Raising a Billionaire: Errol Musk Speaks The Truth About Elon Musk

Errol, what does the world not know about Elon Musk's father?

I think the world seems to know everything about me from what I read, you know. Yeah, I don't know, they seem to. Anyway, the thing is, you mustn't believe everything you read. You know, people, you know, I was talking to Swiss TV on, on Friday, I think it was. And, you know, they was French, so it was easier. And, you know, I was saying to them, you know, they brought up this thing, they know, that Elon had once said that I am evil. That was to do with me supporting Trump, by the way. And. And then Elon's mother, who I had a very, very wonderful marriage to, says I was very nasty to her. I wasn't, she just made it up. But I. I said to the French people that, you know, you take Napoleon, for example. According to the British, he was a villain, an evil villain, very much like a sort of Hitler. And. But of course, in reality, Napoleon was nothing like that. In fact, as Elon, who actually collected memorabilia about Napoleon, including Napoleon's will, last will and testament, Elon said when he was still a teenager, I think he said this to me, maybe he was still at university, I'm not sure. He said, if Napoleon had not been, you know, ousted by the decadent monarchies of Europe, we would have been on the moon. But actually, I think then, sorry, that was Carl Sagan, we'd have been on the moon by the year 1900. And Elon said, in his way, which was much more interesting for him, was that we would have had the Internet by the year 1900 if Napoleon had not been ousted by the very decadent monarchies, to put back into place the feudal system. And of course, I also said to them, you know, every single town or city in the world today, virtually every single one, I can't think of anything anyone that isn't, maybe in the Far East, I don't know, is. Is governed according to the Napoleonic Code. So when Napoleon came in, he said, look, not the way we are living, way people are living, without water, running water, without sewage, without pavements, without proper roads, without storm water drainage, without fire protection and all those sort of things. He introduced all that. So Napoleon actually introduced all those things. And virtually every town, certainly the town that you're in, and town I'm in is run according to the Napoleonic Code. All the things that we take for granted, that was that those were all things that introduced by Napoleon, which, of course, the decadent monarchies had no interest whatsoever in providing the people with Sewage and, and running water and so on. So that's all Napoleon. And of course Napoleon established the Academy of Sciences in, in. In Paris and so on. So I mean, yeah, so there's two ways of looking at a thing, you know. And then I also added, you know, for example, if I want to see Napa, I've been to Napoleon's where he was exiled on St Helena. I have been there. I passed through there on a yacht once. And. But if you want to see Napoleon's tomb now, you can go to the Place de Invalidas in Paris. Just set aside five hours because the queue is five hours long, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So if you want to see Napoleon's tomb, you can do it, but you're going to wait for five hours. And they have a sort of like you go around in a circle around as you come in, you go around and round and round and then it sort of twists down and you go out at the other end. So there's a sort of continual stream of people going around his tomb. And that isn't what one would think one would be doing for somebody who was a bad person, you know, obviously he was a very amazing person and as the people said, he must have been an alien, you know.

Anyway, so do. Do your ex wife and Elon see you as a villain and evil then? Because I want to come with this with an open mind. I, I don't want to project in what's been written in books and other people have said I want to come in with. With an open mind. So, I mean, do you have a good relationship with Elon?

Oh, yes. No, I have a very good relationship with Elon. And you know, as it happens, Elon and Kimmel bought me a Bentley which I drove down from Johannesburg, which is a city and I live in Cape Town, it's a thousand miles away. Drove it down last week and Bentley Flying Spurs. So they bought me that. And that's very nice of them. I didn't really ask for it, but I really like it. And I've always had those sort of cars, you know, Rolls Royce and Bentley and, and so on. So anyway, yeah, so no, I have a very good relationship with them, but they have their own lives. I don't interfere in their lives. I do give them advice. They spent the boys, Elon and Kimmel grew up with me until they left school and, and, and then their daughter, my daughter lived with their mother but was also with us most of the time on holidays. So, yeah, I have a very Good relationship with them. The kind of relationship that I would like to have is what I have. I don't want. I can't imagine having children who don't. Who do less well than I did. I mean, I think that's the worst thing that can happen to a father is, is your, your, your sons especially do worse than you did. I mean, you want your sons to do better than you did, and I'm glad of that. And I have, of course, seven children now, and I raise them all like that. So if anything, all my children, including my daughters, who are from my second marriage, who are 31 and 24 now, they live in Texas and they are very close to Elon and Son and Kimball and Tosca, and they give me advice all the time, you see. So everything I get from them is, do this, dad. Do this, dad. And so they, they teach me. So I just say, yes, yes, yes, you know, and. Yeah, so I'm very fortunate. Very fortunate guy. Very.

Why do you think the media like to try and paint the picture that you don't have a good relationship and that you're estranged?

I think that's, that's makes for good reading. But I mean, it's, it's a bit. It's a bit dated now, you know, because in, in 26, 2016, during the year of 2016, I turned 70 and the boys came out here in, you know, they have. All have private jets and everything, and they brought with them the entire sort of cast of the Jungle Book movie, which was very interesting woman and very beautiful woman and very interesting men, and the director of the film, which is a very successful film, by the way, the Jungle Book. And they came out here with a bunch of children, about 20 children, about 20 adults. And we had this party in. They took over a restaurant here in Cape Town and we had it for the day, you could say. And during the course of this lunch, it was six months before the election in America that elected Donald Trump. And, you know, I live in South Africa. We, we don't have an easy situation in, you know, people here are. We have an unemployment situation of about 60%. We have no government department that functions anymore. We have, you know, every possible bad thing that you can think of. The only thing that's keeping the country alive is the remaining, I would say, European element that. That's here. If they weren't here, we'd be like Zimbabwe and. Yeah, so it's, you know, it's common sense. It's not like I'm saying bad things. All people have their values. But generally in terms of running a first rate country, that takes a different kind of person. Anyway, this Jon Favreau who's the, was the director of this film, he said to me during the luncheon, which was a wonderful luncheon by the way, he said, I believe you support Trump. And of course everybody broke out into laughter. You know, there were these pretty girls, I think Scarlett Johansson and Amber Heard and I can't remember the others, Jennifer Lawrence, I don't know and, but the men I remember quite well anyway and there was a Google, one of the owners of Google was there and, and they all had this terrific laugh, you know, and I said well it depends where you live, you know, I mean if you live in a budget cage like you do, I said like they do like you do, then I suppose it's not important. But we don't live in a budget cage, you know, here you have to carry a gun. Whether it's licensed or not, you have to carry it. You can't send your children out of the house to the shop, they can't walk to the shop. And I believe England's becoming like that now. They're making a very big attempt to make it like that in England and you know, and we don't live in a budget cage. You know, I've actually killed three people who broke into our house for self defense. Well, they fired 52 shots at me and I fired two shots at them.

And you killed three people with two shots?

