LONG LIVE BOXING NEWS
HOW did you first come to work for Boxing News?
I was assistant sports editor of the Stratford Express in East London (staff of two), and boxing was then my first love. We’re talking late 1950s. I’d had the dream to become a British champion like my hero and near neighbour in Stepney, Sammy ‘Smiler’ McCarthy, but brittle wrists meant I could only pound a typewriter keyboard. I was a walking record book on the sport and I jumped at the chance to join the Boxing News staff in 1958 when they had a shuffle following the departure of Editor Jack Wilson. Tim Riley took over as Editor, and we knew and respected each other from covering the London amateur boxing scene. The Boxing News staff was then just three full-time in editorial: Tim, king of the records Ron Olver and myself, with South London freelance Dave Caldwell working as a regular contributor for us. Michael Taub, a talented young writer with good boxing knowledge, joined as a junior soon after me.
Happy as I was on the Stratford Express, I just couldn’t resist it when Tim invited me to join his small team at 92 Fleet Street, bang opposite the Black Lubyanka Daily Express building that was an anthem to the best and the worst of art deco when built in the 1930s. Little did I know that before the 1960s were halfway through I would be looking out on to the Boxing News office from the Express.
Was it a huge salary rise that took you to Boxing News?
Oh yes, I was lured to boxing’s famous trade paper by a weekly wage of £8.10s (£8.50), and the promise of projection as a columnist on my favourite sport. These were the days when staff bylines were considered