Low life
Brain strain
Jeffrey Bernard
I learnt too late and a long time ago to go down for a count of eight when in real trouble, and I still do just that when I hear a buff envelope coming through the front door or when I fall over in the morning putting my trousers on. It is a mystery to me, by the way, who on earth takes them off at night. But, as I say, eight seconds can frequently seem like quite a long time in which a desperate man can make not just one but two or three life-saving decisions, and if he is really sharp, there is even time to consider what is on the menu later that evening.
Twenty-four hours, on the other hand, can be a lifetime, and yet I read this morn- ing that Frank needs all of that in which to make up his mind whether to retire or not. There is only one more annoying type of procrastinator and that is the man who you walk into a pub with, you ask him what he's having and he tells you he doesn't know, and then spends a minute or two humming and hawing before ordering a glass of what he's been drinking every day of his life for the past 30 years. For Bruno to choose a drink, the landlord would have to apply to the local magistrates for an extension.
Years ago I always found boxers and fighters to be 'nice guys'. Some of them, particularly Bruno, still are, but there was always a time to be nasty and that was when it was, in Henry Cooper's words, `time to go to work'. Sadly, nowadays there are some really nasty people earning a liv- ing at what is no longer much of an art and is certainly devoid of nobility.
Outside the ring, one of the most unpleasant young men in England maybe even the world, for all I know — is our own Naseem Hamed, the current world featherweight champion (9 stone). I would quite like to personally kick a hole through his chest — when he was down, of course. As it is, you can be sure that I would beat him at the other thing he's good at, the hype of 'eyeballing'. He claims he can make anyone look away from him before the fight. After the usual preliminary instructions from the referee and a wintry glance from me, he would stagger back to his corner already a beaten man. He now says that he will become a legend. He prob- ably will, but I hope they throw at him every Mexican and South American — all of them especially good at that weight.
Meanwhile, it is good to hear that Joe Bugner, 46, is at last to retire for good bloody good — after being stopped by a Scott Welch. It was becoming obscene watching Joe attempting comebacks and I still have a photograph of the two of us together taken for the Sporting Life in 1970.
There was a momentary return to the more civilised aspects of boxing when I spoke to Jim Watt on the telephone in Glasgow last week. In his day he was as good a British world champion, a lightweight, as we have had in the past 50 years, which is saying he was really terrific. I half remember some recent correspon- dence in The Spectator about the standard of education in Scotland as compared to elsewhere. Jim doesn't only read and write, he understands those long words so fondly used by readers to our letters page. He has a finely honed brain, better exercised than Bruno's. An awful optimist, he runs a wed- ding car service. I am afraid that when Frank has counted up to eight, it might be hearses.
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