The Irish businessman has sold his F1 business and is involved in charity and media projects, but he says that he hasn't kicked his racing habit for good, writes Siobhán Creaton

Eddie Jordan, the Irish entrepreneur who battled to establish his team as one of the powers in motor racing's ultra-competitive "Piranha Club", is adjusting to life after Formula One.

The 35-year addiction was broken only by financial pressures that forced the sale of his beloved team last year. Now Jordan is busy pursuing new adventures, although he isn't promising that he has kicked his racing habit for good. He will always need to live "on the edge", he says.

The Jordan name is due to disappear from the Formula One grid shortly. Jordan is still involved in what he describes as "helping to clear up" some of the remaining aspects of his former racing team acquired by the Canadian-Russian businessman Alex Shnaider. He says he is happy that his name is retiring with him.

"I think this is a good thing. It is synonymous with Ireland and I wanted that to stay," he says.

He claims that this is the first summer that he has ever taken a proper holiday or more than five or six days off at a stretch. Used to circling the globe with his team, he finds it strange to be in the same place for too long.

It's equally unsettling for his wife Marie and their four children. After three weeks together in Spain, Jordan says the family agreed that he should go away for a couple of days.

"It was just too much, so I went to Nice to see U2 in concert. I had business there as well," he laughs. "Now I know what it's like to have a three-week break and just do nothing or to do the minimum.

"I have never had that. It's a different experience. I'm not saying I would want to do it all again, but I find I need to be active," he says.

He has plenty of projects to channel his boundless energy and enthusiasm. In recent months, he has caddied for Paul McGinley at the German Masters golf championship and appeared in a lifestyle television programme alongside Paris Hilton, filmed during the Monaco Grand Prix. Jordan is also fulfilling engagements and other commitments in his role as a patron of the Cancer and Leukaemia in Children (Clic) charity.

In the coming weeks, filming for his new television series to be shown in the UK, China, Australia and Germany will begin. He is coy about the details, but says that his role is something akin to Sir Alan Sugar's in The Apprentice, but along different lines.

There is talk of writing his biography, in October he intends to walk across China's Great Wall, and will sail the Atlantic in November. Of course, he still plays the drums with his band.

"I have a whole heap of things that I put off and have wanted to do," he explains.

Jordan has long been characterised as a fast-talking wheeler-dealer. A former bank clerk who sold used cars and carpets as a sideline and who was always passionate about motor racing and music, he won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2000.

He says that he took his first entrepreneurial decision in 1981, the year he set out to chase his dream to enter Formula One. "I had to decide whether I was good enough to be able to design, create and put together a car that was capable of taking on other cars in a highly charged, competitive environment in every different corner of the world.

"Once I made that decision, I fully believed that I was going to be able to achieve it. I set the target, the goal and got on with it," he says.

Money, either his lack of it or the prospect of earning a fortune from the sport, was never an issue. "Money was the last thing on my mind," he says. "Entrepreneurs are generally notorious gangsters because they usually only ever see the upside. They have great difficulty in quantifying or clinically analysing the downside or the loss.

"I suppose as you get older, you can say: 'My God, was I really that stupid to just go head first into that one?' But you do."

Jordan reckons that there are few other businesses that have to start on January 1st every year generally not knowing where they will get the £70-£80 million (€104-€119 million) to be able to run the team for the year.

"Very few private people would ever have that kind of money to speculate in one season or to risk losing. Why did I do it? I don't know. I think the more pressure I put myself under, the better the results."

He is disappointed that it is now virtually impossible for entrepreneurs to make it on their own in Formula One. "There was a time that I could win grand prix and fight against the big, big car manufacturers but not now. No entrepreneur could ever afford the massive amounts of money they are spending," Jordan explains.

He says it is bordering on being "totally irresponsible" for any private individual to get into motor racing. "It is not a clever decision. You are always speculating and playing with money that you generally don't have. That in itself, if things don't work out, can have massive ramifications. That's where I think I have been very fortunate."

