Tamara Ecclestone
Tamara Ecclestone

Millionaire motor racing heiress Tamara Eccelestone has insisted she would not even have paid a "packet of crisps" to her "disgusting" blackmailer.

The daughter of Formula One owner Bernie Ecclestone took to the airwaves to blast ex-boyfiend Derek Rose for threatening to reveal her bedroom secrets in a £200,000 extortion plot.

Rose and Ecclestone dated when she was 17 and split up in 2003. She labelled "horrendous" the experience of him returning to haunt her, years later.

"Having to see him was bringing back such horrendous memories, but when the news came [of his conviction] I just felt relieved, I felt like there was finally justice," Ecclestone told Daybreak.

"It wasn't how much money he demanded, he could have demanded £5 and a packet of crisps, I never would have paid him - I won't be held to ransom.

"He is a bully, a disgusting human being and I would always stand up for what is right.

"I felt disgusted," she revealed. "I just felt really glad that everyone saw it for what it was."

Rose was jailed for four years at Southwark Crown court for blackmail.

The case threw the spotlight on Ecclestone's romantic life and her taste in men after it emerged that she was engaged to marry a banker, who has been banned by the Financial Services Authority, just one month after the couple met.

Ecclestone complained that her privacy had been invaded by Rose and his alleged accomplice Jakir Uddin, 20. Uddin faces a retrial after his trial collapsed.

Ecclestone, who last year starred in her own Channel 5 TV show about her personal life, vowed to make efforts to keep elements of her life out of the public eye from now on.

She said: "Even though you are a public figure I think you should be entitled to your privacy and there are things that go on in relationships behind closed doors that are completely private.

"Because of my dad's involvement in Formula One I have always been in the public eye. He's never ever sought it out, it is just something that is a byproduct of what he does.

"I have grown up in the public eye and there are certain aspects that I am used to but there are things like relationships that I now want to try to keep private."