THE name’s Bond… Gypsy Bond.
Britain’s richest gypsy Alfie Best has just spent an astonishing £4.5million on a helicopter designed by James Bond’s favourite car company, Aston Martin.
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Just 15 have been made, and multi-millionaire Alfie has been given
Number 007.
When he took delivery of the seven-seater aircraft with the registration G-YPSE on the fuselage, Alfie was shaken and definitely stirred.
As he opened the door of the high-performance ACH130 chopper, on the tarmac at Oxford airport, he said: “It’s incredible – it’s a long way from my first-ever vehicle, a Ford Escort, which I sold for eleven hundred quid.
“When the helicopter came from the Airbus factory it was a bit ‘army-fied’, all green and grey.
“But look at it now, after the guys from Aston Martin have done their thing. It’s phenomenal and the smell of brand-new leather is out of this world.”
Inside the tan and grey cockpit, fitted with the finest hand-crafted leather, Alfie spies a small silver plaque on the top of the instrument panel which reads: ‘Aston Martin G-YPS, Edition Number 007, built for Alfie Best.’
He says: “007 – it does make me smile. But I swear to you it was a lovely, fantastic surprise getting that serial number because just 15 of these been ever built and we have ended up with the only one in the world that is double-O seven.
“Airbus rang me up and said ‘Do you realise which production helicopter this is?’ I said, ‘It’s an ACH130’. ‘No, no’, he said ‘it is 007’.
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“They say zero-zero but to me – a Sean Connery fan – it is definitely double-O seven.
“I thought, I hope James Bond is okay with gypsy scrawled all over the side of it! I’m no longer going to go with the Gypsy Millionaire, I’m now Gypsy Bond.”
Alfie Best hasn’t been known as the Gypsy Millionaire for years – he is now worth £700million, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List.
Not bad for a man born 52 years ago in a travellers’ caravan parked at the side of the road near Leicester in a snowstorm.
‘First gypsy billionaire’
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Alfie is now the owner of Britain’s biggest residential home parks empire. His company, Wyldecrest Parks, currently operates 97 sites
from Inverness to Land’s End.
By the end of the year he will own 108 parks and next year, if all goes to plan, he expects to be the world’s first gypsy billionaire.
As he poses like James Bond for the Sun’s legendary photographer Arthur Edwards, Alfie says: “I swear to you it is purely a business tool. It will allow me to visit five parks in a day.
“Whereas if I drive I’m not really doing the work I should be doing because I am getting there, rushing through to then get to the next one.
“I fell asleep on a motorway twice and hit the centre barrier both times because it is monotonous and driving on a motorway, you don’t become a better driver, you become a worse driver.”
Alfie has learned to fly but he will employ a professional pilot because he knows the dangers after previously crashing a helicopter.
He recalls: “We were practising taking off and landing. When I landed one skid got stuck in the grass and the other was on a concrete pad.
“Because one skid was stuck, I took off at an angle, lost control of the machine and then tried to bring it down from 400 feet. It flipped over on its side.
Having a load of dough and too much time are two of the most dangerous things because idle hands make work for the devil
Alfie Best
“My instructor spent a week in intensive care and I escaped with just a little cut on my cheek.
“Maybe you could say it was the instructor’s mistake, but I always say, ‘Don’t look to pass the blame down, accept the blame.’ I was the one that was flying it.”
After such a terrifying accident why has he spent over £4million on a new helicopter?
“If you fall off the horse, get back on,” says Alfie. “I’m deadly serious. If you fall off the horse, get back on, so I bought a new helicopter.
“I’m taking my private pilot’s licence now but I will never fly without a pilot.”
The ACH 130, which is also used by military and rescue services, costs £4m and Alfie had half-a-million pounds of extras, like top-of-the-range GPS navigation systems, carbon fibre controls and the ultimate leather upholstery.
Rejected billionaire business deal
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He can afford it because Alfie, who lives in a £6m Surrey mansion, recently received an offer of £950m from a hedge fund for the parks business he founded 21 years ago.
But Alfie, who appeared last year on TV’s Undercover Boss, turned down the offer which would have made him an instant billionaire.
He says: “Having a load of dough and too much time are two of the most dangerous things because idle hands make work for the devil.
“We can all party too much, we can all enjoy ourselves too much and, I never thought I’d say this, but we can all work too hard.”
For nearly nine months Alfie has been followed by a camera crew making a documentary called the Gypsy Billionaire.
But according to the latest rich list figures, he is still a couple of hundred million short of a billion.
He says: “This genuinely isn’t about earning any more money. I’m of the opinion that once you have made five or ten million, then you do not need any more money than that.
This isn’t about earning any more money. I’m of the opinion that once you have made five or ten million, then you do not need any more money than that
Alfie Best
“That’s all the money in the world as far as I am concerned because that allows you to do everything.
“After that, it’s about actually building something that makes a difference. I get a lot of criticism but I’ve got broad shoulders. You have just got to take it and accept it and realise I am lucky.
“I base my wealth just on my asset value. I see so many companies valued in hundreds of millions of pounds but they have never made a penny profit.
“You think, ‘How does that work?’ “
Alfie reckons we are not just heading for a global recession – we are already in one.
“In my opinion, you are worth what you are worth when the s*** hits the fan,” he adds.
“I want to know what I am worth if I have to sell to be out. We can all kid ourselves and paint up our own brains and what our own future earnings are worth, but it’s only as good as long as you are earning.
“So I think we need to be realistic and that is how I base it.”
But as Del Boy would say, this time next year he will be a billionaire.
“With the deals that we have under contract at the minute we should finish this year at £800m,” he says.
“Depending on how the market goes, by the end of next year we will be £1bn in assets. But I’m a realist – anything can go wrong, you can go up and come down just as quick.”
With that, Gypsy Bond took off to fly to lunch at Aston Martin’s factory and look at possibly spending another £150,000 buying a matching James Bond car, the DB11.
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