SOME people just cannot live ordinary lives - they prefer to live on their wits (or their talents) all the time feeling quite convinced that something will turn up. Some certainly fall by the wayside, others seem to achieve fame and fortune without effort while still others taste the best and worst of life in equal amounts.

Eddie Jordan, last privateer to break into the magical, glamorous world of Formula One motor racing, falls into the latter category - and in Timothy Collings's absorbing biography we are given an insight into what makes this larger than life character tick.

Timothy has been fortunate in his subject: few biographers can have had as much to go on as far as their subject is concerned. EJ risked his home and his business and all his goods and chattels to form the Jordan team in a business "notorious for burning money" just over 10 years ago and duly entered what is called the select Piranha Club of F1 entrepreneurs, documented elsewhere by Timothy.

Eddie has been wheeling and dealing, so to speak, since his days in the schoolyard in Dublin; he'd sold carpet off cuts, dubious salmon and even worked in a bank and sold second-hand cars on its car park.

After a brief career as a racing driver he became than man who provided the opportunity to others to make good - drivers like Martin Brundle, Jean Alesi, Michael Schumacher, Eddie Irvine and Rubens Barichello. "I made you - and don't you forget it" was a familiar Eddie cry in the pits - words supplemented with profanities but delivered with humour.

EJ took the F1 plunge on the back of winning the Formula 3000 Championship in 1989 with Alesi. Since then it has been a roller coaster ride but he's still in there punching - and throughout he has enjoyed the unswerving support of his lovely wife Marie.Eddie Jordan: The Biography by Timothy Collings is published by Virgin Books in hardback at £20.