Henry Cooper

T
he author wishes to thank Sir Henry and Lady Cooper, Lord and Lady Teviot and in particular, for his diligent research and enthusiasm, Tony Gee. Thanks also to Andrew Lownie (the architect of this), Susan Dowdall at the
Daily Mail
and all at BBC Worldwide.

W
hen I heard of the untimely death, three days before his birthday, of one of the finest (and brightest) men I have ever had the good fortune to meet, I was, like many others, deeply moved. People with whom I had had no contact for a long time started to reconnect, simply to discuss how sad they were. It is like this when we lose someone we have learned to believe to be a fixture, a part of the National landscape, a well-remembered face. Images of Jim Clark, Graham Hill, even Diana, Princess of Wales, flashed across my mind. In my view, Henry was of that rank.

For, we do, collectively, feel loss. We feel diminished by their passing. We need them. For most people, frankly, are not very good at what they do.

Henry was. The British sporting public do not need their heroes to be World Champions. Stirling Moss, for example,
never was, although many people don’t know that. And those who do, don’t care. It’s very nice when that happens, they reason, but it is not a requirement for hero status. What is needed is the sense that these people give of their best. British champion will do nicely. Empire & Commonwealth will do even better. But most importantly, they need to be the real deal. Henry was.

I hadn’t seen him for a while; the last time had been at the
Thomas à Becket
, which had previously served as his training headquarters. I had heard of the sudden death of his adored wife Albina and was uncertain (as one always is) as to how to behave. Grief can be a very isolating experience, both for the sufferer of it as well as their circle. And I knew how close they had been.

The occasion was the unveiling of a ‘blue plaque’ in recognition of Henry’s contribution to his sport, the neighbourhood and indeed the wider community. He was expected, and there was a murmur of anticipation. Here was to be present one of the most famous faces in British sport; a gentleman and the man possessed of one of the most terrifying punches in boxing history. You would not volunteer to have been in the path of it.

Many of those present, who were the most eager to meet him were not even boxing fans. In politically correct Southwark, boxing can be disapproved of.

There was a fluid agenda. He’d certainly say something, I might too, time permitting and we’d all have the opportunity for some refreshment and a natter. The place was packed…

I met him outside. He was bang on time (a courteous
eight minutes early, in fact, as usual), immaculately turned out, as he always was, his suit a masterpiece, his loafers gleaming. He seemed tired and reduced, though, and his high colour alarmed me. I also knew that he was worried about his twin brother, because someone had taken the trouble to tell me.

I was apprehensive for him – this was one of the first occasions he’d ‘performed’ since his tragic bereavement. Would he be up to it? I’m not sure I would have been in his position.

We shook hands and spent a few moments chatting while I finished my cigarette: He knew he hadn’t the time to light one of his own cigars.

‘How are you?’ I asked. A bovine, stupid question on my part, but he obviously knew why I had asked it. I had dropped him a line (embarrassingly late, because I had not known) about Albina (who I had liked immensely), but with the usual sign-off – ‘H – please don’t trouble yourself in replying to this note…’

‘Oh, I’m all right, Robert. It’s been difficult, but I’ll survive…’

After a little more small talk, I stubbed out my fag and in we went. I introduced him: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen – Henry Cooper…’

One of the biggest rounds of applause I have ever heard probably then lifted the floorboards in what used to be his training room upstairs. Had Jim Wicks’ ratty little office still been there, I’m sure the dust would have risen from the desk; the telephones would have tinkled.

I needn’t have worried, in the event. He was splendid. Funny, relaxed, self-deprecating and ‘accessible’. There was
no question he would not answer. There were some
long-lost
old friends of his there and to hear him chat with them was charming, in the proper sense of that over-used word. Some of them had led very hard lives, it seemed to me.

He stayed several hours – I don’t think there was a single person present to whom he did not speak, and that included Traffic Wardens and PCSOs (trust them to sniff out a free sandwich) who wandered in off the street. It was Open House, which seemed appropriate.

