Читать книгу Chris Eubank: The Autobiography - Chris Eubank - Страница 14

I returned to the UK in January 1988 to make my home there. I came back principally because I wanted to be with my brothers, whom I still adored. My first fight back in England was on 15 February of that year, against Darren Parker in Copthorne, whom I stopped in the first round. Then came a fellow called Winston Burnett, who was target practice, but he would have beaten me if I hadn’t known what I was doing. The next fight was a mismatch, against Michael Justin, who was supposed to have ability. He was hard and willing but did not have the ability to deliver shots. He showed lots of heart coming forward, swinging at me, but it was no contest. Two more middle-round stoppages against Greg George and Steve Aquilina and suddenly, I was 10 and 0. Over the next 24 months, I was to fight 11 times on my long haul towards a title shot.

At first, however, it was tough. I had no money and lived in a tiny bedsit. Perhaps inevitably, I found myself occasionally drawn back into a life of shoplifting. Before I had left for New York, I’d been in many amazing chases with the police, but perhaps my finest was a two-day pursuit in mid-1988. It was an absolute classic. We had hired a taxi as usual to take us around our targets and he then escorted us while we took the gear around all the pubs in the Walworth Road or the Unity Centre in Peckham. That morning, the car that arrived was a big burgundy Granada, driven by this fat Turkish man, aged about 27. He picked me up at around 8 o’clock in the morning and we set off to collect Beaver. We drove to south London and headed for a large department store. On this particular occasion, I didn’t take anything but Beaver stole a leather jacket. As he walked past me he said, ‘It’s hot,’ meaning we were being watched by store security. So we started walking briskly (but not without style, even under pressure) towards the exit. It seemed at first that we had succeeded in not drawing attention to ourselves, but suddenly Beaver flicked his fingers in the air, which was the sign for us to take off.

We split up instinctively. Beaver ran off in one direction and I headed for the car park, running up to the top floor where the Granada taxi was waiting. I said, ‘It’s hot, it’s on top, we’re being chased. I’ll get in the boot.’ The Turkish driver said, ‘No, don’t do that, just sit in the back seat and act normal.’ I should have gone with my gut instinct but instead I sat in the back. We started to descend the spiral ramp that led to the exit, down and round, down and round, all the time waiting for someone to stop us. We pulled around this final corner just before the ticket barrier, thinking we were going to escape when, dismayed, I saw two policemen stopping all the cars and checking the occupants. The taxi driver said, ‘Just stay where you are, you will be alright, they won’t know it’s you.’ I waited anxiously for our turn in line and decided to lie down on the seat. When the policeman stopped us, he looked in the back at me and said, ‘That’s him.’

‘Step out of the car, please,’ he said to me. I got out and immediately started explaining to the senior officer, saying, ‘Listen, you’ve got the wrong man. I haven’t got anything, look in my bags.’ Unfortunately, the security guard from the store confirmed that I was one of the culprits. At that point, I played an old trick I’d learned from my brother David, which he always used to great effect. I began to act frantic, severely agitated. ‘I’ve got heart problems, I’ve got stress problems, this is making me unwell. I’ll take you to court.’ I started shouting and ranting at this officer, trying to work my way out of the predicament. After about ten minutes, I just started to think I was getting somewhere when the officer, in a truly disparaging tone, said, ‘Will you just shut up!’ So that was that, nicked.

I sat down in the police Rover and slid my way across the seat. Already my mind was racing – it was a Friday and I knew that I would spend the weekend at the station and it would be Monday morning before I’d see daylight. I had a blues to attend on the Saturday which was going to be fun: good music, lots of girls, drinking and ‘crubbing’ (close dancing). That, I wasn’t going to miss.

More worryingly, I knew that as soon as they put my name in the central computer, it would alert them to the fact that I had jumped bail from the gentleman’s outfitter’s theft, where I had been caught on the M23. Then it would be prison and who knows what future for me. This was a desperate predicament. I had to escape.

The obvious thought was to jump out of the car, at high speed if necessary. As we slowed down to drive around this flyover, I tugged on the door latch but the child-lock was on. So now I was really in trouble. A change of tack was needed. I started to apologise to the policemen in the car. ‘Officer, sorry about my behaviour earlier, I was out of order.’ I continued being Mr Polite all the way back to the station, in full charm mode. They were very much more relaxed by the time the car pulled up.