I killed three people with two shots. But I, I was 11 years in the military here and I'm good with guns and so that Elon is quite good with guns. And it's not that I like guns, it said I, I had to and you know, I won the South African, South African Defence Force Shooting Championships over a week when I was 22 years of age. Not that I, I mean I was one point away from the next guy. So let's not get carried away. You know, out of 2, 000 points I think I got over the week I got, it was from handguns to cannons and machine guns and everything, I, I, I got 1751 and the next guy out of 2000 and the next guy got 1750. So it was not like I was a runaway winner or anything. But anyway, I did win it and yeah, so I, I, I, I was able to keep my head, you know, when, when, when I was shooting I, I also sort of when I was in the military here I was set up for a medal for military tactics because I managed to corner 32 terrorists once in a spot. And we took them what we called terrorists in those days. And, and we had take them in, you know. But yeah, so, you know, so, yeah, so that's what happened. I was able to do that. But so anyway, coming back to this party, you know, they all laughed and everything, you know, and I tried to make it better and I tried to explain to them what my feelings were. And they said I'm absolutely, it's absolutely ridiculous and Trump is a ridiculous character and all sorts of stuff. And I said, I actually said no. I said to Elon and Kimmel, who were sitting there, they were quiet. And I said to them, he's just like us. You know, I followed his career over the years because I was in much the same type of business of property development. And, and, you know, I said, he, Trump is very much like, like Elon and me and, and Kimmel. And anyway, after the lunch was over, you know, the boys got hold of me and said to me, Jesus, what the hell do you think you're saying? You know, you've totally embarrassed us and all that sort of stuff. And, and Elon, you know, said I was evil for I'm an evil bastard. 4. 4. And Kimball, of course, I've never heard swearing from him in his entire life. He's very straight sort of guy. But he was swearing at me, you know, and saying, you know, he's done with me for, for saying this and all kind of stuff. Anyway, I said, you know, sorry, you know, I, I, I, I mean, that's how I think, you know. Now, of course, it's all changed. So Elon, El. Supports Trump, which is, he's learned a little bit. You know, I'm a little older, and it's, it's not a question of Trump specifically, but it's, it's the type of policies that, that Trump and, and people like that have, which are the right policies for people like us. And, and so, so, you know, it's completely changed now. And I mean, Elon is Trump last week, you know, said he's going to, I mean, he's going to make Elon. He wants to make Elon. If these Democrats can't cheat their way into another win, he's going to, he's going to make Elon the person who checks the efficiency of government departments. Now that's, that's really a hell of a thing. Elon is a machine. So when he, when he goes in there and does something like that, Elon is not, he's like a machine. So it's not like he has empathy or anything like that to work to bank on. You either up to scratch or you're not, as far as he's concerned. And so in a way, unless he's mellowed slightly, I think I can see those government departments being whittled down by about 75%. As you may have seen when he took over Twitter at that ridiculous price. I told him that if he had. Excuse me, I got a bit of cold. If he had, if he had waited until the following April, but they put him into so much pressure, couldn't. He could have bought Twitter for about $7 billion. But anyway, bought this huge place for this huge amount of money. So anyway, he immediately reduced the staff from 8,000 to 1,000. In fact, he gave the job to my brother's son, who's a very smart boy who came out of Berkeley with top honors. So he runs Twitter, James Musk. And he brought it down to 1,000 people. And they asked Elon, well, how do you manage? He said, well, the place only needs about 1,000 people to run. So if you talk about Elon being the efficiency expert for the American government, I think there's a lot of people out there who must be thinking, how do we get rid of Elon? You know, we don't want that. You know, we're all on a cushy wicket here. I, I was looking this AOC was a bar made or something. Interesting girl. Obviously she's pretty and everything, but she came in as with a total asset of a hundred thousand dollars. They estimate a total assets of something like, I don't think it was less, actually about $60,000. And she's now worth $29 million, which is quite odd after one session of Congress, you know, but it's happening all the time. I mean, Biden, who's been getting a salary, government salary of a couple hundred thousand dollars a year for 50 years, he's worth, I don't know, they say he's worth 165 million or something, probably more. But we all know he's been selling the American secrets to the enemy. I mean, he's a. To anyone will buy them, actually. And I mean, these are rotten people, rotten to a core. And the only thing they're good at is getting themselves elected to do jobs that most people don't want to do. I mean, I was a city councillor for 10 years. I was asked to be a city councillor of Pretoria. I was very young, I was in my 20s. I really thought I was going to Be doing interesting things. But as soon as you become a city councilor, you sit for two or three days a week with a pile of papers in front of you a foot high, and it's all to do with toilets and street signs and, you know, all sorts of incredibly uninteresting stuff. And, you know, it's only very now and again that, that anything of interest comes to you, you know, so that's the real situation of people in, in, in government. It's. It's a hell of a boring job. You know, most people just wouldn't. Most guys just wouldn't want to do it. You know, I mean, if you take 10 guys to get stranded on an island and, and they say, all right, let's make you the, you, you know, you yourself, the, the, the lead guy, and maybe one guy to assist you, and the rest of us will do, I'll do water and he'll do bananas, and he'll do, you know, fruit and stuff. And, and most guys would opt for, I'll do the bananas, I'll do the water, I'll do the fruit and stuff. I don't want to sit here adding up with sticks in the sand, if you understand. While, while you guys go out and have a good time, you know, that's, that's the reality of the world. And it's those guys who sit back and tell you up and see who brought what and who did what. Terribly boring. Terribly, terribly boring. Much more fun to go and collect bananas, if you follow what I mean.

I do, yeah. I'm fascinated, fascinated. Errol, why do you think Elon U. Turned so much on Trump? What did he disagree with you before and what does he agree with you now?

Well, you have to understand that we, we are from South Africa. And although, of course, separate, or what do you call it, racial discrimination was extremely rife, I mean, under the British Empire. I mean, you know, and in America for that matter. I mean, up to about 1950 to 1960, I mean, there was the same policies that were followed in South Africa, were followed all over the world. So apartheid was not just in South Africa, it was everywhere. I mean, the British had apartheid in all their countries around the world. The Dutch had apartheid. No person of color was allowed to come to Russia, to Holland, was allowed into Holland. That was just normal. And so we were left with the end bit of, you could say, what they call apartheid or separate facilities for different races. I mean, in England, I was in America in the early 70s, they still had racial signs there, whites only in certain places. In the south, the black woman only got the vote in 1965 in America. I don't know if you know that. And anyway, the thing is, what was I going to say now?

Yeah, so Elon's uturn.

Yes. So when, when, when you come from South Africa and they went overseas. So Elon went in 1989, I sent him to America with a view to studying there. He comes over as we were still in the throes of apartheid here. So he arrives in America as a somewhat. A white person from South Africa and the media and things like that. In places where he went especially, you know, I suppose in certain some place not in the south but where he went, had painted South Africa as a very bad place. If you, if you came from South Africa as a white person, you must surely have been a, a racial oppressor or something like that, a racist oppressor. Of course he wasn't. But in order to become accepted and this happened all the way through with all my children, right down to the one that, the youngest one that's there Now, Rose, who's 24, they have to, what do you call it? What's the right word? They had to dispose or decry South Africa as a place. They, they had to come across as, when they went there as people who fled for the sake of not being a part of the so called oppression in South Africa. And, and so they would, including my, especially my young daughters, they would, they would espouse the, you know, the white, most anti South African things to make people accept them, you know. And Elon, which is not true at all, you know, told people he left South Africa to avoid having to fight for apartheid in the army, which is not true at all. You know, he was sent because I sent him to America to study. It had nothing to do with apartheid and, but it works well to tell, it worked well to tell the people that. And I had the situation with my daughter, who's now 31, 32, she was at the University of Colorado. And she said they are terribly nasty to her because she's from South Africa. This was when she first went there, which was, oh, let's see, about 2014 or 2013. And they, she said, they're terribly nasty to me, dad. She was crying. So I said to her, well, what did they say? And she told me, well, they say, you know, that she's from South Africa and she's bad and all that sort of stuff. I said, just ask them where that. Just say are you sorry? And everything. But when you have an Opportunity then ask them if they can show you where the Red Indians are living. And, and because you want to visit a Red Indian village, this is real. I really did tell her that. And she said, why? Because you see the art done, they kill them all. So they won't be able to show you a Red Indian village and then they'll never ask you again, they'll never trouble you again. And she did that. They never troubled her again because, you know, that was the circumstances there. There were 26 million people of the so called Red Indian origin in America. When the Americans arrived by the 1900, there was 1 million left over. Left. They killed them all. You know, so that's what they have to have had to do. So any, like in that luncheon at that point in time to be, to be, to tell those people from Hollywood or, and, and even the Google people that were there and some Tesla executives that they actually agreed with me was very hard for them to do that because at that point in time they couldn't. And in the meantime, people like John Favreau have turned completely against Elon Musk. Jon Favreau's an idiot. He's done well with movies and he's made some good stuff, but he's not a smart man and you know, quite frankly an unpleasant person in my opinion. But the thing is he, he, all he does now is badmouth Elon, you know, on, on Twitter and, or rather X and on, you know, other media and stuff because Elon has turned around and said he, you're, you're all wrong. And it's. The reason Elon has done that is not because Elon is just trying to be funny or something. It's because Elon has realized that the, where things are going and, and he does. Elon went to America because America was a dream compared to South Africa. And now they're turning the American dream into a hell where people are thinking, wait, let's go back to South Africa. You know, it's better here. And you know, so anyone who looks at the Biden setup, which was obviously faked, it was a fake election. I mean, I'll bet my last, last cent that it was against 10% of whatever you've got that it was a fake election and you can start sending me the money. By the way, it was a fake election and you know, and now we've got these people who are basically selling out the United States and turning it into a. I don't know what their plans are, but at the same time, I must say I spent Two months in Texas, and I've been in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, New York State, Virginia and so on in the last few months. And I must say, you see very little of, of this wokeness. In fact, you don't see any of it. You don't see anything. It's, it's all in the media. It doesn't exist, simply doesn't exist. And as my daughters, they've said to me, dad, it just doesn't exist here. We don't see anything. And my daughters live in Austin in Texas, and it's probably the most upright, straight, decent community that you can possibly imagine on that basis. I lived in England as a small boy and I was from 10, 10, 11 years of age, two years. I, I know a lot of, I went around with my mom because she, she was from England and she sort of split from my dad and we, she decided to take me and my brother back to England and we, we went to England and we stayed with all the relatives in different places in England. So I, as a kid, I, I got to know London, I got to know Bristol, I got to know Liverpool, Gloucester, Blackpool, Southend on Sea, Western Super Mare, everywhere. I knew the places. I still remember them very well. And England was, was fabulous. It was a fabulous place because they loved children. That was the thing in England. They absolutely love children. I, I, it was a big experience for me to go to England. I, because here children were sort of shut up and go and play outside type of thing. But in England I realized, boy, these people loved kids. They loved me. And I felt like a new person from going to England. When I came, my mom made up with my dad and, and she came back and, and we came back to South Africa and I came back immediately to drama, you know. Yeah, terrible drama. You know, getting home from school was very difficult because the South African Dutch kids would catch you and they would, you know, defecate into your school bag, urinate into your school bag, throw your school bag on the rail alliance, you know, whatever, you know, because there was terrible unhappiness here. But I fortunately had two years of unbelievable good experiences in England.

