.

I had been expecting it. “Yes, Ron, he is. Earlier this year he was arrested on suspicion of rape and sexual assault against a number of men. But, lest we forget, in this country a person is innocent until proven guilty, and rightly so. Moreover, Evans is still an MP and he remains a member of the All Party Parliamentary Motor Group, so I think it would be wrong for us to exclude him before his trial.”

Ron said nothing for a while. Then, handing the list back to me, he said, “Yes, fine, invite him.”

The visit took place in late October, and Evans was part of the group. Quiet and edgy, he said little. The following April he was acquitted of all charges, losing his life’s savings in legal costs. I felt sorry for him and, despite our politics being almost diametrically opposed, I invited him to dinner at Bob Bob Ricard, near Golden Square, Soho, which was then my favourite London eatery bar none, and he and I enjoyed a great dinner lubricated by a large quantity of fine red Burgundy.

“When I was facing trial, all my invitations were rescinded, every single one,” he told me over our second bottle, close to tears. “The only exception was McLaren. May I ask you: was Ron Dennis aware of my inclusion?”

“He was indeed,” I replied.

Evans wiped his eyes, smiled, and whispered, barely audibly, “Please tell him how grateful I was for that, and still am. It meant a hell of a lot to me at an extremely difficult time. It surprised me when my invitation wasn’t cancelled, to be honest, but it was a lovely surprise.”

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