Don’t forget, I am an unbeaten professional boxer at this point and training almost every day, so I am the fittest man on the planet – and I do not say that in jest! The police officer’s grip on my arm had slackened just a little, so that when he turned away from me to unlock the over-sized lock on the door to the cells, I pulled free and I was gone, off like a bullet. The only problem was, I was wearing my cherished £140 snake-skin shoes, which I had bought from Panache in Walworth Road. As stylish as they were, they were not best suited to sprinting, not least because they were dress shoes with smooth, wafer-thin soles.

The officer was, of course, coming after me, so I ran around a car. He stood one side of the car, hands on the roof, staring at me. He said, ‘Now don’t be stupid, son,’ and, voice brimming with confidence, I replied, ‘Let’s see who’s stupid,’ and ran off across the yard away from the officer and security guard. Because of my fitness, within a few seconds I was twenty yards or so ahead. After all, I was running six miles every morning before I even opened the gym door, so these fellows were never going to keep up.

At this point I banged past a middle-aged man who then joined the chase. He was wearing one of those army jumpers with shoulder and elbow patches. By now, though, I had built up a good speed and dived through a subway, then dashed up this long flight of steps to bring me back to street level, deliberately choosing the steps instead of the ramp to make their chase tougher. I can picture to this day the sight of this man, panting desperately for breath, face all reddened and flushed, skidding through the subway and coming to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. He looked up and I was standing there, grinning at the top of the steps. My heart at this point was barely beating above resting rate. This guy chasing me was so exhausted he was barely conscious.

We stood there looking at each other waiting for the next move, then I heard another officer shouting, ‘Don’t stop! Get him!’ I calmly reached down and took off each shoe, held them up in the air triumphantly, before turning around and setting off at speed towards a street full of market stalls. As I weaved my way through the stalls, out of danger at last, I could just hear a faint voice shouting, ‘Thief, stop!’ I was so fit they never stood a chance. Once I was sure I was safe, I caught the train back to my friend’s house and slept there for the night.

I was awakened at 7.45am the next morning by a knock on the door. I heard someone’s voice saying, ‘Is Christopher here?’ before being let in. It was the police – no, it was the ‘cozzers’. I know cozzers is a generic term for the police but real cozzers only come from certain police stations. This particular cozzer was like a huge bulldog, 6’ 4” with a furious scowl. He didn’t care very much for me because I was wrong. He came into the front room where I was sleeping and said, ‘Christopher, get up now.’ I was half-asleep, squinting through my eyelids, saying, ‘What? What are you talking about?’

I got up and stood in front of him wearing only my socks and underpants. My clothes were hanging up in the wardrobe but I knew I had to delay getting fully dressed because at that point they would cuff me, especially after my escapology of the day before. I couldn’t believe my bad luck; this chase had been going on for two days now!

I surveyed the terrain and noticed that the sash window was too near the officer to offer a realistic chance of escape. So I asked him if I could brush my teeth. He wasn’t stupid, so he followed me into the bathroom where they knew there was a window. They watched me brush my teeth. I had acne at this time, so while I was standing at the mirror, I squeezed a pimple and the pus and a little streak of blood started running down my face. I turned to the disgusted officer and said, ‘I’ve got to clean myself up.’

‘Fine,’ came the reply, and he continued to stand there.

‘Can I use the toilet now?’ I asked.

‘Sure,’ came the reply but he still stood there.

‘Can I have some privacy in here?’

‘No.’

So he stood there and watched me use the toilet. Or rather, pretend to use the toilet. After a short while, I played out the charade, did a fake number two, used the toilet paper and so on, pulled up my underpants then came back into the front room.

‘Right, officer, I’ll get changed now.’

He was standing leaning against the door frame and had started talking to another officer and a girl who lived in the house. Alternately he would talk to them then turn around to keep an eye on me. Then, for one moment too long, he had his head turned away from me. That was all the opportunity I needed. Like a flash I was through the sash window, in only my socks (silk, mind you) and underpants.