Was there a, a moment where you thought, maybe I've raised the most important man for the future of the world? I mean, Elon is very important man in media, free speech, you know, maybe the progress of humanity. Was there a moment where you saw that?

Well, I always saw them as a chip off me, a chip off the block. And as kids, you know, I, we always have, we discuss things at length often listen to them when they were teenagers, what their thoughts were on things they were then thinking much like they do now and it was the fact that they went over to the States that they sort of changed and said, you know, that they trying to disassociate themselves from South Africa as I said but as they went along, I mean I've always been very technically orientated. So I started out as, as a, as a young man I, I got a job with a consulting engineering firm from England and they made a ter, it was a very famous firm and they, they made a terrible mess of a government job here and they were giving war, they were given sort of marching orders from, by the South African government at that time, this was in the 70s and, and I, I took over their, their one branch, I said I'll take over their own one, their other Bronch. I was 23 years old, I was, I, I, I barely professional status and I said I'll take over their practice, the practice if they'll sell it to me. I bought it for what today is an astronomical amount of money. But I managed to pay it back within two years. I, I, I was one of the most successful consulting engineers in, in the country. I was doing all the biggest projects and you know, I, I, I, I did the same as Elon in a way. I mean, you know the home I bought when I was 26 years of age, I was there last week. It's the home of the European Ambassador to the Southern hemisphere to Southern Africa at the moment. Previously it was the headquarters of the United nations for Southern Hemisphere but it was a home that Elon grew up in. I bought that home when I was 26 years of age. I mean that's like one of the most finer homes you could ever imagine. So it gives you an idea, you know that I did extremely well like, like Elon in a way on a smaller scale. I mean and you know we had everything, you know, yacht on the ocean, house in the light in the bush, twin engine aircraft. Many I've had about 40 twin engine aircraft and you know I started driving Rolls Royces around about 28, the age of 28. I bought my first Cornish when I was 28 and before that I, I had Mercedes but I, then one day I saw a Rolls Royce. I was taken by it and I've had many and I've got one in the garage now and I have a Bentley now as well. And yeah, so they sort of learned from me when they went overseas. I sort of saw them changing but I always thought technically they were they were up on things. I. I mean, when Elon was a student at Wharton, you know, he got a college. He got a scholarship to go to Wharton, which was very helpful because Wharton was $250,000 a year. And anyway, while he enduring one vacation, he went to work for Pinnacle Research in California. And they were trying to develop a battery. Not a battery, a capacitor that could act as a battery, you know, which is still being studied at the moment, big time. Instead of having a lead acid battery, you have a capacitor which is capable of storing the same. And that's the future, in fact. And he came back saying, no, with this. With this type of capacitor, we could. He. Of course, he came back all the time for holidays. I brought him back and. And they could have an electric car. So he was talking about electric car even then. So when he started out into the technical side of things, I had no doubt that they would do well because I had done well. I assumed that. I didn't think Elon would do so well in the. In the. In the other parts of the spectrum, like politics. But at the end of the day, politics is 50% of our life. It's not a little bit of our life politics. People don't realize it is 50% of everything. And. But as far as technical success, I had no doubt about them being successful. Kimball started a restaurant. I kept telling him, very good food. Start a restaurant. He started three restaurants in Alice. And the last time I counted, 3,581 restaurants. Wow. 3,581. He has to have a jet to get around to them. He gets from one city to the next. That's the only way he can get to all the. All the restaurants, you know, so he's got a private jet, the most beautiful private jet and a big private jet. And. And that's how it gets around. And Elon, of course, the same with. Elon has a fleet of jets. I mean, he has about seven or eight, but. Yeah. So technically, I had no doubt that they would do well. I'm now looking at whether they will do well in the political realm, especially Elon. I mean, it's still active. The situation is somewhat active. And as I explained to him, when you get into this world, they don't try to just deprive you of your money or your shares. They actually try to deprive you of your life. You know, they kill you in this. In this field. So you've probably seen things like recently Maduro, this criminal who runs who's managed to get himself crookedly into running Venezuela, which was. Was a lonely country, you know, in a completely faked election. Recently, Elon, he took Elon to task this Madeira, you know, so. And it wasn't only him. I think there were others. Oh, yeah. In Brazil, they say, we're going to get you, you know, and. And so on. And so, yeah, you enter into a situation where you have to have a lot of bodyguards.

Wow. So Andrew Tate came on my show recently, and he said that there are three stages once you become powerful. First of all, they want to cancel you, then they want to imprison you, then they want to assassinate you. Yeah, he's. He's imprisoned or has been imprisoned. Now, Andrew Tate has. He fears for his life. Do you fear the same for Elon because he's very outspoken?

Well, you know, Elon is very, very powerful. So, for example, recently it was Putin and who else said that the American government is going to have to reason with Elon, going to come, have to meet Elon. You know, you can't. Elon can decide whether you have Internet with Starlink. He can. He can. He can do anything. He can do anything he likes. I mean, he can launch a rocket. He can land it anywhere he wants. He's the only viable launch facility in the world. The rest are all play, play now. They'll play play. He's real. So when he launches three rockets a week and brings it back to Earth, which is this year's tally so far, it's three a week. And now he has to go and rescue people from the International Space Station. And, and, you know, and Bennett, Benjamin Netanyahu said Elon is the de facto President of the United States. So, you know, obviously, you know, these. And then he has an enormous following. So Elon's following is in the hundreds of millions. So it's not like, you know, he's weak or anything, you know, and you are up against people who will. Will do bad, bad things. I mean, who would have thought, for example, that in England, this guy who was once a spy for the Soviets, what's his name, Rodney Stormer or something, you know, that's his real name, by the way, Rodney Stormer. He was a spy for the Soviet Union. And now he's the Prime Minister of England, and you don't even know that. And. And so now was. He was a spy in Eastern Europe for the Soviet Union. He wasn't a spy. Apparently not a spy in England. But now he's putting people in jail for saying, we want Our country back. Oh, you know, I mean, no one can believe it. I, I mean, and, and then he's got the police there backing him up. I don't know how they, how they do it. I, I can't understand how they're getting the police to, to go along with this. It doesn't make any sense at all. It's very un English by my reckoning. Something really odd going on there. And, you know, I haven't been in England for a while. I was invited there, as a matter of fact, talking about illegal immigrants. I was invited to go to England in July, that's this past July, about eight weeks ago. I was invited to say a few words at Westminster Abbey at the, the 30th anniversary of the end of apartheid, which was being hosted by the South African embassy. And I was invited and I was asked if I would say a few words, which was quite an, quite an honor, I thought, you know, imagine saying something investment savvy instead of walking around and looking at everything quietly. Anyway, so I didn't go. The reason was I, I, I had a medical checkup which was, turned out to be a false alarm, but it was a, I was asked to stay for this medical checkup. So I gave it up. I said, look, I'm not going to come. But that, the real what happened was that led me to not apply for my. Although I'm eligible for a British passport through my mother, it led me to not apply for a visa. And you have to apply for a visa three months before you go. And then it's about £200. And that's a lot of money because an American visa is about £40 and visa for Schengen is about £40, but England is £200.

Why?

I don't know. But at any rate, because. And then I decided, okay, well, let me see if I can go about four weeks, three or four weeks before it was due to go. On the 15th of July, I got hold of the embassy here and they said no, because I've waited for, for this length of time. I have to get an expedited visa. And that's going to cost 1400 pounds. 1400 pounds for a visa for three weeks to go to London? That's that. I mean, I could just go on a rubber boat, you know, why not? I mean, that would be easier, you know, I mean, why would I want to do that? And then of course, the last time I was in England, I was driving in from the northwest towards London. We were staying at the Marvel Cumberland at the Marble Arch area and. No, yeah, that's right. And, and Cumberland Hotel. And then I, I, I started driving through a town that had carts and horses and donkeys and I thought I could understand where it was. And everybody was an Indian. Every single person that I saw was from, was an Indian, you know, from India. India. And I thought, what the hell is going on? You know, people cooking on the roads and stalls and everything. This was in London. And I realized, oh, I've stumbled into a sort of, you know, a sort of ethnic spot or something, I don't know. And you know, that's, that's not very attractive, if you know what I mean. It wasn't attractive to me anyway. I thought, well, you know, this is crazy, this is crazy. I mean, I'd love it if I could go to Karachi and, and find myself in a, in a nice English spot with roses and everybody's nice. And that's not going to happen, you see, because we don't have, it's not quid pro quo, you know, it's only one way it seems anyway. Yeah.

So are you a bit scared for Elon and what might happen to him?

