Born in a caravan by the side of a road, Alfie Best is today on track to become Britain’s first Romany Gypsy billionaire. He shares his extraordinary story from Monaco, the place he now calls home
Words: Selma Day
Alfie Best is on track to become Britain’s first Romany gypsy billionaire – worth a cool £947 million at the last count (according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2024). But earlier this year, his disenchantment with the government and constant hounding over his tax affairs “without finding anything amiss” led him to quit the UK to live in Monaco. “I was getting badgered and beaten to death to the point that I thought, ‘I don’t need this’, and, truthfully, I’d had enough.
“Our tax system is fair – there’s no question about it – but it’s not fair when it’s not implemented fairly and I think the UK is not only losing its wealth – it’s losing its expertise. We’ve lost some of our greatest entrepreneurs – Jim Radcliffe, James Dyson, Alan Sugar, Richard Branson. At no point in history has there been more people leaving the UK than now.”
I meet Alfie in the Nobu lounge at the Fairmont Hotel in Monte-Carlo. He’s looking relaxed and happy in the place he now calls home – and wants to invest his money in countries he feels are more welcoming including France, the US and Dubai. He’s well and truly settled into the Monaco lifestyle, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, driving his Rolls Royce Spectre and spending time on his 27.1-metre Sunseeker yacht, Wyldecrest – named after the mobile-home park business that has helped amass his fortune.
“I love it here, says Alfie,” who has a wife, Emily-Jane, a son Alfie Jnr and daughter Elizabeth. “I wish I’d done it 20 years ago. I’ve come here and it’s allowed me to see what the rest of the world is saying about us at home.”
It’s just two weeks after the UK General Election and the conversation quickly turns to politics and Brexit, which he feels was a lost opportunity. “It was the one time in the history of our country that the Conservatives and Labour needed to come together – the time we needed to unite.
“When we did leave, I actually felt that the country could have turned it massively to its benefit – the UK could have become the Monaco of Europe.
“I thought Rishi Sunak was going to be great. You had somebody from an immigrant background who went and had a great education, whose family came to a country, did extraordinary well and whose son rose to being prime minister. So for me, this was going to be the second coming of Christ – this was going to be a man who understood entrepreneurship, understood business.
“Instead, the first criticism he gets about his wife being a billionaire, his next thing is, ‘well, we’re going to tax all the non doms’.
“The one thing that builds wealth is more wealth – and to say all non-doms in the UK now have to be taxed on their worldwide wealth that they didn’t earn in the UK is just chasing wealth out the front door….but yet our borders seem to be open for everybody else for us to feed. I’m a gypsy so I’m the most unracist, unbiased, unprejudiced person you’ll ever meet, but the truth of the matter is, take care of the people that are actually here already. Don’t keep looking to take care of the rest of the world when the world can’t take care of us.
“I think Britain is a great country, but we need to adjust our thinking fairly quickly. I can only say that I wish Keir Starmer the best of luck because I don’t think he’s got an easy job. There’s a lot to fix in the UK.” He cites charging VAT on schools as another “grave mistake”. What people don’t realise is that more people are going to leave private schools to go to the public sector.”
Alfie, who was born in a gypsy caravan by the side of a road near Leicester in a snowstorm, left school at 12 and helped his dad sell tarmac door to door. At 17 he became a car dealer before moving into vans and mobile phones. He went on to set up Wyldecrest Parks, establishing his first mobile home park in Essex at the age of 30. Since then, he’s built an empire of more than 100 mobile home sites in the UK with 16,000 residents and a staff of around 400. He also has an extensive property portfolio and other business interests.
But life hasn’t always been like this for Alfie who has had his fair share of what he calls “stresses”. “The worst time in my life was when I nearly went bankrupt when I was 20 – at the time I thought that I could walk on water. I had a £500,000 house, I owned a block of flats, I had a van rental centre and, all of a sudden, overnight, I was in a place called negative equity. I never knew what these words meant – I certainly found out a bit sharp. I moved out of the house and I had a [heart] murmur and collapsed across the desk.”
The experience had a profound effect on Alfie who says he still suffers from imposter syndrome and worries about “losing it all tomorrow”. “I think it made me a much more rounded businessman,” he says. It certainly seems to have made him more driven and determined to succeed.
“Once you taste a little bit of success, you keep going back for more,” he says. “It’s like a contagious wildfire. But with success comes a little bit of notoriety and with notoriety, you get a lot of people who expect you to know every mortal thing – like you can wave magic dust. And there is magic dust to success – it’s called hard work and perseverance.”
Alfie is enjoying the fruits of his success and life in Monaco. “I want to set up a company here and I actually want to pay my taxes but I want to be fairly treated.”
Now, he wants to share his knowledge and experience with others looking for the kind of success he has seen. To this end, he’s set up the Best Wealth Network, which enables like-minded individuals to connect, share insights and valuable resources. Its aim is to facilitate collaboration and open doors to new opportunities, in turn, fostering growth and empowering people to achieve their goals collectively.
“What we teach at Best Wealth Network is idiot proof. We’re not teaching rocket science. What I’m showing people is that it can be done. It’s simple. I believe, as long as people are prepared to persevere and put in systems and processes into their life, wealth will follow.
“I’ve done it through sheer grit and determination. I’m not a guru. I’m not clever. I’m not smug. I’m just saying, ‘this is what I’ve done’.
“And I swear to you – it is in everybody. For God’s sake, look at me – I’m a pikey who was born in a caravan and with no formal education. I’m a nobody. But what I can tell you is this – if I can achieve just some of my goals, your readers in their position can certainly achieve so much more than me.”