The estates around Walworth Road were real rabbit warrens so it was easy for me to lose anybody who would take up the chase. However, it was cold and drizzling so I was absolutely freezing. As I ran into one courtyard, this little kid, about 13, saw me and looked surprised to see someone wearing only socks and underpants running around at 8.15am in the rain. I went up to his front door and said, ‘I’m being chased by the police, I need a coat, I’ll bring it back.’ There was absolute sincerity in my eyes. I could see his brain thinking it over, while I’m standing there shivering, half-expecting the cozzers to come round the corner at any moment. Eventually, after what seemed like an age, he timidly said, ‘I’ll just go and ask my dad.’ As soon as he was out of the hallway, I grabbed a coat off a hook and ran off. Poor kid. I eventually made my way to Nasty’s flat and finally, after two days of being on the run, I was safe.

I don’t have a problem with people who steal things. Well, don’t get me wrong, stealing is wrong but shoplifting at the time was justifiable to me, I was a kid. Anyway, I knew that the mark-up on some of those clothes was 400%, so I just thought of it as stealing from the rich to give to the poor, namely me. People need to make a living, it’s nothing personal, it’s not you they want, it’s just the money. However, if someone steals and hurts a person in the process, that is totally unacceptable, and against everything I stand for. I abhor that.

After Maximo I trained myself. When I started working in the Jack Pook gym in Brighton, my brothers, who were boxing themselves, introduced me to a trainer called Ronnie Davies. He had been Southern Area Lightweight Champion himself in 1967, so he knew the business. I was constantly in the gym, but Ronnie worked as a site manager for a building company. He toiled a long day on site and would come to the gym, back bent double, and work with me. I used to say, ‘Come in from the cold, stick with me, I’ll take you to the top.’ And I did.

He said to me, ‘You only need to train four days a week.’ I replied, ‘You can come in four days a week, I will be here seven days a week.’ Ronnie wasn’t training me. I knew how to box, all I needed was someone to be my eye outside of the ring, because there are certain things you can’t see. I would come back to my corner and his perception and observation would be very enlightening, because he could see things I was too involved to catch.

Ronnie was also a brilliant bodyguard. By that, I don’t mean personal security, rather a man who knew which fighters were dangerous, which ones were under-rated or over-hyped. Plus, he could protect me from the litany of problems, situations and liabilities that boxing exposed me to. There would be so many people trying to get to me, hangers-on, charlatans and takers, and Ronnie had a faultless radar for that, he sniffed them out immediately. He always watched my back against things like that. He was a very good companion. I will always love Ronnie Davies.

Ronnie also made me laugh. His humour was so cutting, so dry, that he would regularly have me roaring. Over the years, we had so many hilarious times, nights when our sides would ache from laughing, where we would fall asleep still sniggering. One time, we were planning to fly back from Portugal to Heathrow via Dusseldorf, but I had lost both the passports at the airport in the Algarve. So we had to disembark in Germany and wait overnight for the passports. I have never laughed so much as that night. From the moment we walked off that plane, we cried with laughter.

We went for a walk around the streets of Dusseldorf and I was telling Ronnie, ‘You mustn’t eat pork.’ I have always had a love-hate relationship with pork and had recently been listening to certain people who would not touch it. I was saying, ‘It is not a clean meat, Ronnie, never touch it again, if you know what’s good for you!’ He was laughing at me about it but I really wanted to win him round to not eating pork. They’d offered us pork on the plane and I was saying, ‘This is a very dangerous meat, Ronnie.’ As we were strolling past all these shops and restaurant windows, we stopped near one which had this big spit roast of pork going around on a skewer, crackling skin and juices sizzling. I walked in, got their attention and, said, ‘Yes, sell me all that’s left of the pig!’ Ronnie was doubled over in stitches.

A few more shops down the road, we were walking past a kebab shop and there was this big German guy shaving slices off the revolving meat. Despite this being Germany, as he saw me a bright light of recognition lit his face up and he immediately struck up my peacock pose, complete with kebab knives in hand. Yeeaahh!

