Phil King was on the trip as my producer. While we were there, I told him that we should enjoy a bit of Mexican culture as well as the hospitality and duly booked for a coach trip to the pyramids. Unfortunately, we had enjoyed a bit of a night out the evening before. At 6 a.m. the phone rang in the room and a voice said, ‘Señor, the coach for the pyramids, she is leaving in ten minutes.’ Phil says my reply down the phone certainly included the word ‘off’. He might be accurate. In those times of budgetary restraint at the BBC, we were sharing a room.
He and I also shared a taxi on our first night in Mexico City. We had asked the concierge for the address of a nightclub where there might be a bit of fun and a few girls. The cab dropped us at this sombre-looking place and when we entered there was no action at all, just a bar with a couple of men sitting at it. Then suddenly a lift came down and out of it stepped a dozen or so girls and paraded in front of us. So much for a nightclub: we were in a brothel. It took some persuasion, and a bit of my Spanish, to get us out of there in one piece.
But, just as in Kuala Lumpur, I did bump into a very sweet girl, and for a short time afterwards I was back in the air-mail business. It’s a wonder I found time to do the broadcasts.
The late Seventies and Eighties usually saw a dozen or so big boxing promotions each year in England, at the Royal Albert Hall or the Wembley Arena. They were either under the banner of Harry Levene or Barrett-Duff Promotions. Mike Barrett was a genial character, Mickey Duff a more rough and ready type who knew boxing inside out and who had once been a professional fighter himself. Levene was an old stager, grumpy as you like, but the man who had planted the thought in my mind about becoming a boxing commentator. They all got on with each other – sometimes. Once when Levene, now in old age, was ill, he telephoned Duff. ‘Mickey,’ he said, ‘I’m leaving it all to you.’ ‘I don’t want your money,’ replied Duff. ‘Not my money, you prick, the promotion,’ came the response. There was not a topline boxer in Britain at the time who didn’t perform on their bills. They worked closely with Terry Lawless, who managed many of the champions of the time, and they had a virtual monopoly; but they put on great shows. In recent years, the sport has been largely lost to the average fight fan, with promotions in small halls and television coverage only on satellite channels. Sitting ringside in close proximity to the weight of the punches, the blood and the sweat constantly underlined the courage of the boxers. Mickey Duff, the old pro himself, with a face to prove it, once told me that if his son ever looked as if he wanted to become a professional boxer, he would be tempted to cut his arm off. He knew precisely how hard a game it was.
I had said on one of our programmes that the first live coverage of a world title fight would be ‘Here, exclusively, on BBC Radio’. This was of course under instruction from the legendary Angus. Arriving back at the office after the show I was told there was a phone call for me. I picked it up and a voice said, ‘Mr Lynam, I have to tell you that you are a liar.’ Who was making this preposterous statement? The voice introduced himself as Jarvis Astaire, of whom I had scarcely heard. It was his rather graceless way of telling me that our forthcoming broadcast would not be exclusive because his company were beaming the fight into a chain of cinemas. Strangely, the conversation ended with us on good terms, despite his inflammatory opening line. Later, on several occasions I hosted his closed-circuit shows. Down the years, whenever I have gone to a major sporting event, almost at any time and anywhere in the world, I have found Jarvis there. Oh, and he’ll definitely have an opinion about it.
Before each big fight I was nearly always allowed in the dressing rooms, where I witnessed the pre-fight nerves of the boxers involved. I began to acquire a useful knack of spotting the winners and losers even before they entered the ring, and I consistently did well when placing a bet on the outcome of fights, in marked contrast to the lack of success I have had over the years when having a flutter on the horses.
I continued to travel round the world when British fighters were involved in major championship bouts abroad. In May 1976 I went to Munich to see another British fighter have a crack at Muhammad Ali. This time it was Richard Dunn, a tough former paratrooper from Yorkshire who had worked his way to the British title after some mediocre years. Dunn was nowhere near world class, but Duff and Barrett had engineered a big pay day and a probable beating for him.
For this fight Richard had acquired an addition to his usual retinue. Now he had a hypnotherapist with him who was boasting that not only would the British fighter enter the ring with absolutely no fear, but that he would actually create one of the all-time great upsets by beating Ali.
At the weigh-in for the fight, there was a near disaster when the ring collapsed with Ali in it. He could have been killed. As it was, he clambered out of the wreckage, unmoved by the untypical German inefficiency, and got on with the formalities.
In the fight, Dunn was indeed fearless and even caught the great man with a few decent punches; but you can’t hypnotise someone to be more talented than they truly are, and the inevitable end came in round five with an Ali knock-out.
After the fight something strange occurred. Dunn, who had always had a stutter, did an absolutely fluent interview with me, speech impediment missing for the first time in his life. A couple of hours later, the old stutter was back. A punch to the jaw is obviously only a temporary cure.
I had travelled to Germany with a heavy heart. Just before I left home, I learned that my father had been diagnosed with colon cancer. A couple of months later he died, after a major operation. This warm, generous and humorous man, full of common sense and decency, would no longer be there to advise me and make me laugh with his wit and wisdom. I was devastated. He had spent his life caring for others but when he needed care, it seemed to me that the doctors showed less concern than they should have done. Despite many requests at the time, the surgeon who operated on my Dad was always ‘too busy’ to give me the benefit of his advice or expertise about my father’s exact condition and I was continually palmed off with his juniors. I bitterly regret that I did not demand his attention more.
I felt alone and in despair. I needed a friend. I telephoned Jill, who had taken a job at a hospital in Holland. Jill had known and liked my father very much; so she came and held my hand and made arrangements, looked after my relatives from Ireland, and got me through. I took a few weeks off work and we spent some lazy days on Brighton beach as I tried to get over my loss. Then, once again, I let her go.
I now immersed myself into work even more and was glad of the boxing trips abroad. And of course, like millions of other people, I was still intrigued by Muhammad Ali. But he was now getting well past his prime. Many people thought he should have retired with his faculties intact after the ‘Thriller in Manila’. Certainly his doctor, Ferdie Pacheco, who had always been in his corner, strongly advised him to do so. By 1978, Ali was still very much active, but his speed of reflexes had deserted him and the wonderful footwork was a thing of the past. Now he was defending his title against Leon Spinks, a blown-up light heavyweight whom I had seen win the Olympic gold medal two years before in Montreal, the very title that Ali had won sixteen years earlier.
The fight was taking place in Las Vegas and, as usual, I got there about a week before to cover the build-up. On the day I arrived, my producer Phil King and I were having a bit of a disaster. Not only had the airline managed to send our luggage somewhere else, including all my pre-fight preparation, but the hotel in which we were supposed to be staying had no record of the booking. We were standing in the foyer bagless and roomless, and wondering what our next move was going to be, when the receptionist called my name. ‘Ah, a room,’ I thought. On the contrary, she just had a telephone call for me, on the other end of which was a BBC producer in London. ‘Des,’ he said, ‘I’ve been trying to find you for ages. You’re on live in thirty seconds.’ On came the familiar voice of Tony Lewis, the Sport on Four presenter. ‘Joining me now live from Las Vegas where he’s been watching Ali train is Des Lynam. How is Ali looking, Des?’ There are lies, damned lies, and reports from correspondents in difficult situations.
Eventually we got our hotel sorted out but now we had another problem. With his usual flair for publicity, Ali had a new gimmick. He reckoned that he had been talking too much and was going round with sticking plaster over his mouth. Well, this was jolly fun for the film and television crews and the