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HIGH FLIER
I want to be the first gypsy billionaire… I’ve got a £6m house & I’ve just ordered an Aston Martin helicopter
ALFIE BEST has all the trappings of a successful businessman who is worth more than half a billion pounds.
We are sitting in the drawing room of his £6million Surrey mansion, where his well-heeled neighbours include an Arab sheikh and Queen rock star Brian May.
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Parked outside are just some of his car collection — a £1.6million Bugatti Veyron, a £275,000 Ferrari F8 Spider S-A, and a convertible Roller worth a quarter of a million.
His back garden has a helipad where the £3.75million Airbus Aston Martin helicopter he has on order will soon be landing.
And he also owns a £5.4million eight-bedroom holiday villa in Barbados three doors from .
As we chat, Alfie’s two mobile phones keep pinging — not just with business messages but vile abuse from trolls on social media.
The star of ITV’s new series, Undercover Big Boss, leans into his sumptuous sofa and says: “I know exactly what the England players suffered at the hands of trolls. You want to try being a rich gypsy.”
Alfie Best was born 51 years ago in a caravan beside the road near Leicester, where the snow was three-feet deep and his parents could not get to hospital.
They have hatred for me because I talk about my wealth in a country where we are not supposed to discuss being rich
Alfie Best
Today, he is the wealthiest Romany gypsy in British history and chairman of Wyldecrest Parks, Europe’s largest holiday and residential park company, whose plan is to become world No1.
He is also the owner of non-league East Thurrock United, which he bought when the semi-pro football club ran into financial trouble during Covid.
As a football fan, Alfie was horrified by the trolling endured by England’s young players after this summer’s Euros.
He says: “Disgusting, disgusting. They were young men with the whole of their careers ahead of them who, by the way, got us to a final for the first time in 50 years.
“They did their country proud but those parasites and trolls turned it into racial abuse.
“These are the same toxic people who have hatred for me because I’m a gypsy — then add to that I’m happy to talk about my wealth in a country where we are not supposed to discuss being rich.
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“I do get a lot of backlash on Twitter and I think there is even a Facebook hate page on me.
“Does it worry me? No. I have got extremely broad shoulders and people have been looking down on me all my life. I accept that. It’s one of the things that drives me.
“I’m not going to concern myself about a minority, whose lives are so grey they have nothing else to do but to find fault in other people’s lives.
“Have you noticed how these trolls never post a photo of themselves? It’s always an obscure picture of something else. That’s because they haven’t got the face to stand up and be counted.
“Let’s not kid ourselves, being a gypsy comes with a stigma. Cher sings ‘Gypsies, tramps and thieves’. Do I think that is derogatory? No. It’s a wonderful song.”
Alfie describes himself as an “old-school, blood and blisters businessman”.
He quit school in Broxbourne, Herts, age 12, because by then he had already been working for two years hawking Tarmac door-to-door with his dad.
By the time he was 17 he was a car dealer before moving into vans then selling mobile phones.
Twenty years ago, age 30, he started Wyldecrest Parks, buying his first 120-home site near Romford, Essex, for £1.7million.
Today the company has 16,000 residents on 91 sites in the UK, Europe and the US and employs 380 people.
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Alfie’s empire is now worth £560million and he aims to become the world’s first gypsy billionaire.
He says: “I was born lucky. I’ll tell you something about being lucky, take this to the bank — being lucky is about mindset.
“If you keep thinking on a negative point you will surround yourself with negatives.”
Alfie was certainly lucky in December 2018 when his Robinson helicopter crashed and he walked away with just a cut to his head.
He recalls: “I bought a helicopter because I had two crashes where I fell asleep at the wheel of the car and hit the centre reservation. I was learning to fly at the time and the crash it was pilot error on my part.
"We had rotary failure and we came down very, very fast from 1,000 feet, hit on one side of the skid and then did like a vertical roll over. I was fine and managed to pull the pilot out.
“He was in intensive care for a week but despite the crash I still believe helicopters are one of the safest modes of transport, and having one allows me to do so much more work getting up and down the country.
“My aim is to be the world’s first gypsy billionaire. I always study the Rich List because it inspires me.”
I was born lucky. Being lucky is about mindset. If you think negative you will surround yourself with negatives
Alfie Best
Alfie’s rise to the top has not been without controversy.
There have been accusations that his company flouted planning laws as the park empire expanded, and some residents have made complaints about his sites.
He says: “Park homes are the answer to the affordable housing problem.
“But local authorities don’t like them because park bungalows are in the lowest council tax band so they often object because they can get more money for bricks and mortar homes in higher tax bands.
“With 16,000 residents you do get complaints — you wouldn’t expect otherwise.
“But part of the reason for going undercover was to find out how to improve our business including how we deal with complaints.”
It is seven years since Channel 4 abandoned Undercover Boss, the show where company heads disguised themselves and went to work on the shop floor of their own firms.
Now, when businesses are reeling from the Covid crisis, ITV has re-launched the idea as Undercover Big Boss, which begins on primetime tomorrow.
In the first episode happily married father-of-two Alfie went undercover as tattooed drainage engineer William Finney and worked on three of his firm’s mobile home parks — in Lancashire, Cumbria and Northumberland.
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He reveals that after the promo for the new show was aired on TV, online trolls accused him of faking scenes.
Alfie says: “I have seen people on social media saying this is re-enacted. Nothing was rehearsed.
“Everything you see, from me clearing the drains of sewage to working on the sites, is real. One of the things I was concerned about was that the team I was working with were going to feel that I’d tricked them or cheated on them and they’re the two things that I can’t stand.
“Finney is my mum’s maiden name and my middle name is William so I became William Finney. It was as close to the truth as we could get.”
The undercover boss even recruited his mum Jane and dad Alfie to pose as customers trying out a holiday caravan.
Alfie says: “I came from a hard-working family. I was blessed by an extremely good mother and father. Would I say they were hard on me?
"Extremely. Would I say they were loving? Beyond belief. My dad is 76 years old and still works seven days a week as a builder doing manual work.”
While undercover, Alfie works with good-natured 65-year-old maintenance man Julio Basso, who soaked up complaints from angry residents whose drains regularly became blocked at Penwortham Park, near Preston.
He also meets father-of-two Richard Saul who lives away from his family five days a week to work as a caravan salesman at a park home site at Port Haverigg, west Cumbria.
After revealing his true identity to Richard, Alfie was in tears.
He says: “There was a scene which was cut where his two children came over and I said, ‘Do you miss your dad?’ They said ‘Yes, we miss him’. I asked if they knew why he was doing it and they replied, ‘To give us a better life’.
“It was like I was re-living what happened in my life because it felt like I walked out the door and didn’t come back, because when you’re running a business, work doesn’t stop at six o’clock.
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“As a boss you have to sort it and your family comes second.
“I used to believe I was the hardest-working man on earth.
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“But when I did the programme I realised I had people who worked just as hard as I did and their passion for what they were doing for their families and for themselves was as great as mine.”
- Undercover Big Boss is on ITV tomorrow at 9pm.
Alfie Best reveals how he doesn't think being born on side of road has set him back in life
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