In short, I was proud of him. But this book is not about me; it’s about him, his life and his times. And what times they were…

I have amended this book very little; not because I’m idle, but because I believe that a writer only ever gets (and only should ever get) one shot at the ‘feel’ of a book; the tone of it.

I’ll miss Henry; he was a magnificent man, likeable and straightforward and, after he retired, boxing receded in the national consciousness by a vast margin. Even people who disliked what he did could never bring themselves to dislike him. We are still searching for his replacement. Some have come close, but – I don’t really think so…

R.I.P.

T
here can be very few sportsmen whose career and reputation mark them out as instantly recognizable to a public outside their sport but there is one figure whose extraordinary popularity, by virtue of the traits he exhibits, marks him out as belonging to that select band, the ‘national treasures’. He is Henry Cooper.

Before television, such figures were rare; they would be seen on newsreels, perhaps heard on the radio, and we would read of them in the press, but the advent of mass visual broadcasting allowed them an audience that would have been unheard-of even a few years before. The development of satellite broadcasting multiplied their audiences again by many times, and so as the 1950s gave way to the next decade, sports were considered to be a global activity, and participants had to be of a global
standard. If they were not, they would fall by the wayside, and indeed many, particularly boxers, went the way of musical hall comedians. A sportsman’s character became important, too, as a mass audience could be quick to spot a personality who did not seem to deliver a certain character with which they were comfortable. It is different today, of course – Mike Tyson still has a huge following, despite his obvious character traits.

Henry Cooper survived the transition from private parochialism to public globalism. His fans spanned Europe and America once he had proved that he was a world-class heavyweight. He did this in 1958 when he beat the formidable Zora Folley, then ranked second in the world, behind the great Floyd Patterson.

And Henry’s personality shone through: relaxed, modest, realistic and hugely skilled. At the time he won the British and Common wealth heavyweight title in 1959, he was still living with his parents on an equally modest council estate in southeast London, sharing a room with his twin brother, George. He only moved out when he married in 1960. Unsurprisingly, George went, too.

As he rose to prominence (and stayed there), the nation came to identify with him. On the occasion of his first encounter with Cassius Clay in 1963 in a world title eliminator, when he put the American on the canvas, the country was heartbroken when he lost the fight. That he lost it by chicanery was clear, but he said nothing. When, on the occasion of his last fight against Joe Bugner in 1971 he lost through what can be only described as suspicious refereeing, Britain was doubly saddened, as the event triggered his retirement. In between, when he fought Muhammad Ali for
the world title in 1966, it was a more important sporting occasion to many, particularly this author, than the World Cup Final of the same year.

All in all, Henry Cooper fought 55 professional bouts as a heavyweight; he won 40, lost 14 and drew one. He successfully defended his British and Commonwealth title a record number of times and won three Lonsdale belts while doing it. That he had to sell these a few years ago in order to meet his liabilities as a Lloyd’s name touched the nation as deeply as anything that had happened to him professionally.

His post-retirement career kept him in the public eye like no other man; he seemed ageless. But time moved on; there were things he could say that he could only hint at in the past. The woes that befell him as a Lloyd’s underwriter are, while well known, still something of a mystery which we can explore, as one venerable British institution is cynically ripped off by another.

I first started discussing this project with Sir Henry after the publication of my biography of Stirling Moss; in many ways Sir Stirling brokered the introduction as the pair were not only good friends but also shared a manager for certain events. Stirling is also a boxing fan. Although I had met Henry (very briefly) at a boxing evening some years before, I had no real acquaintance with him whatsoever, so when the familiar figure strolled into the London Golf Club in Sevenoaks, Kent, which was our agreed rendezvous, and simply shoved out a huge hand in greeting, I confess to being quite charmed.

Such was the demeanour of the man that the prospect of working with him on this project was, professionally as
well as personally, a compelling one. As he leaned forward to explain some of the niceties of professional boxing (as opposed to mere violence) I realized that he was probably one of the most articulate and relaxed men I had ever met. The difference between the amateur and the professional, expressed in terms of career, was fascinating, as was his description of the 1963 Clay fight, which he famously lost. The rigours of the training camp, the dirty tricks of the ring, all was there, expressed lucidly, honestly and with the assurance that only a man with a career such as his could offer.