Yes, I'm not scared. I'm a worry. I'm concerned. So I warned him from the, when you see about two years ago where this started was about two years ago where there was nothing happening. I used to try and ask him up to about two years ago, what do you think of this happening? Anyway, he was, but non committal. But about two years ago, Joe Biden invited all the electric car makers of America, I think it was early 22 or something, to the White House, but didn't invite Tesla. And at this White House one week or four day event or something, Biden, this prick Biden introduced General Motors as the leading car, electric car maker in America and saying that we're going to be electric by 2035 and all that sort of stuff. At that point in time, General Motors had built 26 electric cars, one of which, only one of which was sold, apparently sold, but 26 were built, but they sold one during the same period previous year, Elon had sold about a million Teslas. And so he wasn't invited. And this shook him, this shook him. It really shook him. He couldn't understand this and he started making political statements in that early January, February period. This is leading up to taking over X as well. And, and I said to him, you know Elon, you're making political statements. You do realize these are political statements that you're making. These are not Statements that people look at and rush to their, to buy shares or something, or sell shares. You are making political statements. You're going to have to have are your, how are your, how are your security, how is your guards and everything, you know, and then not only that, I said to him, who are the people who appointed your gods? And who are the people who appointed the people who appointed the people who appointed your gods? You followed me. And, and so he took that, he took notice of all that. And I have since about six months ago I was there with Elon and eight months ago now and, and I did meet some of his, his security people. I mean they are absolutely the finest guys I've ever met. So he's some of the finest guys I've ever met. Gentle, but geez, you know, I wouldn't get trouble, I wouldn't look for trouble with them. But gentlemen, no, not to look for trouble with them, but anyway, so he's got about 30 now and of course it's a 24 hour day thing, you see. So he has, he's with, he's always within earshot of a God 24 hours a day. Wow.

I want to ask you, I want to ask you in a moment about your journey and career because I know you're very successful in your own right, but before I do, do you think Elon is happy?

Well, no. Well, yes, yes, of course he's happy. He's happy as, as anybody could be. He's still essentially a tech guy, if you understand what I mean. So, you know, in fact, in some ways the political scene is a fun scene because you don't feel like you're to blame for anything. But in tech, if you're not making progress, you do feel it's your fault, you know, and you do feel lousy because with tech you, you know, you go, you're either moving ahead or you're not. With the political scene, well, you know, you realize it's, it's, it's such a, it's not like that. But anyway, so in tech, Elon, I would say, feels he's coming to terms with it. He has come to terms with it to a certain extent, that he would have liked SpaceX to be where it is now about five or six years ago, you know, because for us, every year is part of your life. We tend to measure things in terms of our lifespan. So, you know, you've got X amount of years to achieve this. It's not like you've got, you know, unlimited centuries or hundreds of years to achieve Something your lifespan is what it is and if you haven't achieved, got to a point by a certain stage, you can measure and you can say, well this is not. I'm not going to make it, I'm not going to get where I want to be. It's a bit like sportsmen who have a limit, you know, especially like the top sportsman. If they're not with a. At a certain point by the time they're 20, then forget it, they're not going to, it's not going to happen, if you know what I mean. So in the same way it's very similar and, and so for him he would have. Tesla has been very successful him. So I was in, as I say I was in America eight weeks ago and about. And, and every third car is a Tesla. Every, every third car is a Tesla. So if you and I did 1500 miles there this time, driving from my, from Austin in Texas to my other daughter in Georgia, I'd start this drive. And, and so I can honestly say it's not just in one place, there's every third car is a Tesla. And if you want to wonder what, what does a certain type of Tesla look like? You just look out the window of your car and then you can see one go past and say, oh, that's how it is or that's what the bumper looks like or that's what the doors look like or something like that because they're going past you all the time. So it's about one in every third car and if you go to a stop, the charging stations exceed the petrol pumps by a factor of about five. So there's five times more charging stations than there are petrol pumps and they're all full. That's another thing, by the way, that's unreal. You arrive with your Tesla and then you've got to wait for a charging station and then. But again it's only 40 minutes. It's in 40 minutes you could do a full recharge. 20 minutes you can do a half recharge and it's quite amazing actually. And then you do go in and have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or something because they're very nice shops there. And what am I actually on about? You know, so he's done well with Tesla. So he doesn't.

Is he happy?

Well, I mean he's fairly happy. Like it to. I think he would like the self driving to be where it is. He feels he's behind on the self driving and that. That works on him. You know that works on a person. He would have liked the result. Driving to be, or be a done thing at least two years ago. But he's up against so much legislation, you know, and, and then of course SpaceX is, is a big one, you know, he, it's, he's trying to get there and what he's done is absolutely staggering in terms of what he has done. In fact, I don't know if, you know, they have a group going up now to orbit at the level of the Van Allen Belt radiation belts. You know, they're going to orbit for a period of time, short period of time, hours, and then they're going to descend and then orbit again. They can go up and down, if you know what I mean, into distance from Earth and this is going to be a high orbit. In other words, it'd probably be about a thousand mile orbit up or maybe more, I'm not sure, but about a thousand miles from the surface. You know, the space station was only about 200 miles off the surface and it's safe there. But if you go higher up you go into these radiation belts and there's a lot of speculation about the radiation belts. You know, how did the people who went to the moon go through these radiation belts and survive? You know, so they are, he is doing, that's a step forward. But at this stage I would like to, I would think he would have liked to have had something actually on Mars by this stage, you know, or at least one rocket that arrived there or something. So he's feeling a bit worried about that. You know, his next step is 60. I mean his next age step is 60. I mean it's 53 now but, but it's next step to sit for 60, you know, then it's 70 and you know what, you know, that's, that's your life. It's not that long.

This recent budget should warn you that your pension is not safe and secure and they're coming for your inheritance. Do you even know how much is in your pension or where your pension is invested? Add to this the recent inheritance tax grab on your pensions and the risk of a market crash. You probably didn't know this and I didn't until recently, but physical gold can be added to your pension. Pot gold is inheritance tax free and has grown 700% in the last 20 years. You probably know from my content I'm investing heavily in silver and gold and that's why I've partnered with direct Bullion. Myself and Nigel Farage are brand ambassadors and Direct Bullion can help you with gold to protect and grow your pension. I buy my gold and silver from direct bullion and I don't earn any money on any purchases of gold or silver if you buy direct from direct bullion. So if you go to robmore.directbullion.com you can get a great price on your silver and gold and you can get the pension Gold Investing guide completely for free. As you know, I don't do many strategic partnerships and when I do, I do them with people who are credible, who've been doing it a long time, who invest in things that I invest into. And gold and silver's going well wild. I'm investing heavily in gold and silver and I recommend you check out robmore.direct bullion.com. you know, so it's, it's interesting, you said earlier about empathy, or maybe not too much empathy. And everything you've talked about with Elon's happiness is about progress in his businesses. Was there like a lot of love? Was there love in your family? Is love something that Elon feels, expresses and shares?

Yes. I mean, obviously we're a very close family. You know, I mean, I, when I had this medical problem, you know, a few months ago, I went to the hospital and they sent me a bill for, I don't know, let's say £25,000 or something. And I didn't, I, I didn't know what to do about it, so I sent the bill to, to our family. We've got a family company that runs the family. You know, it's like a company that runs, it's got an MD and everything. And, and they immediately paid the 25, 000 to the hospital. And, you know, immediately, I mean, within a day it was paid. And then I discovered that my medical insurance had already paid as well, so we had to get the money back from the hospital. So, yeah, no, we care, obviously, you know, we care tremendously about each other. And then I, I see how, how much the Elon and Kimball care about the sisters. You know, they're four sisters. Three, four. Three, four sisters. No, one, two, three sisters. And how much he cares about. They care about them and, you know, they don't go without anything. You know, they really aren't expected to be responsible, but they, they take such good care of them, you know. No, no, no, there's nothing like that. Elon is very empathetic. I told the people in Switzerland the other day, you know, when I was overseas, when I was, when Elon was about 14, I went, I Used to actually travel quite a lot as a consulting engineer. And on one occasion I went to the Messi in Hanover and the Messi is a big show, industrial show and I went with Siemens there and I came back and it was my birthday and Elon presented me with a disc, a cassette. And he said, dad, you got to listen to this. Got to listen to this. Remember it was a white cassette and we put it on into our stereo and that. And it was Louis Armstrong singing, singing what a Wonderful World had just come out. And he said, dad, you got to listen to this. You got to listen to this. He was only about 14 and he's. And we listened to this. Now I remember him sitting there staring into space and then he said to me, isn't it amazing? Isn't it amazing? And it's, it's, it's, it's a song where, where the guy is singing and he's saying, we say hello. When you say hello, we're really saying I love you and all that sort of stuff. Elon is a very soft person. Very loved it. He, he, he's a very kind, soft person. You know, he has to put on a bit of an act when it comes to being strict and so on. But I think when it comes to business affairs, he is very strict because he knows where the, when you go off the line, if you go off, off the line, you're in trouble. You, you have to be, you have to know what you're doing. I mean, I, as a young consulting engineer, I was in my 20s, I used to have contractors that was 30 years older than me and they used to try and pull their stunts. I sometimes, and I, I had to get this, rip them right. I was in charge. So I, I had to, you know, it wasn't a question of, you know, you just have to. And that's in the technical world. But no, Elon is very soft, kind person. And as far as happiness is concerned, when I was with him about eight months ago at Boca Chica where we launched that big starship, he was with Siobhan, who the girl he likes at the moment. And he's with at the moment. I mean, what a lovely woman. And I, I've never. The love between these two was just out there. But it was just so wonderful to see. And I worry about it because Elon's, he's not a smooth looking guy like you, you know, you look like one of these guys all woman swoon over. Elon is a sort of a nerdy sort of guy, you know, he never quite knows what to say. He's not a smooth guy at all, you know. So he's not very smooth when it comes to women and that, you know. Yeah, I mean, he tries. I was the same to a large extent. I mean, you know, he's not a, he's not a, he's not what A player or what do you call it? He's, he's tends to be a bit, you know, sort of. I think women would find him dull, you know, and not smooth, you know, not up there with the smart repartee and all that sort of stuff, you know, so, but, so it's very nice for me to see him with an, a really smart girl for a change. You can see what he's really about. And that's Siobhan. I mean, this is a seriously smart girl woman, you know, she's like I had 200 IQ, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

So I understand you're a very rich and successful man yourself. So how did you make your money?