That night we were sharing a twin room and we took this Haagen-Dazs ice-cream back for our night-cap but it took hours to polish off because we were laughing so much. Eventually I said, ‘Quiet now, Ronnie, we need to get some sleep.’ I switched the lights off but after about ten minutes he just burst out laughing again. Another twenty minutes later I went to get some water out of the mini bar, but dropped the bottle, so more hysterics. My sides were aching more than after any body shot! Ronnie took the monotony out of boxing – that scathing sense of humour sliced the tedious side out of my spartan life.

The public perception was that Ronnie was my trainer, so as soon as I could, it made sense for me to have Ronnie styled to suit my team image. He had his hair cropped very closely and began wearing immaculate suits too, no more training bottoms. When I went on to win the title, I insisted he bought a Jaguar too – it was far more stylish and made for a better show. This was all part of the business plan. It was about showmanship. All my team had to be well turned out, not just Ronnie.

I had hooked up with a local promoter by the name of Keith Miles and he started to help me get fights. I worked two jobs, in Debenhams and the other in Wimpy, because the money I was earning from fighting was simply not enough. However, this was very tiring and coupled with my obsessive training, I knew it could have detrimental effects on my performances. So I voiced my fears to Keith Miles, who agreed to pay me £120 a week as an allowance.

It was at this time that I first met my future wife, Karron. Her sister, Phillipa, used to go out with my brother, Simon, one of the twins. One day I glanced through into his kitchen, saw Karron and thought, ‘What a beautiful woman. It would be a dream to be with a woman like that.’ But this was an impossibility. She was, and is, a gorgeous woman. What was I? Nothing. I had no self-esteem, other than my belief in my boxing ability. Back then, no one else knew that either. So, at first, to be with her was just an impossible wish.

By coincidence, Karron had actually seen my seventh fight, against Winston Burnett at Hove Town Hall, back in March 1988. She’d come to watch with a male friend of hers. She wasn’t dating him but I still had not even spoken to her at this point. I had seen her since in a supermarket but couldn’t pluck up the courage to speak to her.

I didn’t have a car as yet, so I used to walk everywhere. People began to notice me walking around Brighton, strutting even back then. Jack Pook used to train my brothers at the time and he said that I walked, ‘as if I owned the United Kingdom.’ I walked everywhere like that. I was always very, very proud, no matter how difficult my circumstances. One day I had walked about three miles into Brighton and as I was coming back past my brother’s house in Portland Road, I saw Karron talking to Peter. I was wearing a nice black cloth coat and went up to them and said, ‘Hi Peter,’ before turning to Karron and saying, ‘Hi, would you give me a lift please?’ She said, ‘Well, I am talking.’ I said, ‘Well, when you’ve finished, if you don’t mind, would you give me a lift back to my apartment? I’ll be in the 7–Eleven, buying a Lucozade.’ She looked stunning.

Shortly after, she came and picked me up from the 7-Eleven in her old black, banged-up Fiat and took me to my apartment in Trafalgar Street. When we pulled up outside, I turned to her and said, ‘Did you come to my last fight?’ to which she said, ‘No’. So I said, ‘Would you like to see it on video?’ I was delighted when she said, ‘Okay’.

She came up to the apartment, but while we were watching the video she began to have a severe headache and neck spasms. I gave her some painkillers but the headache just got rapidly worse. By now I was thinking: Okay, I’m a minority in this country, and where I’ve been living in New York, this kind of thing happens all the time, people get blackmailed or conned. I called an ambulance and they took her to hospital, where it became apparent that, fortunately, she was being genuine. At that point, Ronnie walked in and said, ‘What have you done? What did you do to her?’ to which I vehemently protested my innocence. What had happened was, unbeknown to her, she’d suffered a trapped nerve the previous day when, during a scuffle at the jewellery shop where she worked, one of the owners had accidentally hit her on the back of the neck as he was grappling with a robber.

Keith Miles found out about what had happened and assumed the worst, so I had to tell him too, ‘I didn’t touch the woman, she broke down.’ They were all very suspicious. The next day I was walking through Brighton’s Norfolk Square, past where Karron worked, so I went in to see if she was better. She said she was fine now and gave me a ‘Thank you’ card. I said, ‘Thank you, it was not a problem. Would you like to go out for dinner?’ She said, ‘Yes’ and I was elated.