Some of the bad guys of the period are interesting, too, particularly now that many of them are dead, and we can breathe more easily. With so much money about, we should not be too surprised at the people we find lurking in the shadows – we meet the odd gangster, some truly terrifying businessmen and promoters, as well as a host of fighters, many of them obscure and forgotten now, but in their day, men who struck fear into a prudent heart. There are boxers Henry wished he could have fought (Joe Louis, his childhood inspiration), there are boxers he was glad he managed to avoid (Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston) and those he knew he could beat (Cassius Clay). There are men he wished he could have hurt more (Piero Tomasoni) and those, particularly the three who knocked him out (Patterson, Johansson, and Folley) all of whom he recalled he rather liked. Being knocked out, he assured me, is entirely painless if an expert such as Patterson does it.

The sociology of boxing in these years 1954-1971 is interesting. The double life that he unavoidably led, living on a council estate while lunching in the West End as
British heavyweight champion, was one with which he dealt very well indeed, and I have the impression that if he had to start again, he would have changed very little about himself. He did regret that his twin brother, George, did not progress further as a boxer, but George had recurrent fitness difficulties that frankly held him back. The pair made a good team at fights, though, with George acting more or less as Henry’s trainer when he himself retired. There is some suspicion that of the two men George might have been a touch more aggressive when their paths were parallel, not out of sibling rivalry, but merely temperament. Interestingly, although the pair were identical, they were ‘symmetrical’ or ‘mirror’ twins – Henry was left-handed, George right. They lived a few miles from each other in Kent and were always close.

Henry and George enjoyed a unique relationship with manager Jim Wicks that was brokered by a journalist after the brothers had finished their National Service with the 4th Battalion, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, in 1954. They had both fought in the Army as amateurs and turned professional under Wicks as soon as they were released. Wicks was a totally honest but deceptively hard man, who managed the twins’ careers with great integrity. This is not always the case, as critics of the sport are quick to point out. The Wicks/Cooper relationship was very much
in loco parentis
. It was also the envy of fighters managed by lesser men, and there were plenty of those.

Wicks had started out life as a bookmaker and progressed to man agement rather as a second career. He was a heavy gambler and, by all accounts, a successful one. His headquarters, the gym above the
Thomas à Becket
pub in
the Old Kent Road became, under his management, a mecca for British boxing and something of a social hub for the fans of the sport. Celebrities made sure they were seen there, watching the fighters train. All very gladiatorial.

Henry was quite straightforward as to motivation: he fought because it was his business to fight and not for reasons of some misty-eyed sentimentality. Wicks identified this and as a result theirs was a strong partnership. Boxing is a brutally Darwinian sport and there is a professional ‘sudden death’ element to it. A fighter who is over-matched and loses serially will stand little chance of recovering in order to take on worthier opponents. Conversely, a fighter who is constantly under-matched, fighting relative midgets and achieving a series of easy victories will not be considered a draw by promoters. It is a fine balance and Wicks found it; Henry was British champion for longer than any other man.

Awareness of boxing is deep in our collective psyche, whether we follow it, or approve of it, or not. The very terminology, the lexicon of boxing, is all around us and we use it quite unconsciously every day: ‘coming up to scratch’, ‘throwing in the towel’, ‘making a fair fist’, ‘out for the count’, ‘saved by the bell’, ‘on the ropes’ and so on.

This book is not intended to be a history of the prize ring, and not only because I am not particularly qualified to write that book. I am not, unlike others, steeped in the history of boxing, but I do regard its traditions as being of great significance to my story, as I saw in Henry Cooper a man who had inherited the mantle of so many men in the past, champions of Britain, or at least England, whose popularity at the time was very similar to that enjoyed by him now.

The evolution from accomplished sportsman to national treasure is not an easy process to follow; one day we find that it has simply happened. In Britain, it is not always a status conferred purely by statistical success, either. There is a further quality that is required – that of character, as if the British believe that only the man who has so little to prove can be acceptably humble, and not in a Uriah Heep sense, either. Many men who achieved a great deal less than Henry did are far from that, of course, and are as a result far less popular and sought after.