Well, you know, I wouldn't say I'm a rich and successful. I'm, I've always had everything, you know, I had everything that you can have. I had everything you could have by the time I study. So there wasn't anything left. I mean, you know, there wasn't anything left to have. I mean, I've had everything by the time I was 30. Everything. Every single thing, including the most beautiful woman. Elon's mom was the most beautiful woman and, and, and so on. So I've, I've been fortunate. I, I tended to use money for the things that, that I wanted. Like if I, for example, once started to, I wanted to have banana farm. So I bought a banana farm. I didn't think about or buy shares in a bona farm. I sort of bought a monarch farm. Then I started tomato farm. And then I bought chairs into a game reserve. So I, I, I, I use what money I had to make life more interesting, not just simply build up some sort of huge nest egg of money, you know, and, but I was fortunate enough in the type of work I did to take shares in a lot of the construction that we did. And so that when I was a single father in the 80s, I started to become a single father in the 80s for Elon and Kimball. I was able to stay at home. I bought a horse student and we raised horses. And I more or less gave up consulting only to select clients that I work and did I work for and, and I kept horses with them and I was there. I used to take them to school every day of their lives, collect them from school, everyday lives. So I never built up any, any fabulous amount of money or anything like that. I, I've never been without money, thank God. But I've never built up, you know, huge amount of money. I've never, never done that. I left it to them and, and I was quite amazed when they started off their first business, Zip2 in 1975. They asked me as South Africa was going through a very difficult time at that stage because we'd just gone over to a, you know, sort of so called democratic government and there was no business people leaving the country and everything was just, everything was on hold. Nobody wanted to do anything, nobody wanted to buy anything, nobody wanted to develop anything. And people, many people were moving to trailer parks because I couldn't pay their houses anymore. And what was I going to say about that now? I forget, I forget what, what the point was. Anyway, the thing is, what were you talking about initially?

My question was how did you build up your wealth?

How did you build money? Yeah, so. Oh yeah, they start, they wanted to start this first business. So I didn't really. I had, I owned about 50 stands, what we call stands, it's a house stand. What do you call it? A, what do you call it in England? A stand?

I don't know.

Yeah, you know, they call it Irvine in Dutch and a lot in America. And I had about 50 lots in, in Sandton which is a very upmarket area. And, and I was stuck with paying the, I couldn't afford to sell them, nobody could buy them. And, and, and so I had to pay the monthly. I didn't enter into a special arrangement with the Count City Council to, to, to, to be able to pay the monthly tax. You know, the monthly tax that you have to pay every month. I couldn't, I just couldn't afford it. And, and, and, and, but I eventually sold all these stands by about the year 2000. But money was very hard at that time. But I did manage to put together some money for them and I sent it to them for this first business and Kimball said to me that without that money they wouldn't have never been able to make it. But after about six months I actually went over there at the end of 95 to see what was happening and I really didn't quite know what they were on about. They were talking about the dot com and you know, in 95 we didn't really have even Internet in South Africa, you know. And so you know, a few people had it, but very few. And anyway, when I got over there, they told me that they'd been to see a publishing company. And this publishing company publishes 11 newspapers. And they'd explained to this publishing company that unless they go onto the Internet, they're going to fall behind. And this publishing company was publishing the San Francisco Chronicle, the LA Times. A lot of major newspapers were being published by this company. And they. They listened to Elon. Elon people only 24, 23 at the time. 24 and 23. And they gave Elon and Kimmel $4 million, $4 million, $4 million in 95. And said, all right, take this money and see what you can do. I mean, who the hell gives a. Two little boys in those days? All right, we've had our. We've. We've seen this happen again with others, you know, with the different Internet things businesses. But who the heck gives $4 million? I mean, Peter Thiel gave Zuckerberg $500,000 for. To start Facebook. And they were given by Nitra $4 million. And I arrived at the airport, and they came at the airport and they showed me this little check was a tiny little American check. Our checks was this big. American checks were that big. And they showed me this check made out to both of them for $4 million. So I thought, well, wow, who gives you $4 million? I mean, what the heck? I mean, that was like. With that money, you could never, ever, ever, ever have to work again. So I said, what are your mistakes? 400. Can you. Can you use this money? And they said, yes. I said, well, take 400,000 rands and put it in South Africa. So if you have to run away, they just laughed, you know, they laughed at me. And of course, they used that money to put 75% of the newspapers in America onto the Internet. 75%, including the New York Times, who, by the way, they charged $47 million to put the New York Times onto the Internet. The New York Times refused to go onto the Internet. They said that it's nonsense. And when everybody else was on the Internet, New York Times contacted Elon and said, well, we need to go on the Internet. So Elon said to me, how old are you, Dad? I said, I'm 47. He said, okay, it's $47 million. The next day, got a check for $47 million.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, wow. All right. So do you have Errol? Do you have any shares in Tesla or any of Elon's companies?

I own about 27 to 30% of Tesla. My son, through my son, I don't need to own any, right? I don't need. I don't need to own any shares in Tesla. I don't need to earn any shares. We own a lot of shares in Tesla and if Elon had his way, he would definitely push it to over 50%. But, you know, because then he can tell them what to do. But at the end of the day, it's probably good the way it is. No, no, I don't need to worry about buying shares in my son's businesses. We already have shares in those businesses. So even, even when I do have said to them in the past, I could do this or I could do that, say, oh, dad, go travel somewhere, go to Hawaii, have a trip somewhere, take a trip, interview some. I've said, well, I'd like to get involved with you. Can I do this? Can I send it, dad, Travel, why don't you travel? Why don't you go where? Have you ever thought of going to the south of France and renting a boat there, you know, on the rivers or something? I said, well, I have thought about it. Well, they do that. So, you know, that's the attitude to me. And I must tell you, you know, it's really funny. In 1970, shortly after that holiday, that birthday thing, I was diagnosed with, I needed open heart surgery, you see. Oh, wow. So I had the open heart surgery and worked out all right. It was pretty gruesome, but anyway, it worked out all right. And after that they contacted me and said, you know, they were still annoyed about the Trump thing, but we saw, they sort of forgot about it. But they said to me that they, they think I should go into a home, into an old age home, and they want me to start looking for, For a place to go, you know, So I, I said, no, no, I'm still flying an airplane, you know, so I don't want to go into all that, you know, but. And that's the way, I mean, nice kids think like that, you know, they think like that. So if you're a nice kid, you think like that because your parents may not think like that. I remember my mom who died at the age of 90, you know, when she was about 80, 82 or something. My brother and I, he's a doctor, we thought of, wouldn't she, Laura, rather be in a. In one of these, what do they call it, retirement villages, you see, and we went to her. She had an apartment of her own. She's. She stayed in that apartment till they started. And she Was. I don't think we ever actually got to the point, you know, we sort of entered to her, but none of my. My brother and I had the guts to. She was a real British woman, you know, and she would tell you straight away, I'm British, if you. If you start any nonsense with me, I'm British to tell people that, you know, when we're on trips and everything. And so we never really got around to it, but we sort of tried to hint her, wouldn't she rather be in a retirement village? But she. I don't think she even replied to us, you know, because any case, every time we went around to my mom, she had a huge meal waiting for us, you know, she spent hours preparing. Just lovely. And so she didn't really seem like the kind of person needed to be in a retirement village, you know, and.

Yeah, you have, I believe. Oh, it's all right. Elon has 12 kids, is that right?

Yeah, he has 12 kids, so sometimes people think he has 10, but he has 12. Yeah.

Do you know the names of all your grandkids?

I do, yes, of course, but I'm not going to list them. I'm not going to go over the names. No, but I know all the names. Of course, course. You know, and the ones I like.

How many?

That's right, yeah.

In total. How many grandkids do you have?

In total? I have about 20.

Wow.

20. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And.

And how does that make you feel?

