Patrick Guilbaud first got to know Eddie Jordan in the 1980s, when they were both starting out. Guilbaud would go on to become a Michelin starred restaurateur. Jordan, meanwhile, lived many lives in a life well lived. 

“When Eddie arrived in the room he lit it up,” Guilbaud recalled. “He had such a nice personality, such a strong personality.” 

Guilbaud and Jordan became close friends; they were part of a group that holidayed together with their families playing golf and skiing.

Their friendship was outside the sphere of motorsport, but Guilbaud was there when Damon Hill famously took the debut victory for Jordan’s eponymous team at Spa in 1998.

“It was my first time in Spa, and we won,” Guilbaud recalled. “He used to call me his lucky charm.” 

After Jordan left motorsport, they were part of a group that went skiing in the Swiss Alps. “Eddie was fearless. He liked speed, but he didn’t take stupid risks,” Guilbaud said.  

As a businessman, Guilbaud said Jordan was a natural. 

“Eddie was irrepressible. He could smell a deal,” he recalled. “He didn’t come from a wealthy background, like we all did, but he worked his way to the top. He loved his family, and his children, are very nice people. Eddie stayed down to earth. He was a unique person.” 

Jordan sadly passed away today after a battle with cancer. 

“We are all going to terribly miss him,” Guilbaud said.

“He had two movies in him”

Michael Brady first met Eddie Jordan on March 12, 1978, in the Northside Shopping Centre, which had opened to fanfare at the start of the decade. Brady was working as a salesman with Marlboro Cigarettes which was sponsoring Jordan along with Captain America’s, a small cookhouse chain then owned by Mark Kavanagh. 

Brady remembers his infectious enthusiasm for racing. “Eddie was a good driver,” he recalled. “He got a test drive with McLaren but just didn’t make it – so he decided to form his own team.”

Brady managed to convince soft drink 7Up, which was owned by Marlboro owner Philip Morris, to support Jordan’s early motorsport efforts. Jordan’s team then raced under the colour green, which also suited its other early sponsor, camera film company Fuji. In 1990, Eddie Jordan joined the Jordan Formula 3000 team, and the following year Jordan Grand Prix began to compete in Formula 1.

Marlboro was now one of the sponsors of the team so Brady stayed close to the team, and his friendship with Jordan continued over decades.

“Eddie had balls. Eddie had guile. He had brass. He took a chance on everything.” Brady said Jordan’s catchphrase from early on was “Fuck the begrudgers”. After he became successful, Jordan had FTB inscribed on a tile at the bottom of his swimming pool in Spain. He also had it tattooed on his wrist, as did all his children. Brady said what Jordan achieved in Formula 1 could never be repeated.

“Nobody in the history of the world will again start a Formula 1 team from nothing on their own,” he said. “You couldn’t write the script of his life. He had two movies in him.”

*****

In 1991, Eddie Jordan performed something of a sporting miracle. The Dubliner’s newly-established Formula 1 team had finished fifth in its debut season in the world championship in a field that included legends like Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell.

Yet despite the success, the Jordan Ford team was facing a wind-up petition from its suppliers. Jordan had already exhausted many of his funding channels, including from the sport’s founder Bernie Ecclestone. 

With his Irish team owing £1 million in 24 hours, it appeared that Jordan’s impact on Formula 1 would be one that was impressive but short-lived.

But at the last minute, Jordan secured the funds from an old school friend, granting his team a stay of execution. Within weeks he landed an £18 million sponsorship deal with South African oil firm Sasol.

“I paid back the million to my friend straight away, and suddenly, the team was alive again,” Jordan said in a 2018 interview with the Sunday Business Post.

“In some ways, that kind of luck is the story of my life. I honestly don’t know anyone luckier.”

While Jordan believed in luck, he also believed that people should make their own luck. Looking back at Jordan’s legacy it is one that was created through his force-of-nature personality that benefited from good fortune, rather than the other way around.

“I went to Silverstone and I completely caught the bug”

Eddie Jordan was born in Dublin on March 30, 1948, to parents Eileen and Paddy. In early life, he had brief flirtations with the priesthood and dentistry, a profession that had been common in his family. But ultimately he turned to accountancy, completing a course in the College of Commerce in Dublin before joining Bank of Ireland.

However, after his first real exposure to racing in the summer of 1970 on the Channel Island of Guernsey, he switched his attention away from a banking career. He bought himself a kart in 1971 and went on to win the Irish Karting Championship. He then began to work his way up the rungs of professional racing, achieving success in Formula 3 and Formula Ford. He even appeared at the hugely prestigious Le Mans 24-hour race.

Jordan himself, often known as EJ among those close to him, has spoken at length of the ways in which he was captured from an early age. He described the sport as “like a drug” and there are countless anecdotes of the determination he’d shown to raise funds to back his addiction, including selling salmon fillets on Dublin streets.

