When I retired I became a businessman, but few people know what my business is. I always try to explain that top tennis players are business people. They run a company to manage their name and their brand. Roger Federer is the best example. He has a company, a huge tennis business that uses his name and his distinctive ‘RF’ logo as its primary brands. Federer is the chairman, chief executive, the major shareholder, the chief financial officer – he’s everything, but he has a lot of employees. I know he didn’t study at university, but the job made him like that. I was very similar. I had a big turnover as Boris Becker, not only through prize money but endorsement deals and television appearances. The whole business of being Boris Becker was very big, so when I talk about becoming a businessman, I mean that I took a more hands-on role in managing my name and my brand.

To some, that may sound distasteful. It happens to all top players while they’re playing, but they don’t try to sell it too openly because it doesn’t look good for fans around the world. If you think of business and sport, do you play because you can make a lot of money? No, you play because of the competitive instinct, and the money is a nice bonus. It therefore doesn’t come across well if we try to market our brands too ostentatiously, so no-one admits to it while they’re playing, but that’s exactly what it is. Nowadays more than ever players can’t admit to it.

It wasn’t a big change for me because I’d done it most of my life. But it was a big change for others. People were surprised to see me in a suit rather than tennis shorts. It would look odd if I went into the office in shorts, so I had to dress differently, but I was still the same person with the same philosophy. That’s the dilemma a lot of sports stars have when they enter into their second career – the image from the first career is so strong that you can’t be taken seriously in a suit or a 9am meeting because people expect you to be on court at three, and that still happens to me today, more than 15 years after my playing career ended. Sportsmen and women have a harder time entering their second career.

Today I run my brand, but I also have a company, Becker Private Office, based in Mayfair, which involves me dealing with finance, private equity.

I’ve obviously had good years and not-so-good years. I have investments in real estate, the car business, technology, and in social media where I invested little bits in start-up companies. Altogether I have over 200 employees, and I can proudly say that this is a genuine second career following my career as a tennis player.

However, it is a very separate career, one that doesn’t seem to the public like a natural follow-on to having been a top-level athlete. I think many tennis fans think that retired players live a life of leisure, getting up after the rest of the world has gone to work, lunching at some tennis club, or waiting for the phone to ring with some invitation to talk about past glories. That is a long way from the way I live now, but it’s strange – ironic even – that so many people don’t see my business career as something that goes with the Boris Becker brand.

I like to think I understand the value of money. I’m a big spender on my family and friends, though not necessarily on myself. I spend a bit of money on my hobbies. But I have an understanding of money, the importance of it, the necessity of it. After all, I run three families, so I need to understand money.

I’m grateful to tennis for giving me great lessons in that. How to be disciplined, how to be future-oriented, how to take decisions that could affect my family and me, good or bad. So I’m constantly aware of the need to manage life and money. And I love it, I love the fact that I have kids who know that when the house is burning they can call me and I can help them, and that includes their mothers, with whom I have good relationships. I don’t think anyone should take that for granted, it doesn’t happen in every case of broken homes. But I have a patchwork family and I have to act accordingly. My kids deserve that, and therefore their mothers do too, regardless of whether I have conflict with them. And they give me so much back for it, so that’s another reason why I like to work, why I like to be busy.

As I’ve said, I didn’t go back to Wimbledon in 1998 after semi-retiring at the 1997 Championships, but there was no staying away the year after my full retirement. In 2000 I was asked to come back for the millennium parade of champions – and I wasn’t going to miss that. All the living champions came back, including Björn Borg who was back at Wimbledon for the first time since his last final in 1981. It was one of the most amazing afternoons, and thankfully there’s a photo. But I wasn’t involved in any other way, and I wasn’t living in London, so I came for the ceremony and then flew home.

In 2001 I still needed a sense of separation so didn’t come to Wimbledon, but then in 2002 I was asked if I would commentate for the BBC. I felt honoured. German is my first language, English only my second, but I liked the work, and in my first year I was asked to join the team for the final, which is very nerve-wracking. I obviously passed the audition, as I did every men’s singles final from then on until 2013. I felt very respected and welcomed, and that built another sense of relationship with Wimbledon.

I was in the news for a couple of years around that time for reasons I wouldn’t want. The break-up of my marriage, the subsequent divorce, the furore around Anna’s birth, and a horrific lawsuit in which the German tax authorities tried to have me jailed because in the early 1990s I had spent a few nights a year in my sister’s flat in Munich when I had notified them that my sole residence was in Monaco. I got off with a fine and a suspended sentence, but the enormity of the lawsuit was brought home when I was refused entry to the USA to see my boys for Christmas because I was branded a criminal. It was an inhumane experience that I never want to go through again.

I think I was so much in the news that people got a bit tired of me, and nobody took the time to see what really happened to me. I also think there was a bit of jealousy. Most people going through a difficult court case, going through a divorce, going through a child born out of wedlock, would have their backs to the wall, but I did pretty well to keep my spirits up and maintain my sense of self, considering what I had to go through. I think that’s another reason why people who don’t wish me well seize on this time. It’s like they can’t believe it – like they’re saying ‘When is this guy falling down? Everyone falls down sometimes. Why isn’t he like us?’ And my answer was ‘Well I was never like anyone else, I am myself, I am Boris Becker.’

I suppose that added to a sense that was developing: that I wasn’t totally comfortable with Germany any more. I was living in Zurich at the time, which is German-speaking and less than an hour from the German border, but as I tried to work out where the next stage of my life was taking me, I found little irritations about Germany became bigger irritations.