Great. I mean, it's lovely. I. I mean, it's really nice. I mean, they all, you know, you think of each one in terms of the, you know, how they doing and everything. And I was just. My daughter, she heard two, that she's got a son, a boy and a girl. The boy is seriously smart and beautiful looking. And, you know, you see them as they grow up. You don't. Of course, they live in America. I see them every few years and every time I see them, you know, I just can't believe it. And. And her daughter, my granddaughter Isabel, she's. She's a. Not a tenor. What do you call it when a woman sings? Hi. Soprano. Soprano? Soprano. She's sings like she's doing. Singing. She sings in things, in. In shows, you know, as a soprano. That's amazing. Unbelievable. You know, you think, well, gee, where does that come from? Yeah, you know, you know, you.

You said earlier that you give Elon advice. What advice do you give Elon?

Well, now I give him the advice that he's on the right track and that he. I Don't have to give him advice because people are saying it all the time. On every media outlet I look at, they say, elon is our hope. Elon is the hope for us. Elon is our hope. And you can't. When that, when you see that hundreds and hundreds of times, you can't ignore it. You know, I think I got a message this morning from someone in, somewhere in Europe saying the same thing to me, somebody I've never heard of, you know, saying, elon is the hope. I hope, you know, and, and so, and you know, Trump, Trump is, you know, he sort of shoots himself in the foot by sort of talking like a New Yorker, you know, sounds a bit like he's bragging or something, but they are like that. But Trump is a very good person. And I mean, he, they, they criticize him, but he took a small, he got some money from his parents, but he turned himself into a billionaire. You can't. I'd rather be with somebody who took a little bit of money from his parents and turned it into a billion, billions of dollars than, than someone who got a lot of money from his parents like the man in the Bible and, and squandered it on, on, on, you know, on booze and everything. I mean, you know, so Trump, Trump is a worthwhile character to look at as well. And, and I think the ideas that, that, that, that he's talking about are the ideas that we we dis, disly need to get back to, because these new ideas are not good ideas at all. You know, I mean, there's always room for improvement, but not to wreck society and not to teach children that they could choose from 72 genders and all the sort of crap. I mean, you know, there's, and there's nothing new to that kind of thing. I mean, it's been. I remember as a kid, you know, there, it's nothing new. So, you know, just that at the moment we've got Obama with a man called Mike Robinson or something, and that's. He pretends to be a woman called Michelle Obama. And then you've got Macron who's with his male teacher from school who pretends to be a woman. So I think they seem to be wanting to ratify that and make it normal, but it's not normal, you know, But I mean, there's always. I remember as a kid, you know, May and I, I worked at a steakhouse when I was a student, and this steakhouse in Johannesburg was a very, very successful steakhouse. And the owner, of course, Was big shot. And one day he liked me, and he liked me. I think he liked me more than me. But anyway, he said to me, he wants to take. He was in his 40s, late 40s, and he said, he wants to take us to a nightclub, you see, in Johannesburg. Johannesburg in those days was better than New York, better than London, better than anywhere, as you can imagine. It was a diamond capital of the world and all that sort of stuff. And so we went with him to a nightclub, May and I never, ever had heart attack or whiskey or anything like that in our lives. Anyway, we went to this nightclub, Diamond Horseshoe it was, and we sat in this booth that this Rob actually seemed to have a right to use and everything, you know, and was rather nice. And there were. In those days, they used to have a sort of swing band, you know, like a real band, you know, not. Not a disco. And there were people dancing in this nightclub, you see. And as we'd gone in, I. I looked at some of these women on the dance floor. Oh, gee, these are beautiful women. Then. And then Rob said to me, the owner of the restaurant, he said to me, errol, what do you think of these women? And I said, whoa, Rob. I said, these women are so beautiful. And the one was in a red dress with blonde hair. He said, what do you think of her? I said. He said. I said, oh, man, Rob, that's got to be the most. I mean, May and I couldn't keep our eyes off her. She was probably the one of those beautiful women I've ever seen. So he said to us. He said. He said to me, they're all. That's a man. That's a man. So I couldn't believe it. He said, that's a man. I said, no, no, no. And then I sort of made excuses to get up and walk through the dance floor, you know, a few times to the toilet to. To have a better look, you know. But I just couldn't. Couldn't get it into my head that this was a man. He said, no, no, it's a man, you know. So you see, it's not new at all, you know.

Yeah.

That I was 18, so. 18 or 19. So, I mean, you know, it's not new at all. Yeah. You know, So I. I think people make too much of it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Is there. Yeah, yeah.

Is there anything Elon does that you don't support?

No, I can't think of anything. No. No. I support everything he does. He's very kind to people. I would say he gives he's, he's got $9.8 billion in a, in a, in a, him and Kimmel, they earn this $9.8 million at last count, which is a huge amount of about £8 million billion pounds that they've got in a, in a sort of help you trust, you know, that you can apply to, you know, for help but they only focus on helping tech, if you know what I mean. So I was involved about two years ago on helping people who look after brain damaged people, you know, and they came to see me and asked me if I'd help them. They've got sort of refuges or so refuge, refuges in different, I don't know what they call them really because you can't look, you know, when somebody gets brain damaged, like a kid of yours who might fall in the swimming pool or something like that, you, all the parents always think well I'm going to look after the child. But when the child gets older you can't. You need three people for every one of those people to get them through the day. You know, it's just impossible. And I saw this and I went to some of their places and I saw it, I was absolutely amaz, heartbreaking to see these beautiful people, still quite beautiful people like that. Anyway. And they asked me if I could help them and we did help them a little bit. And then I did a painting of Elon which they, which I had for a long time, which I, I, I did it when he was 18 and I, I gave it to them. I fix it up nicely and I gave it to them. It's a big painting, a big painting and of Elon on his way to America and because I do a lot of those and, and he, they auctioned this painting, they wanted to auction this painting in Florida about eight, nine months ago. I went to the auction. They didn't auction the painting. They, they, they've got to auction on loan to the new New York Metropolitan Museum. Now it's on display. So they've got it on loan there and it's going from there to somewhere in California. And, but they sold prints of the painting at the auction. They sold 150 prints at around about $2,000 each. So they, they made about $350,000 selling prints of this painting that I did. And, and so that was quite nice. And so yeah, so they help, what do you call it, their trust or whatever you call it to help is aimed at tech. So if you want to improve something tech wise, you can apply to, to them. You Know, but they don't really want to send the money to other things and I'd say they should actually do that. That's about the only thing I can think of.

Okay, so is there a secret you've never shared or a story you've never told Errol?

Offhand, I can't think of anything about them.

About you, about your life.

Yeah, there are things that of course people have experienced in life you don't want to share with anybody, you know, horrible things that have happened to you. But you know, let's say I've had my fair share of them and the people made their mothers had her fair share of them things.

You don't really share one thing.

No, I really, they very unpleasant stuff that you had to deal with in life. But no, you know, no, you know, we've had our fair share of misery, let's put it that way. So, so we try to work our way out of misery, you know, not try and dwell on things like that. And, but otherwise we, I can't think of any specific secret of mine that I have, you know, not that I can think of, you know, have to sit and think that's worth talking about.

I mean, is there anything about, anything about you or Elon that's very misunderstood?

Yeah, well, I, I, the things they say about Elon, some people say, you know, that he's a villain and he's part of the deep state or something like that. That's nonsense. I mean he's everything, anything but. And you know, so I don't like it when I hear them stupid people saying that he, he got unnecessary help in his life or he, he's a spoiled kid or something like that. He's nothing of that nature is true. He did go to school in a Rolls Royce, as it happened. He did, he did go to every capital city of note in the world before he was 12 years of age. So he had. Luckily my mother took me to England when I was 10 years old. That was a big wake up for me. So I was able to take my children before they were 12 years old to the Far east, the Middle East, South America, North America and Europe. And so they'd been to nearly every place you can imagine by the time, they were certainly 12 or 15 by the time. 15 for sure. And so, yeah, so they did have every, they always known a, they've always had a private aircraft. They, they've always known what it is to sail on the ocean and our own yacht and all that sort of stuff. So they're not they didn't grow up as poverty stricken kids. On the other hand, they didn't grow up with unlimited funds. But my experience with people who did have unlimited funds or citizens to limited funds, they, they didn't give much to their children in any case. So. Yeah, no, we're actually not a very complicated bunch of people. We're not, we're not that complicated. You know, we, we're really straight. That's, that's all I would say. We're very straight down the middle and not self opinionated or anything like that, you know.

So Errol, we finish on the disruptors round, which is a quick fire round.

Yeah.

So we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 questions, quick fire. What's the biggest disruption that's ever happened to you in your life?

Divorce. From Maze. From Elon's mother.

And could you say in a sentence or two why?

