ELON Musk’s dad has revealed how the tech billionaire loved playing tricks and beating adults at games when he was a kid.
Retired electromechanical engineer Errol Musk, 77, told how the Tesla CEO, 52, had a “wicked sense of humor and loved winning” while growing up in South Africa.
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Errol said his son particularly loved to “wipe out” the grown-ups while playing rummy and Monopoly.
He told The U.S. Sun: “Elon loved to go to (toy store) Hamleys and buy tricks.
“They all knew him because he came into the shop so much. He would go straight to the trick department. The magic tricks.
“He was always looking for something you can fool people with and walk out with a packet of various hoodwinking tricks.”
Reminiscing about the SpaceX founder’s childhood, Errol claimed that Elon and his younger brother Kimbal, 50, even hustled adults at rummy.
He explained: “Another memory I have is when we went on a family cruise once from Cork in Ireland to France.
“Elon and Kimbal joined some old people playing rummy.
“They were quite smart, these boys, and they’d already learned things like rummy and stuff like that.
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“And they played these old people and came away with a lot of money. Like £23, which was a lot of money in 1979. Elon was eight then.
“I made him take the money but he refused saying he had won it fair and square.
“It was very funny but I had to keep a straight face and insist he give it back.
“They were really old and I wouldn’t be surprised if Elon had pulled a few stunts.”
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Errol also revealed how Elon, Kimbal and their sister Tosca, 48 were a handful and would not allow him and their mom Maye to leave them behind at him without kicking up a stink.
Errol said: “It was very difficult to go out at night and leave the children at our Pretoria home with a babysitter.
“The three of them were fanatically opposed to us going out without them. I mean, they were beyond belief fanatically opposed to us leaving.
“These were not normal kids. If we did manage to get out they would scream so much at the windows that we would have come back into the house again. We just couldn’t do it.
“I can still picture the three of them at the snooker room window which looked down the driveway, screaming, Elon in front and the two other little ones copying him.”
“We knew the kids would scream and go berserk until they realised that they’d failed to stop us.
“And the babysitter told us as soon as we were out of sight they would calm down.”
‘WICKED SENSE OF HUMOR’
Errol recalled one time that the young Elon took matters into his own hands to avoid being left behind.
“One time, we got away very smoothly in Maye’s lovely Jaguar XJ6 and headed for dinner at the Austrian ambassador’s house.
“Halfway there the next thing Elon suddenly sits up from the back seat in his shorty pyjamas with a big grin on his face.
“We were already late so I didn’t want to turn around.
“So when we arrived I told the ambassador, ‘Look, I’ve got a problem. My wife is going to stay and I’m going to take my son home.’ And his wife said ‘No, no, no.’
“So there we were, a table of eight dressed to the nines with Elon sitting between two guests in his pyjamas joining in the conversation.
“It was a very fancy party that night but Elon was perfectly comfortable around the dinner table.
“We had a very fine home and we often entertained and often had the prime minister and the president as guests, so Elon was in his element.
“After dinner we all played Monopoly and, typically, Elon wiped everyone out. He had hotels everywhere.
“He cleaned up like he cleaned up those pensioners at rummy. That’s how he was.
“Elon had very little interest in being with other children and was very comfortable in adult company.
“He had a wicked sense of humor and loved winning. I remember him laughing his head off after beating us all at Monopoly that night.”
The new revelations come after Errol told The U.S. Sun earlier this week that he believes Elon has put himself in a “no-win situation” with a proposed cage fight against Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg.
He also slammed an AI-generated pic of his son as “totally inaccurate” and shared childhood pics to prove his point.
In April, Errol revealed details about his claim to have once bought a share in an emerald mine in Zambia, which Elon has disputed.
Earlier this year, Errol told The U.S. Sun that his son is a big fan of French emperor Napoleon and believed the internet would have been invented by the year 1900 if the legendary general hadn’t been defeated.
In September last year, The U.S. Sun revealed how Errol killed three armed intruders Clint Eastwood-style in South Africa in 1998 while his then six-year-old daughter Ali clung to his leg.
Also last year, The U.S. Sun revealed Errol’s claim that he had fathered a second child with his stepdaughter, Jana, and that he had been asked to donate his sperm to impregnate high-class women in Colombia.
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