Sheikh worth $6b doesn't seem to splash it about

Sheikh Maktoum is founder, president and chairman of the A1 Grand Prix series which he is in NZ to promote. Picture / Dean Purcell

Outside the hotel room of "the richest man you'll ever meet", as somebody said of His Highness Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Maktoum al Maktoum before we went to see him, is a bodyguard. But His Highness opens the door to his hotel suite himself. He is, apologetically, talking on his hands-free cellphone, but he gestures that we should, please, sit down. He has lovely manners.

When he finishes his call, during which he is saying thrilling rich-man stuff like "just go for it", and "close the deal", he asks to finish his cigarette before any pictures are taken. He warns that he is boring, and that he doesn't much enjoy interviews. "I'll tell you the truth. There's one thing I didn't count on: I thought no way would people be interested in me. They'll be interested in the drivers, the teams, the cars. They don't need to know about me."

If he is at all irritated that I am not all that interested in the drivers, the teams and the cars of his grand project, the ambitious A1 Grand Prix, which is what he's in town to promote, he doesn't show it. He is too well bred, perhaps.

Although not too well bred to have a little poke at me when I use the word "royal" rather than "ruling". He stores this up, after correcting me - he is a member of Dubai's ruling family. "We don't believe in royalty." So when I ask why people thought he was a bit mad for coming up with a global grand prix concept in which all the cars are the same, he says: "Imagine this. You have an Arab from the desert who's a sheikh, not royal but from a ruling family, doing something about cars ... What the hell does he know about it?"

He has stressed the sheikh because I have idiotically blurted what I'm thinking, which is: "I've never met a sheikh before." He gives me the sort of look you might give to a mad but benign stalker. Of course the point is that when you are a sheikh you're not going to be much fascinated by being one. But I am interested in what he thinks people might think a sheikh would be like. He says, "I don't really care, because once they meet me they take all those stereotypes off".

That would be the stereotype of "the oil rich businessman wasting his money", I say, quoting something he's said in an earlier interview. "Well, now we go to terrorism, you know," he says. "Watch for an Arab with a backpack."

He rails, if mildly, against the portrayal of Muslims generally. "I mean, for one example," he says, "they say, 'oh, in Islam you can marry four wives'. Okay, now if my dad married another wife, my mom would have him." And then he gives me a little history lesson, couched in colloquial terms, on the practicalities of polygamy. "In a way it's like having a legitimate mistress ... So instead of having to divorce, and the kids growing up without a father and having him run off, he keeps his obligations."

His Highness, at 28, has yet to marry at all. "I don't have time. Who would put up with me?" He works "24/7" and has been up all night, working across time zones. He'll sleep "when I die".

He calls the A1 "a self-imposed mission of proving myself". Which he felt he had to do because "I found out about a year ago that I was insecure. I looked back at my life and said, 'Why do I do the things that I do?' I've done ironman, I've done triathlon, I've done adventure racing, motocross, and I've excelled". He has a degree in business finance from Suffolk University in Boston, and was studying for his MBA but "didn't finish because of 9/11".

His family wanted him home. "There was an element of fear, yeah. Because no one knew what was going to happen. People always fear the unknown." It niggles at him a bit, this unfinished degree. "I'm the kind of guy that when I start something I like to finish it. I mean, my mom finished her PhD." In Women's Studies. His mother is "head of the women's association for the country".

It would be an understatement to say that he comes from a family of high achievers. "You could say so, yeah. There's a lot of pressure." This is another understatement. He is the nephew of Dubai's Crown Prince; his father runs a billion-dollar business, Al Fajer. "So we have big standards. If someone says, 'What have you done lately?' you know it's like ... so you have two options: either keel over and die and continue on useless your entire life or fight and do it. And in our family they only back a winner."

He is said to be worth around six billion quid; his personal investment in A1 is estimated to be around 100 million quid. When I ask him how much he's put in, he says, "What, weight?" pretending without any attempt to be convincing to have misheard. When I say, "No, money", he says, "Weight I could tell you - 18 kilos. I used to be quite fit actually."

He's not sure whether the drive to succeed is something you learn from growing up around success. "I don't know. I think some people have it, some people don't and your surroundings and environment have something to do with it. But it also comes down to personality. So my brother's a bit different to me." In what ways? I ask. He says, "Oh, he's a lot taller. He's six foot." This is very droll because His Highness is a rather compact chap. About the perfect height for a groom, I'd have thought.

But I'm quite concerned about this problem with insecurity so I ask if he's feeling less secure these days. He thinks he is because, with A1 "I've actually achieved something". And, oddly, he says: "It was only after I'd succeeded that I realised I was insecure. My dad used to threaten me with the police all the time. 'If you do this, I'll call the police,' and I was absolutely terrified. So he never made me think I was anything special. On the contrary, he used to drill that I'm absolutely normal and average in everything I do. And, you know, everyone wants to be special."

So, now that he's achieved that, he can, it seems, go out of his way to live his life not being special. He's staying at a perfectly nice hotel, in the penthouse suite, but when I say I thought he'd be at the Hilton, he says, "Why?" Because it's flasher. "I'm not a flash kind of guy. My wardrobe is T-shirts and cargo pants."

He says his sisters steal his old jeans so he can't wear them any more. He loves cars but he doesn't collect them. "I mean, how many cars can you get into? How many suits?" He doesn't like shopping. "No. This is what I spend, okay. I spend about $3000 [US dollars, I assume] a month. I buy DVDs and music, fuel when I drive around, dinners and lunches when I go out with friends." When he goes out with friends they split the bill.

Now, really, what's the point of being the richest man I'll ever meet if he doesn't splash it about a bit. "I must say you're a terrible disappointment," I tell him. I thought he might be offended. After all, no matter how often he insists he's not a flashy guy, he is used to deference. But he looked positively delighted.