Well, I, I, we were very close from the school time. We went to school together and I never ever expected to be divorced. And by the time we'd been married for about 10 years and before that we'd been going out for about six years, I really probably at that point in time was giving more attention to the work that I was doing than I was to, to her. And she also has a degree in science and so on and, and I never really thought it was necessary for her to work or anything like that. And she was just always at home and we, we had a private chef, personal chef, we had many servants. So I think she was like very unhappy with things and she decided she wants to go on her own and she made quite a big life for herself after that and it was a big shock to me, but I didn't object to it and I agreed to the divorce and we were, I knew people in the courts and we were divorced from, in one week, from the day I received the summons to the, to the divorce was one week. Wow. I just did it right away because I thought there was no point in, in, in, in not doing it and I set her up in a big home that we had in another city and, and yeah, but it was a very big disruption to, to, to my life. Very, very, very disruptive disruption. Turned everything in a different direction. It did give me an opportunity to pursue horses, as I said, and sailing, which she didn't like at all. And then flying, you know, I've flown the length of Africa, she didn't like flying at all. So I was able to do a lot of things myself, but it was a terribly big Shock. And it still is to this day because she still writes in magazines and stuff about how bad I was to her. Of course I think she exaggerates, but at any rate, 44 years later, she's still talking on interviews like this about her marriage to me. Even talks about her honeymoon now, 44 years later or 50 years later. And so clearly it hasn't, you know, worked too well for her either. It was a terrible disruption. On the other hand, I remarried and I have two daughters that I cannot imagine the world without. Those two daughters of mine, they are. Well, simply put, Elon and Kimball adore them and that's enough, you know, so that, you know. But that was a big disruption.

What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?

The biggest risk I've ever taken. You know, I suppose when I was very young I. I borrowed £8,000 to buy that first business and I too put my parents house up for collateral. I mean, if I think of that and if it hadn't worked out, my parents were prepared to do it. They were very simple people and they did and, and I was able to pay that back. I mean, that was a bit of a risk. But it turned out quite, quite well for them as well because, you know, I was able to see to them afterwards as well, you know, look after them. I was just telling somebody on a. On another discussion years after that I managed to pay that money back. And then my parents had a. A car that they'd used for a long time. I forget what it was, some sort of car, Ramblo or something. And I bought the car that came out was a Cortina. I don't know if you have them, they're Cortinas. You heard of the Cortina? Anyway, it's a British sort of car and it was a very nice car, quite a big car. And it came out in a 2 liter automatic, you know. And I brought this car, brand new for them, blue and white, I remember, and I took it to them. Or I forget how we did it, but anyway I gave it to them. And my father, who was simple guy, he was a crypto analyst during the war, you know, for six years he was. His nerves were shot, damaged by the war. He could never stop shaking, you know. But at any rate, he refused to take the car. He said no, whose car is this? And I said, well, I got it for you. No, no, whose car is this? And I said well, I got it for you. So I, I got it for you. He said no, no, no, no one. I Remember his exact words, no one can buy such a car. No one can buy such a car. His words were, no one can buy a car like this. And I said, well, I did. And he said, no, no, no, no, there's trouble here. This is trouble. This is trouble. I was obviously in my 20s, so you can imagine his doubt, you know, his doubt, he probably thought I pinched it or something. And I don't know why I'm telling you that, but, you know, they were simple people. They put up their money for their house, so that was a bit of a risk, but they did it and, And I was able to succeed. Yeah. Otherwise, let me think. You know, I, I mean, every time you, you take off, you set off from the coast with a yacht. I've traveled. I've done Cape Town to Europe, around the bulge of Africa. I've done twice to South America, once on my own. I've done the Indian Ocean four times across to India. Every time you set off in a yacht, it's a risk. It's a kind of risk. And every time you take off in a small airplane, of course it's a risk. So I have lost two. May's father was killed in a plane crash. My sister's husband was killed in a plane crash, a small plane crash. And. Yeah. So every time you do that, it's a risk. So as far as other risks are concerned, I can't really. I think every day you, you, you, you set out to do something, there's a certain amount of risk, but as you get older, I think you make less risky decisions, you know, I think so. I think so.

Does he. What's the biggest risk Elon's taken?

Well, in. He started off with this rocket business, and he had about $180 million in about 2002. Now, this was an astonishing amount of money to have, you know, and, and he had this money, this cash money, and, and he started deciding what to do with it. And initially he decided to start this rocket business. And he thought he could do it with a little bit of this money. But then suddenly, the people that he once spoken to about electric cars going back to when he was a student, he decided to look them up, and he found that they were working from a sort of garage, their own house garage or something, and they had built an electric car. And so he decided to buy their company, to buy the whole company. That was what became Tesla. So that was a sort of risk of $20 million that he bought, paid off all their debts and took over the company. And this Went on to him actually disposing of the guys who started the business because he felt they weren't business like, you know, and there was a big argument about that, but fortunately they sold. I sorted that one out, thank God. But at any rate, so he made friends with them and put them back in the pound seats. But then he was left with about a hundred million dollars when SpaceX looked very, very shaky and no one's ever really made a success of that. And he plunged this remaining $100 million, including some of it, into Tesla, because Tesla did not take off immediately. It definitely didn't. And when you start working with electric cars or cars and rockets, 180 million, there's a drop in the ocean. One launch of the Starship now is 2. $2 billion. Wow. Yeah, $2 billion to launch the spot, the starship. So, you know, anyway, so he was, he took this, those risks where no one I have ever known in life. Well, I imagine there are people and some of the most extraordinary people I've met probably did things like that or a similar sort of things, would take their $100 million that, that most of us would say, wow, well, I'm okay, I'm going to go and live in Switzerland or something and plunge it into a, into a business that, that everyone said has absolutely no chance of success. And that was SpaceX. As it is today, SpaceX is the only viable launch facility in the world and it is worth about $500 billion. In reality, of course, they value it at $180 billion, but in fact it's worth about $500 billion, if not more, because there's nothing like it. And now you add Starlink to SpaceX, where they provide WI FI to the entire world and will provide WI fi to the entire world from a cell phone next year, from a cell phone at a much better WI Fi and at a very good price. You can imagine how much SpaceX must be worth. But that was an incredible risk to take because he did actually find himself unable to pay salaries at Tesla at that point. Wow. 28, 2008. It's an interesting thing about Elon. In 2008, he didn't know how he was going to pay salaries. And I was back in South Africa and he said to me, dad, how are you doing? And I said, well, I'm battling, it's tough these days. I'm struggling a lot here. I was struggling a bit at that point, point in time because we'd moved the whole family down, my second wife and everything down to the Cape and so on. We were trying to get re established down here. And as I said, South Africa was definitely not a place to expect to do well. Anyway, he promptly sent me a, a large chunk of cash in the middle of, of the worst possible time that he was in, which enabled me to get by for a year, you know. And, and that tells you something about Elon. I never asked for it. Never asked for it. I need, I never suggested it or, you know, half suggested or anything. I just said it's really tough, but we're getting on, we're going, it's all right, we're managing. And promptly sent me that money. So without any, any request. So that gives you some idea of, of, of, of, of Elon. Yeah. And what's the next question?

The next question is, what's the most disruptive thing anyone's ever said or done to you?

I suppose again, it comes to me, I want to be divorced.

What about the people that tried to kill you?

Huh? What about the people that tried to kill you? Kill me? Oh, I went to school in South Africa, by the way. You know, if you go to a high school in South Africa, you, I, I, the, I try to explain it like this, you know, if you, if you went to school in England when you're perhaps your age or, or you know, 40ish, or whatever you are, 50ish, you look up your old friends from school and you go, they look you up to have a get together. If you went to school in South Africa at 14, 50, there are guys who at school with you are looking for you, who are looking for you. I don't think you understand what I mean. That's a difference. That's different. Yeah, so, so I, this is a tough place, a harsh place. And yeah, so I've had many people over the years say I'm going to kill you. And of course, of course, you know, if you take somebody's girlfriend away from them, that's enough to want them to kill you. No, I mean, I've had lots of things. The most disruptive thing I said in my life was divorced from me. That was the most disruptive and shocking, you know, shocking why? You know, anyway, so, but I mean, I, as you go along in life, you, you might, of course, you know, not only that, I mean, when people that are very dear to you pass away, it's very, very difficult to deal with that. I, I lost the stepson in a car accident quite some time ago in 26, 2006. It feels like yesterday, if you know what I mean I was actually thinking it was 2015, but it's 2006 so it was 18 years ago. And you never quite get used to that, if you know what I mean, you know, you can't even really discuss it. So everybody has that problem, you know, I would imagine.

What's your most brutal life lesson?

That's really a life lesson. People let you down. I guess not everyone is smart. Most brutal life lesson that you can have is, was something that happened at school when I, what I learned at school. When I was in school we had a four master who kept our class for three years. He wanted our class for three years because we were all so smart. And in our final year he was a British guy and he said to us, an old British man and he said to us, son of his father and he said to us, you are all gifted. And we all sort of said, yes, we're all gifted, thank you. And he, oh sorry. And he, he said, but when you go out into life, you're going to find that it's not like that in the world. You're going to find that you're only 10% of the people in the world. The other 90% are nothing like you. And I remember him telling us this several times, a few times and thinking about it and then it only comes home to you when you are out in the world and you realize how different people are and how 90% of the people in the world are not particularly what you would like them to be. 90%. And that's quite a hard lesson to, to, to, to, to. To. To learn and you know. Yeah, they're not, not what you would have, would hope them to be. Yeah, it's a tough lesson to learn.