Boxers can have something of an uphill struggle in this particular, purely because of the nature of their sport. It is not one that many understand (indeed, many people even refuse to accept even that it is a sport), save that it has a very dark side to it. It can be difficult to reconcile what our popular boxers such as Henry Cooper actually did for a living with the fact that we also like them so much; for they do and did what the vast majority of us simply cannot conceive of doing: climbing into a ring with another man, under formal and old-established rules, and beating him, fair and square, with frequently bloody results.

The association of the observer with what is actually happening in a boxing ring is quite unlike other sports. Many feel that they could drive a Grand Prix car, or manage their way around a golf course with some credit, or even serve an ace at a major tennis tournament (and they are probably wrong in all those assumptions) but climb into a ring with Ingemar Johansson, or even Brian London? No; it would be quite unthinkable.

Given the very shadowy nature of boxing, particularly when Sir Henry Cooper was Britain’s senior exponent of it,
his public started to identify with the simple fact that his involvement in it seemed to have left him morally untouched, unlike, perhaps, Sonny Liston, who while he was a tremendous hero to some, would probably not have included the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother among his fans.

Some sportsmen are so competitive, so aggressive, that their state borders on that of a kind of autism. The public realizes this and often feels distanced, even repelled, as a result. I have met racing drivers, for example, who have never won a race, nor even achieved a podium position, but some of them have exhibited such a swaggering
self-regard
that I feared – not much, I must confess – for their sanity. I have never met a boxer like this; to be sure, there are those who rise to a certain tongue-in-cheek level of
performance
, but the suggestion is always there that this is so close to self-parody as to be considered an entertainment: merely perhaps, the hobby of easily bored men. The boxer’s pride is generally a quiet thing, and we like and admire them for that.

No one who reads this book will be remotely surprised when I say that I like boxing rather a lot. It is an interesting sport and I admire what fighters do very much. The fact that it has been, literally and metaphorically, ‘on its back foot’ for some time is a matter of great regret to me. I have also had a go at it myself; in the 1960s, when I was at school, it was considered morally compulsory to lace on the huge, ancient and iron-hard ‘mauleys’ (around the back of the bike sheds, usually) and square up in some grotesque and
ill-supervised
mismatch. I got soundly thumped, of course, and it hurt, rather a lot, as I recall. There is nothing quite like a
good whack in the solar plexus before Latin to quite put you right off the subject. So, my admiration for most of the men who do this for a living knows few bounds.

Although I well remember so many of Henry’s fights, it has been interesting for me to cross-refer to so many contemporary accounts of them from more seasoned observers than me who were at the ringside. By and large, but not exclusively, I have used broadsheet and specialist press coverage, for the simple reason that it is generally well written and concise, and lacks that ghastly sentimentality that seems to infest the tabloid world, although the opinion of that most accomplished writer, Peter Wilson of the
Daily Mirror
, is always illuminating. Similarly, the veteran observer Harry Carpenter’s insightful pieces, which he wrote so well for the
Daily Mail
, have been invaluable.

Viewing contemporary footage of some of Henry’s encounters has also been revealing, if only because the flawed nature of some of my own recollections are revealed, but it is important to stress that the perspective of television or video is strictly two-dimensional and can be highly misleading; the view of a boxing match offered by being seated near the ringside is far removed from that offered by being seated on a sofa and watching from a distance, if only because the spectator at a live match can see (and hear) how hard these men actually hit each other. Television denies us this.

Interestingly, even broadsheet coverage differed radically in its
reportage
of a given fight, even down to the details of times elapsed and relative points. This is not necessarily for reasons of professional sloppiness, merely an aspect of history. No two writers will ever see things in exactly the
same way, which is why it is important to compare and contrast consistently. After reading the bulk of the broadsheet press, it seemed to me that the
Daily Telegraph’s
Donald Saunders and
The Times
’s Neil Allen seem to have been the most consistent, particularly in their pre-match assessments, which are a useful litmus test of the informed opinion of the day.