When he recalled his first visit to Silverstone, he feared that he might get “arrested” for speaking about it.

“I think there were about seven of us in the back of a van, we were able to climb under the wire and get in and I remember this steward: ‘get down off the hoardings, get down off the hoardings’,” Jordan said on an episode of the Formula For Success podcast, a show he ran with fellow Formula 1 legend David Coulthard.

“We were on the hoardings at Copse Corner, I had the best view ever. That was the first time I went to Silverstone and I completely caught the bug there.”

By the end of the 1970s, Jordan was in team-building mode. His team worked its way up from the lower reaches of professional racing before securing a place in that famous 1991 season.

As the owner of Eddie Jordan Racing, later known as Jordan Grand Prix, his profile rose substantially in part thanks to his ability to pick would-be legendary drivers at a very early stage. Jordan is credited with handing starts to the likes of Senna and Damon Hill in Formula 3 as well as facilitating the debut of one Michael Schumacher in Formula 1.

Jordan Grand Prix won on four separate occasions, the first coming in Belgium in 1998 with Hill at the wheel. In 2005, Jordan sold his team to Russian-Canadian businessman Alex Shnaider. At which point it was turned into Midland Racing. Since then the old Jordan team has taken many forms, once Force India, then Racing Point, and now Aston Martin, the team owned by Laurence Stroll.

His personality and sharp wit sparkled during this era, ringing through on countless occasions. Among the highlights was a brief interaction with his former driver Martin Brundle who was interviewing team members on the track ahead of a grand prix. When asked why Jordan’s cars were so fast at the weekend, Jordan, with a wicked smile, quickly responded: “Because, Martin, maybe you’re not driving them.”

Brundle, who first raced for Jordan in 1983, spoke about how much he will miss him and described him as “one of the biggest characters of Formula 1” and that “everyone loved him” and that the sport would be “poorer without him”.

That personality played well among audiences as Jordan shifted more into broadcasting, which included a stint hosting Top Gear on the BBC.

“An abundance of charisma”

Beyond the realm of sport and broadcasting, Jordan had an incredibly active altruistic side. The Dublin native, who spent much of his childhood in the Co Wicklow town of Bray, was a patron of the child cancer charity CLIC Sargent and The Amber Foundation, an organisation that supports young homeless people facing complex challenges.

He received numerous awards for his contribution to sport and charity over the years. In 2012, he was awarded an honorary OBE. He was also knighted as an honorary Musketeer in France with the University of Ulster and Dublin Institute of Technology (now TUD) granting him an honorary doctorate. The James Joyce Award was also bestowed upon him by UCD’s Literary and Historical Society while Trinity College Dublin’s University Philosophical Society awarded him a Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage. He was also inducted into the Irish Motorsport Hall of Fame. 

Greg Murphy, a former Formula 3 racing driver said Jordan was an inspiration when he founded Murphy Prototypes which competed for a decade in the European Le Mans Series and 24 Hours of Le Mans. “It is incredible what he achieved. No one will ever appreciate what he did in motorsport. He took on Ferrari and beat them,” he said.

Jordan’s brother-in-law, Des Large, backed Murphy when he started competing in Formula Opel in 1999. His father Pat Murphy drove in Mondello in the 1970s when Jordan was making his mark as a racer. “When you see someone from Rathfarnham doing it at the highest level, you think why not me? Eddie was an incredible wheeler-dealer, who didn’t have it easy. He was always very encouraging with nuggets of advice, while always letting you know motorsport is a tough business.”

Jordan has also left behind a family crestfallen by his passing. His wife Marie, whom he had been with for half a century, and his children Zoe, Miki, Zak, and Kyle announced Eddie’s passing with “profound sadness” in a statement issued on Thursday morning.

Jordan passed away peacefully in his sleep with his family by his side in Cape Town in the early hours of Thursday morning at the age of 76, after a battle with an aggressive form of prostate cancer for the past 12 months.

“EJ brought an abundance of charisma, energy and Irish charm everywhere he went,” the family said in a statement. “We all have a huge hole missing without his presence. He will be missed by so many people, but he leaves us with tonnes of great memories to keep us smiling through our sorrow.”

The statement outlined how Jordan and indeed his F1 team were known for their “rock and roll image, bringing a fun and exciting element to F1, as well as consistently performing above their weight”.

A diverse business career

While Jordan undoubtedly made his name in motorsport, his career reached far beyond it. Jordan was an investor in Celtic Football Club and made an array of investments across New York, London, and Europe into commercial and residential property development, as well as media businesses and food and drive companies. He also served on the advisory board of Citi Private Bank, a board member of Oyster, and a partner in hedge fund Clareville Capital.

