Eddie Jordan’s send-off was as riotous as his life, writes OLIVER HOLT

There was a memorial service to celebrate the life of Eddie Jordan at Westminster Central Hall on Monday. It was riotous, just as Eddie’s life was.

When his widow, Marie, spotted a friend beginning to cry when they met before the start, she scolded him gently. It was not to be that sort of occasion.

Nor was it. Eddie’s was a life well lived, a life that was cut short too soon, but a life that had given him love, children, grandchildren, happiness, success and a rock-star lifestyle in Formula One. A thousand people and more who loved him celebrated all that he was when they flocked to this cavernous venue.

And as the service came to an end, Eddie’s old Silverstone band, Eddie and the Robbers, were joined on stage by Rick Astley, Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford, performers from Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance and a cohort of clapping, stamping F1 drivers, among their number Damon Hill, Mika Hakkinen, Martin Donnelly, David Coulthard, Johnny Herbert, Martin Brundle and Eddie Irvine.

As they clapped and cheered, footage on the big screen behind them showed Jordan jumping off the pit wall at Spa in 1998 and skipping joyously down the pit lane in the aftermath of Damon Hill’s victory in the Belgian Grand Prix, the first triumph for Jordan Grand Prix, the day the sport’s great disruptor entered the pantheon of its greats.

The day after Lando Norris won the British Grand Prix for McLaren and huge crowds swelled the stands at the old aerodrome at Silverstone, everything seeming to confirm that the sport is in rude health, it was worth remembering that today’s heroes stand on the shoulders of giants like Jordan.

After the service, we all went down to the Lecture Hall and Library and savoured the joy of seeing old friends and resolving to meet again soon and recapture those days of the 1980s and ’90s that were at the heart of the youth of many of us, swapping stories about Eddie.

Mine are only fond. Like many, I will always feel I owe him a debt because he, and friends of his like his commercial director, Ian

Phillips, were welcoming and friendly to me when I came into the sport in the early 90s and introduced me to people who I might never have met otherwise.

It was Eddie who egged me on, with indecent glee, to do a bungee jump at the Indianapolis 500 in 1993.

He told the story ever after of how petrified and inelegant I looked — and was — as I plunged off the platform. It was the first and last time I ever did a bungee jump. It would not have happened without him. I remember how amused he was when Bob McKenzie, from the Daily Express, and I offered to take him and Phillips to dinner at a fancy restaurant called Le Roannay in Francorchamps during another Belgian Grand Prix weekend.

As the night wore on and the wine flowed, he invited Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone over and the night got better and better, Flavio ordering the best grappas the restaurant served. They had to wake Bob and I at the end of the night when everyone else had gone — and then we saw the bill.

I swapped a few messages with Eddie a couple of years before he died in March this year at the age of 76, and he was still laughing about that night.

‘Reminds me of Spa when da journos PAID,’ he wrote and I could hear him laughing.

He was still full of mischief. Not too long ago, he gave me some information about a deal he thought was happening in F1 and was delighted when we ran it. ‘U did brilliant to run da story,’ he wrote. ‘Bravo.’

Bob was there on Monday, of course, and Ian, with a few genuine rock stars, a lot of grandchildren and many of the drivers who drove for him.

There were a lot of songs and a lot of reminiscences of a man who, as Hill had said recently, ‘had the energy of a nuclear power station’. There were plenty of readings, too.

His daughter, Zoe, read beautifully. It was one of the only solemn parts of the afternoon. She recited A E Housman’s poem To an Athlete Dying Young.

‘Now you will not swell the rout,’ she read, ‘Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran, And the name died before the man.’

I thought then of sport and loss and of Diogo Jota, a young man, humble and amiable, a loving husband, father, son, brother, champion, footballer and friend, taken so, so early, and of the terrible tragedy of a full life like Eddie’s that was snatched away from Jota in an instant.

There is something so noble and vital about a life in sport, a life that represents vigour, youth and triumph, that the loss of men and women in the arena, men and women who have lived our dreams and given us so much, seems even harder to bear.

‘The time you won your town the race,’ Housman’s poem begins, ‘We chaired you through the market-place, Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high.

‘Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.’

What a strange coincidence 

Even limited exposure to elements of the Premier League is enough to make a cynic out of a saint.

If it were not enough that Arsenal should have continued to pick Thomas Partey for nearly three years knowing he faced allegations of rape, what a strange coincidence that the player should be charged three days after the expiry of his Arsenal contract.

The brain glitches with tech errors 

One of the problems with technology in sport is that officials are so in thrall to it that it steals away their common sense and ability to exercise judgment.

When Britain’s Sonay Kartal hit a backhand that was clearly long at a crucial juncture of her match against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Sunday, chair umpire Nico Helwerth ordered the point to be replayed when it became apparent the line-calling system had been inadvertently switched off. 

Pavlyuchenkova was, rightly, livid and the authorities are fortunate that she went on to win the match.

The issue is that the shot was several inches out. It wasn’t even close to clipping the line. If Helwerth had called it as he saw it, there would not have been a problem. But when technology glitches, the human brain appears to glitch with it.