We started to go out and, with my £120 per week allowance, we had some good times. All I did was train, so that money went a long way – we went out quite often. I would train first thing in the morning, about 5.30am, finish at about 7.30am and then start gym work at 2pm or 4pm depending on how I felt. At this point, I was touched with it, I was on heat to train. It was a passion that I could feel within my solar plexus, an inner passion. At first, the people around me were sceptical that I could keep this focused and have a woman in my life at the same time, but it was never an issue. I know it is for some fighters, but it never even started to become a problem for me. I’ve always remained my own man.

In a sense, because Karron was so easy to get on with, it eliminated the complication of having a difficult girlfriend. I knew this was the woman for me, so I started the relationship off correctly. I hadn’t been out with many women seriously up to this point. I had a girlfriend in England before I left for New York, and over a period of three and a half years, I only had two girlfriends over there. I was so focused with my training and also with the church. The scriptures taught me that you shouldn’t fornicate and I did the best I could! The thought was constantly in my mind but I took that energy and channelled it into training. Karron and I became close very quickly and moved into a flat together above a garage that Keith Miles owned. Bear in mind, I was not famous or wealthy at this point, so to this day I know Karron is with me for me, which for a celebrity is priceless.

My relationship with Keith Miles, however, was not working so well. He used to talk down to me, like I was an idiot. He would say, ‘Do as you are told.’ I must state that at times he was very nice and a real character, but when he spoke to me in a way that wasn’t dignified, I couldn’t accept that. I said to him, ‘When you disrespect me, I’d rather starve than accept your disrespect.’ So that business relationship ended, and with it went the flat above the garage.

We moved into a room in Karron’s mother’s house in early 1989, during which time Karron became pregnant with our first child, Christopher. We had all our belongings in this one little room, with a fold-up futon to sit on and a little kitten for a pet. I was training very hard by now and some of that time was spent with the superb boxer, Herol Graham.

That first fight that Karron had watched before we were even dating was the only time in 47 contests that she came to see an actual bout. I would never have my wife, mother, father or children at the fight. Boxing matches are a desperate situation and I could never understand how fighters wanted their family present. I realise some say it motivates them, but I could never understand that. I wouldn’t even allow my father to watch (mind you, he wouldn’t have wanted to), he would have had a drink and torn the place down in excitement! When I later had a gym upstairs at home, my kids occasionally came up to watch me train but never saw me sparring.

While we had been trying for our first child, I said to Karron, ‘It is not possible that we will have a girl. It will be a boy and his name will be Christopher.’ There was no more than a 0.001% chance of having a girl. Karron didn’t see it that way, but I was convinced. I spoke about this in the press (I was starting to attract media attention with my lengthening unbeaten record) in a very blunt fashion and they made a big headline out of it, but that was not fair. Sure enough though, Christopher arrived on 18 September 1989.

I felt the same when we had our second child, Sebastian, on 18 July 1991. By then, I thought it would be nice to have a girl and I honestly feel that by relenting in my mind, we had Emily, who arrived on 19 April 1994. Since then we have also had little Joseph, on 23 October 1996. I was very proud to be present at all their births.

Some boxers are affected for the worse when they have children but I was not softened towards the boxing business. Remember, I learned to fight in New York, and as the saying goes, if you can do it there you can do it anywhere. This was my job and I now had young mouths to feed and provide for. I always wanted to be successful, so I didn’t need a family to make me more motivated. Yes, they all have to be fed, clothed and put through school; with any child comes a responsibility which you have to attend to, your duty is to provide. However, I have always had a very strong sense of satisfying me, of becoming an accepted individual, something I am still chasing to this day. So, my drive for success in boxing never wavered one bit when the children arrived.

As mentioned briefly before, people in the fight business worry about the effect a relationship might have on a boxer’s heart. There is a saying which goes like this: ‘After a personal quarrel between a man and a woman, the former suffers chiefly from the idea of having wounded the other while the latter suffers from the idea of not having wounded the other enough. Thus she will endeavour by tears, sobs and discomposed mien to make his heart heavier.’ Marvellous. Fortunately for me, this was not the case with Karron.

I am very aware that my conduct in my private and public life can impact very heavily on my children’s lives as youngsters. Having a well-known father will mean that if there is a problem, everybody will know and they will have no refuge. So I must ensure that this never happens. You can’t get any closer than your family. My children are me, my children come before me and as an adult you come to realise that.