His most recent business exploit was the acquisition of the brand and IP of the iconic London Irish Rugby Club last month. Jordan led a consortium that included his son Kyle that sought to prevent the total wipeout of a club whose financial issues had nearly condemned it to extinction.

Speaking to The Currency at the time, Kyle Jordan spoke of how the consortium intended to bring London Irish back to elite rugby in a “sustainable and competitive environment”. The revival of London Irish was something that was close to Eddie Jordan’s heart. In the statement announcing his passing, the family also added that he had been “working until the last, having communicated on St Patrick’s Day, about his ambitions for London Irish Rugby Football Club, of which he had recently become patron”.

Daniel McKeown, a senior partner at Jordan Associates, the company that has acquired London Irish, spoke glowingly of Jordan.

“It was an absolute privilege to know the great Eddie Jordan,” he told The Currency. “Sometimes hard on the outside, always soft on the inside and deeply kind.”

McKeown said that Jordan had felt a “deep obligation” to charities and was quietly proud of the work he and his wife Marie had done for childhood cancer. The Jordan Associates senior partner added that Eddie Jordan had held a charity concert every other year in London where he “strong-armed many people to contribute talent or cash, putting his deal-making to good use”.

“He sometimes dodged a selfie-seeking fan but never skipped a high-five from every doorman in Monaco and every waiter in London,” McKeown said. “Many people will have been surprised to spot him busking in Covent Garden, banging the box or the spoons with his band The Robbers, which he loved so much.”

McKeown said that Jordan was a “stubborn and tough negotiator” who had “lived for the adrenaline of the deal”.

Indeed this much has been clear from Jordan himself. When reflecting on his career owning a Formula 1 team, he said that he made “very little money out the race team” but said that he did make money out of buying and selling drivers.

“That was an entrepreneurial skill and I believe I was the first to do that. When a driver had one year left on his contract, I used to sell him,” Jordan said in the 2018 Sunday Business Post interview.

McKeown went on to describe Jordan as a “proud Irishman who loved the London Irish element of his life and career”. He also added that Marie and Eddie had been a team for half a century and that their relationship had provided the foundation for his success.

“He was such a grafter, even when battling cancer, he still made sure he recorded his FFS podcast with David Coulthard, negotiated a £150 million deal, attempted many more and found the strength to play the drums in Cape Town alongside Mike Rutherford to a crowd of thousands,” McKeown said.

“An exceptional Irishman”

This scale of his achievements and the words of his family offer some explanation as to why the outpouring of testimonials in the wake of the news of his passing has been so wide-ranging and effusive.

Daniel Mulhall, Ireland’s former ambassador to the United States, said he was saddened to hear of Jordan’s death.

“I had the pleasure of getting to know him during my time in Malaysia and later in London,” Mulhall said. “He was always a star turn. An exceptional Irishman. May he rest in peace.”

Taoiseach Michael Martin described Jordan as someone who “lived life to the full” and added that he faced his final days with the “same courage and tenacity displayed throughout many years as an entrepreneur, F1 pioneer and TV pundit”. “There were few like him,” he said.

Jake Humphrey a former broadcast colleague of Jordan’s, said that talking about him was difficult after waking up the news that he had passed.

“I suppose some would think ‘why do you want to come on the radio and be a blubbering mess?’ But this guy was so special that I think people need to talk about him, remember him, celebrate him,” Humphrey told BBC Radio 5 Live.

Jordan was also lauded by countless drivers and bosses in the current Formula 1 paddock, including Williams’ Carlos Sainz, who described him as “one of a kind”. Elsewhere Red Bull boss Christian Horner said the sport had lost an “iconic character”.

“He was brilliant at talking to people”

Another close friend Jordan accrued throughout his unique life was Tony Kilduff, a renewable energy investor and serial entrepreneur who first got to know him back in 1992. He was in a restaurant in Sotogrande in Andalucia in Spain, when Jordan came up to his table. Jordan had heard Kilduff’s children’s accents and came over and asked: “Are you lot from Dublin?”

The two families hit it off, and they spent many happy times together in their nearby holiday homes in Spain as the Kilduff and Jordan children grew up.

“Eddie could charm the birds off trees,” Kilduff said. “He was brilliant at talking to people, talking to crowds and generating excitement about the Jordan brand. Eddie was a minnow in a game against the big boys.” A keen musician, Jordan played both drums and spoons. He had a band called the Robbers named because he quipped: “I’m always robbing money from sponsors.”

He was dyslexic but turned this to his advantage as a compelling storyteller. “He was a great man for verbalising things,” Kilduff said. “When he gave a business presentation, he wasn’t a Powerpoint man. He just had this incredible ability to get his point across.”

Jordan later sold his house in Sotogrande but he had been planning to return to the area in July.

“Eddie was dreaming up until last week of having lunch in our favourite beach restaurant called Gigi’s. It is a simple restaurant, but he loved it.”