So this show is called Disruptors. What does the word disruptive mean to you, Errol?

Well, to wake people up. I'd say it sounds like a. Wake people, wake people up to things and wake people up to that things. You might not be noticing what's going on around you properly and you should. Disrupt is a good name. Good name, good name. And wake people up to, to. To take more notice. People are too complacent, especially British people, English people of which I'm very much one very complacent about. Government. We always presume government, you know, just doesn't do anything wrong, you know. And I think for example, my father was a cryptanalyst. We never knew what he did in the war because we would ask, I would ask, you know, but when I was about 30, 30 years of age, it was the first time I heard what he did in the war because he was subject to the Official Secrets act and he wasn't allowed to tell anybody what he did. And when. When in 1976, I think it was, he said to me, if you want to know what I did in the war, he gave me the name of a book and he said, get this book it's written. I can remember it very clearly. It's called Bodyguard of Lies, and it was written by Anthony Strong. And it's. You should read this book. And I went and bought the book. In fact, it was a very thick book. And it was to do with Ultra and Enigma and what the people did during the war. And, you know, and the fact that he kept quiet about it for 30 years showed the respect that he had for. For, you know, for government and Disruptors is starting to tell people, wait a minute. You need to look at what is going on around you. You can't just be complacent. It's not always good. They're not always doing the right thing, you know. So I would say it's a good name.

Thank you. UK just got labor in. Just a quick take from you off. If you think labor and Kirstharmer is going to be good for the uk.

No, no, they're clearly not good for the uk. Clearly not good for the uk and they are. They're taking traditions. England was the place that taught the world that you can talk, that you can be who you want to be, that you can. That's why so many things came out of England. And. And he's putting a lid on that. He's putting a lid on the English people. You can't put a lid on the English people. That's the one people in the world that. You can't put a little. You can put a little Germans, put a little on the French copy, a little on the British. Tell me how you can put a little on the British. I'd like to know. And so he's trying. The guy is a. Is a. Is a mini, Mini, mini. He's not a. He's not. He's a mini person. I don't know how he got into this position. He shouldn't be in that position, you know, and just a sign of things in the world when these type of people are getting into these sort of positions. What worries me is how much the police in Britain are going along with him. You know, England was a place where as a child you could. You could see a policeman and you could ask him anything. You, you could do anything for it with a policeman was, was like your, your, your, like your dad. It was like a stand in for your old man, you know, or, you know, in terms of if anyone was giving you a hard time, you know, that policeman was, was somebody, you know, that you could rely on 100%. And now they're changing that. I, I don't understand it. No, no, this guy is terrible. What worries me is in this last election, I understand that only about a fifth of the electorate took part in the vote, which is because they weren't disrupted enough to worry about voting. And now look what you've got. And yeah, I don't know where this is going to go. And maybe it's in itself a disruption which might lead to better things, you know, in itself it's a kind of disruption. It's a wakeup call to people in, in England, I don't think. You know, I, I, I appear on a few British programs. I have appeared on a few British interviews. Talk tv, London Talk TV and all that sort of stuff. And they, they are, I hear that, I can hear from them. They're terrified, afraid to say certain things. They're afraid to ask me things like you've just asked me. They're kind of afraid because they might be closed down or they might be arrested or something. And who would imagine that in England, you know, I mean, I think it was George Werner Shaw is. He said, you owe your country total respect and the government, when it deserves it. George Renshaw. Yes.

So I want to leave this show on a positive note. So what is the best advice you ever remember receiving?

Well, I suppose the best advice I, I ever got in my life was I had a British grandfather who was most extraordinary man, very, very polished, very refined. It's a silly, silly example. And he asked me to do something for him one day and I, I was probably 10 years old or something, and he, I did it. And then he, he said he'd give me a sixpence. And, and I said, okay. And I didn't. When I was finished, he said, can I have the sixpence? And he said to me, you can't be paid for everything you do. So I still remember that you don't get paid for everything you do. And I said, all right, granddad, that's fine. Then. And then a little later, he gave me the sixpence. Yeah, that's, that, that's what I remember. But I mean, you know, the advice I've had, I've been so fortunate. I've Been with the leaders of this country. Oh, another important advice. I was with the President of this country on one occasion, and in those days, I. This was in the early 80s and I, I was well known in, in political circles and I knew all the cabinet and everybody, and I knew all the very interesting men. They were brilliant men. And I was with the, the, the, the Prime Minister or the President, I think it was then changes to President. PW Bother. And, and I said to him, I was giving him a lecture at a cocktail party. I think his daughter was staying with us, and we were invited to his house. And anyway, we went there and I was giving him a lecture on how South Africa should be run. This was about in 1982, you see. And then he said to me. SPOKEN AFRIKAANS IN DUTCH South King Dutch and he said. And he called me Mr. Musk, which was kind of weird because the previous Prime Minister called me little brother or boot little brother, you know, the previous Prime Minister, John Foster. But he, but P.W. birder called me Mr. Musk. Anyway, I was a kid compared to him. But anyway, he was very nice and very respectful guy. And then he said to me, you know, Mr. Musk, he said, when you run a country, you aren't running a business. You don't only deal with the A level. You don't have the top A level people to decide on everything. You have to. He put it much more eloquently than I'm doing it now. He said, all my. My team is made up of cripples, people who are not particularly clever and some who are downright stupid and some who simply can't do anything at all. That's my team and your team that you've got. Because at that stage we were putting up Sun City and places like that in South Africa, I was the consulting engineer, one of the consulting engineers. You, you could only. You only use the best people. But I can't do that. So that was quite a good lesson to me to think about when it comes to government, you know, and for that matter, people who teach in schools, teachers, they then always have the A team, you know, most of the time you, you, you have to deal with everybody and you have to give everybody a chance. You can't just. That's something that Elon needs to learn, because Elon is very, you know, sort of towards those who are super smart and not particularly happy with those who are not super smart, you know. But in fact, you have to give everybody a break. You have to try and give everybody a break. It's it's just simple. It's not, it's not, it's not rocket science, you know, that's what I would say.

Errol, I really appreciate you taking the time to be on disruptors and a pleasure, thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. Thanks for having me.

My pleasure. Errol, before we go, are you anywhere on social media? Do you engage with any discussions with anyone?

Well, you know, I, I, I am a member of X. I don't really use it much. I read it occasionally. Everybody else seems to use it all the time. I don't particularly have a need to use it. No, I, I'm not on any platform that I can think of. I don't use Facebook or anything like that. I have a Facebook page, but I don't comment much and I haven't had a, had much cause to do so, you know. And also it's a question of. A few years ago, the boys said to me, Elon Kimmel, my son, said to me, dad, please don't make comments in the press, in the media because it, it, you know, it's, it's a problem for them. So be very careful what you say to the media. And an example of that is that Elon made a comment once on, on Twitter where he said that, I think I'm going to take Tesla private for $420 a share. And for doing that he was fined $40 million. Oh wow. By the SEC, you know, so, and another occasion, a silly occasion. This is pretty weird. There was these kill children caught in a cave in Thailand. And Elon, it all happened in 24 hours. So you have to imagine. And of course it's halfway across the world where it's happening. So you're in the dark when they're in the light and you're in the light when they're in the dark. So he got this message that these children are caught in this cage and they can't get out because trap, they have a water trap. I think you probably remember. Do you remember something like that? No. Anyway, so what happened was, I'll just tell you. Anyway, so Elon contacted them and said, look, I will build a submarine, a little mini submarine to go into these caves and bring these children out. This is all in 24 hours. And the, the, the, the police in Thailand, the chief of police said to Elon, don't worry to do that because we've got a lot of petties here who can do this job for, for us, you see. And Elon didn't understand what he said in Diving. You have, you have naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty and petty. Professional association of divers is petty. And then you have the nautical underwater associate. There's two of them. And what the police chief was saying is, we have a lot of petties here. That means patties. Professional association of divers. Elon received this information that they're handling it with a lot of petties in Thailand. And then he said, well, pities are no good. Pedophiles are no good for that. What can pedophiles do? Do you understand? And, and, and he was sued for a hundred million dollars. Yeah, he was sued for 100. He, he didn't understand what. He didn't know what a petty was. Listening to the Thai police say petty was he. They heard petty. We have pities here. A lot of pities, Mr. Mask. We have a lot of petties here. Don't worry about the pities are going to get the children out. And so in America, they said, well, how the hell are the petties going to get these kids out? You know? And then Elon tweeted this and said, well, petties are not going to. Pedophiles are not going to get these children out. And he was sued for 100 million. The, the case was thrown out of court, but that's the result of saying things without thinking, you know, all right, depends who you are, you know.

Errol, thank you very much. Really appreciate your time.

This episode was brought to you by Disruptive Media, helping bold entrepreneurs stand out through podcasting, video and social content. Visit disruptive media.co.uk to learn more. Sa.