Christopher is very intelligent but doesn’t let me know. When I listen to him talking around other children his age, you can see and hear the intelligence. All his reports from school say he is a clever child, he always gets good reports, all Bs, the occasional A. Away from his studies, he is slightly absent-minded. He handles who his father is very well and whenever he stays around other children’s houses, I always get good comments from the parents. He is very well behaved outside of our house, but inside he is always fighting with Sebastian! Everybody likes him and speaks well of him.

I remember saying to him when he was only nine years old, ‘Don’t try to be like me, you may reach where I am, you may fall below or perhaps rise above, but just be who you are. Look to words, to passion, grow up to be a man. Remember this – if I can do it, so can you. Be the best you can be.’ He asked me once what dignity was and I said, ‘If you lose it, it is sad,’ and then explained why that was. I said if I ever tried again to become what I once was, namely champion, so long after retiring, then not only would I not be the father I once was, but also the public would recognise the fact that either I needed the money or still craved the fame. They would then laugh at me or say, ‘How sad.’ On hearing this explanation, the tears welled up in Christopher’s eyes, even though he was only nine years old.

Sebastian is going to be the black sheep. He is his own person. Whereas Christopher will be influenced, Sebastian has his own mind, his own common sense. When we are on holiday, he goes off with a group of other kids without us. He is clever, a good kid. He is the one who will take a stand, which is good. He is more daring – for example, he will fight with me and I will hit him in the arm with a hard blow and he will go, ‘Owl’ but come back at me! Christopher is not interested in all that. Sebastian likes shells, fossils, books – he’s read all the Harry Potter books. He is his own boy and will be his own man.

Emily is a really lovely girl. If she takes after her mother, she will do very well. I don’t know if her arrival made me more tender, I think perhaps that I had mellowed more with age anyway. I wasn’t brought up with any girls (as my sister stayed in Jamaica), so I didn’t see how my father would have treated a daughter but, suffice to say, Emily gets away with a lot more. The boys get away with NOTHING. I often let Emily get away with small things, although never the important stuff. That may be wrong, but I am yet to find out. I am tougher on the boys.

The youngest, Joseph, doesn’t understand fear, he is boisterous and has fight in him. If any of the children could be a fighter (and I vehemently don’t want that), he could. His character is already without fear, it is in his grain. He has watched how I deal with the other three children above him, so he can surmise how much he can push things – he looks at me, raises an eyebrow and tasks me! He will be like me. His devil-may-care attitude will only be contained when he sees that it doesn’t work and only gets you into trouble. Joseph reminds me very much of myself when I was a kid. Back then, I had my own agenda and was always busy. With Joseph, if you tell him something, he will have forgotten it within seconds – he has other things to think about.

I am quite strict with my children but only to discipline them about what is correct. I will not smack any of them for being naughty. If they do something that requires punishment, they will have to collect 20 bags of leaves from the lawns, or maybe write out 30 sentences using the key words I give them. Very often, I will not punish them at all in such a fashion. Joseph once scribbled on the wallpaper, so I said to him, ‘Did you do that? Don’t lie and there will be no punishment.’ He sheepishly nodded and so that was that. He knew not to do it again. You have to draw that sort of behaviour out of a child. The only time I will smack one of my children is when one of them has bullied one of the younger ones. That is not acceptable but it does not happen very often either. Some parents believe that the law should be involved if a parent smacks a child. If that is so, not only would I be prepared to go to jail, I need to go there.

When I was in the Celebrity Big Brother house in early 2001, I had a discussion with Vanessa Feltz about how to bring up children. It seemed to me that she was advocating the politically correct way to teach children. I could not agree with her on that. The politically correct way to bring up children means they will call their mother a cow and tell their father to piss off. That’s the end result, in my opinion. I’ve seen this, I grew up in this country around certain people who did that. In a Jamaican household, there is no disrespect whatsoever: you do as you’re told.