Jordan realised his fortune in 1998 from the partial sale of his team to the investment house, Warburg Pincus. The Sunday Times Rich List estimates his personal fortune in 2005 at €57 million, although he places little faith in such measures of wealth.

His friend, Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone, is fond of saying: "I love those lists: 90 per cent of the people in it shouldn't be in it and the 90 per cent who are not in it should be."

Jordan believes he was a bit different from other entrepreneurs in the sense that the sport that was his abiding passion was also his business.

The two don't always marry well, he says, and you spend most of the time in conflict with yourself. "I used to say to my people: 'Guys, we have two balance sheets. We have the one on the Sunday afternoon where the results are vital, but let us never forget that we have another balance sheet to look after and that's equally as important'."

Jordan says you could have a great year on the track and have a hopelessly poor financial year. "It was all about striking a balance and I was fortunate that I was usually able to look after both."

He suggests that entrepreneurs by their nature are quite selfish.

"You have to be selfish with your time, friends, family and other people suffer and that's one of the drawbacks of being an entrepreneur. You work extraordinarily hard and there is some great pain.

"You have to be sure that, when you have the opportunity, not alone do you have to give back the time to your family but you have to give back your time to charities and various other things. There is some obligation involved," he says.

He tried not to bring his financial worries home and would always try to snatch 20 minutes or half an hour to himself before he arrived back in the evening to adjust his personality before meeting his family.

"There is a huge personality change involved from sitting behind a desk and having an engineering meeting or being involved in a sport where there is a highly charged, emotive atmosphere and returning to your home. Marie would always say: 'Please, leave your business on the doorstep.'

"At home, Marie is the boss; I was the boss at work and I had to be aware that I was coming into her environment."

Music, he says, also helped to keep him sane. "If I was really stressed after the journey home, I would play the drums before dinner and I was usually a better person for it."

Jordan says racing is a drug and has experienced its exhilarating and lethal consequences. "I was in San Remo the day Ayrton Senna died. I just couldn't speak to anyone. It was like as if the whole of Formula One was muted. After a few days, though, I came away with the belief that he was the luckiest person on earth.

"He had been pursuing everything that he wanted. He was killed in a moment. There was no suffering. He was out like a light, and he was doing what he wanted to do most in life.

"It's hard to say that somebody who was killed is the lucky one, but death was always part of the plan. It was just never significant enough to put him off what he was doing."

He believes that an element of risk can give people the necessary edge to achieve their wildest dreams. "Business is like that," he says. "It's all about making the deal. I believe that every good entrepreneur, every good business manager has to and will have a chemical reaction that gives them a better chance of concluding the deal. If you don't have a knot in your stomach, you don't have the passion and the drive that you need."

He has no plans to return to the track for now but will watch for opportunities, maybe in a different guise. "If something extraordinary happens that's new, I might think about that but I don't want to restrict myself by saying: 'No, I'll never do that again'," he says. "I have always felt that being flexible and open-minded causes me less stress."

Now that he has traded the pitwalk for Silverstone's grand stand, does he wish things had worked out differently? Jordan simply shrugs and says he believes things happen and you get on with it.

"I can't cope with people who say: 'Why did that happen to me?' Sometimes you can be in the right place, sometimes in the wrong place, but you have got to make the most of the opportunities that you have. I was fortunate. I got the chance to step out on a world scene in a sport that had tenuous links with Ireland. I was so passionately crazy about it. I was chasing a dream, a fantasy."

Name: Eddie Jordan.

Age: 57.

Family: Married to Marie, they have two sons and two daughters.

Background: Born in Dublin, he went to the Christian Brothers School in Synge Street.

Career: He began work at Bank of Ireland and moved to Jersey during a strike, where he started an 11-year motor racing career.

In 1979, he founded his first team that won the British Formula Three Championship and the Formula 3000, before entering Formula One in 1991.

In 2004, financial pressures forced him to sell his team to Canadian-Russian businessman Alex Shneider.

Interests: Motor racing, music, golf and sailing.

Why is he in the news? He is one of the judges who will select the 2005 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year to be announced next week.