Low life
Fighting chances
Jeffrey Bernard
But on Tuesday night I saw two people go over the top in such splendid style. I watched Marvin Hagler and Tommy Hearns in both their fights on the television in the Coach and Horses. Whenever Hag- ler landed a punch Norman would wince, presumably deeply conscious of his neck brace. I also got conned. I was stupid enough to think that the fights were live but of course they had taken place a few hours before. A crafty Scotsman bet me a bottle of champagne that Hagler would win, knowing full well the result already. I backed his opponent, thinking that Hagler might be over the hill at 31 years of age.
I look around me and I see a lot of people who are over the hill, and I must say that although there is something quite obscene about boxing in the horrific way that a great champion like Hagler can fight, I still find myself sometimes bemoan- ing the fact that there aren't any good pub fights any more. When I was a teenager and in my early twenties there was a good fight every Friday or Saturday night in the Soho pubs. There was nothing exactly disgusting about them, although they were very bruising because they were what Cockneys call 'straighteners'. That's to say that no one put the boot in, they simply stood up and faced each other like the bare-knuckle fighters of 100 years ago. And I shall now myself go into training and make a comeback. I feel that Taki should be whacked. When he said in his column last week that his Swiss bank manager had advised him that the only way in which he could stay out of the bankrupt- cy courts was to ditch his English friends I didn't know whether to feel angry or whether to weep. What every Greek should know is to hang on to any English friend for dear life. He also said that the Brits, as he nastily calls them, are slow to pick up bills. I don't know what sort of people he mixes with in Annabel's and Gstaad but it is a certainty that they are slower to pick up bills than any of the people that I know between the Charing Cross Road and Berwick Street.
In some ways I feel slightly ashamed of having these strong feelings about people knocking the English, but the fact of the matter is that I am actually very pleased to be English. Worse, mind you, than being Greek would be to be American. I have just been talking to one who actually had the nerve to pull a cigarette out of my mouth. Of course I lit another one and had another drink, but I would very dearly like to hit such people over their heads with sacks of their bran and health food and jogging shoes. I just don't know why people can't leave each other alone.
- The only person I would like to see not left alone and interfered with is Norman. I would like to see him given a loop-the-loop by the impotent crop-sprayer. God alone knows what it would do for his neck brace.
But his Mum is eyeing it with a smile on her face, I have noticed. She obviously thinks that there is an outside chance that she will outlive him and hand the money to her sons, the doctor, the solicitor and the chemist.
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