For parents, the best thing to do for your child is to have them exposed to the world. The problem is, the hardest thing for you to do also is to expose them to the world. Nevertheless, let the child go. Because of my background, I was given no choice, I was thrown in at the deep end. As a parent, I’m too much of a coward to put them through that. I don’t want to expose them. I want to protect them. My eldest child said to me one day that he wanted to hang out at Churchill Square in Brighton. I said, ‘No way, I will go to prison first. Do something, achieve something, don’t waste your time down there.’ Fortunately, I pulled myself back in time and did the clever thing, which was to let him go.

I am somewhat like my own father when it comes to the children. I don’t have much time for playing with toys and such like. I never played with toys as a kid myself, largely because I didn’t have any. So I struggle to sit down with them for hours on end playing children’s games. I have to go out there and provide for them all. I was never that type of kid, so now I’m not that type of father. I’m more into teaching my kids reason, wisdom and discipline. Yet, I agree with Nietzsche’s thought that, ‘Women understand children better than men. But a man is more childish than a woman.’

Society, or the media, cajoles people to think that you should try to understand your child. But your child will be alright if they understand YOU, the parent. When they do, you will understand them. I say to my little ones, ‘What? Am I supposed to understand why you jump around making noises and ripping the wallpaper up? I’m supposed to understand you weren’t thinking? Well, no, think. I don’t like that.’ They have to come to understand you.

Think about it. When I became a man, I thought how right my father had been and that I wish I had listened to him much more than I did. There is a natural chronological evolution at work here: my father was a complete loser when I was 15. At 17, he was just trying to hold me down, he didn’t understand anything I did. Yet at 21, he was all right. He still wasn’t for me, I couldn’t keep his company that much, but he was okay. Then you get to 30 years old and the only person you want next to you is your old man. Well, let me say this – he hadn’t changed. It was never that he didn’t understand me. It was me who misunderstood him. One shouldn’t make that mistake.

With me in this experience of bringing up the children is Karron, and I am immensely fortunate to have such a wife. Karron is a good woman. She is an exceptional mother who doesn’t really allow anyone else to look after the children other than her sister. She sometimes burns herself out, though, as four children are a handful. My philosophy is this: my job as a fighter was by far, without any doubt, the hardest business or way of life in the world, bar none. The pressure, the solitude, the physical demands, the media attention, it was so demanding. My estimation is that to mother children is 15 times harder.

We had little money, I was trying to get on the straight and narrow, plus I was constantly training. Karron used to work in the jewellery store for two fellows called Kevin Douglas and Burt Wilkins. They were into boxing and knew all the old boys of the business, like Mickey Duff and Jarvis Astaire. Kevin and Burt were very kind to me, they literally used to feed me and take me around to show me a good time. Even then, I was aware of what was correct. For example, one day I was in a car with Kevin and Burt, when this man took a parking space that we had been waiting for. Kevin was known as a hard man, a very streetwise Cockney, who was into his antiques business. He didn’t want to confront this man because of his size, ‘He can’t do that, it is a matter of correctness.’ So I got out and said to the man, ‘Move the car!’ He said, ‘I will only be a minute,’ but I firmly said, ‘Move the car now, not in a minute!’ He moved the car.

Karron and I knew we couldn’t stay in that one room at her mother’s forever, so we managed to get a mortgage and bought a small three-bedroom maisonette in Hartington Road for £64,000. During this time, I met someone who would become one of my closest friends, a man by the name of John Regan. Ronnie was working for him at the time and kept reporting back about my developing career. John started coming to fights and gradually we became very good friends. He has been with me through some of my finest and darkest moments. John is a man of integrity whom I would trust with my children, my mother and my wife. I would trust no one with my own life. I wouldn’t put myself in that position.

Money was still short, so I went looking for a new promoter. I would travel up to London on the train, dodging the fare each time, and visit many promoters to discuss working together. My father had warned me about promoters and managers, saying, ‘Don’t watch the ones who take hundreds or even thousands of pounds. Watch the ones who take hundreds of thousands.’ So I was wary of who I wanted to work with.

I had sourced the names of all the big promoters. One such man was Frank Warren, who had me come up to London every day for two weeks and kept me waiting every time. One time in his office, I had waited for ages then went out to get myself an orange juice. When I came back, the secretary said that Warren had left. This was the type of treatment one had to put up with from some promoters, Warren being one. It was only a matter of one-upmanship though – which failed.