Henry Cooper Read online

  In loving memory

  of Sir Henry

  and Lady Albina Cooper

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author thanks the premier photographic agency, the Press Association, for the majority of the photographs and Jane Speed for her research assistance. Thanks also to the Cooper family, Terry Baker of A1 Sporting Speakers, to Roy Ullyett’s estate and, in particular, to freelance artist Art Turner for his sketches. Norman Giller also wishes to place on record his appreciation for the enthusiasm and skill of Jeremy Robson and his publishing team, with special mention for Helen Zaltzman, designer Namkwan Cho and master editor Sam Carter.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword by Jimmy Greaves

  Introduction by Henry Marco Cooper and John Pietro Cooper

  Seconds Out by Norman Giller

  Round 1: The Bishop and the Twins

  Round 2: First Professional Punches

  Round 3: Henry Über Alles

  Round 4: Glove Story to Love Story

  Round 5: Marriage, Tax and Cauliflowers

  Round 6: Enery’s ’Ammer and the Feat of Clay

  Round 7: War in Europe

  Round 8: Ali and the Unkindest Cut of All

  Round 9: Freudian Floyd and the Blond Bomber

  Round 10: European Emperor

  Round 11: Bust-up with the Board of Control

  Round 12: Well and Truly Bugnered

  Round 13: The Celebrity Circuit

  Round 14: Arise Sir Henry

  Round 15: The Final Bell

  Homage to a Hero

  The Henry Cooper Fight File

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  FOREWORD

  JIMMY GREAVES

  Henry Cooper was a treasured pal of mine for more than fifty years and he rates up there with Bobby Charlton as the greatest of all British sporting heroes. Wherever you go in the world, everybody knows Bobby and Our Enery.

  Sir Bobby found fame with his feet, Sir Henry with his fists. Bobby had his bombshell shot, Enery his ’ammer. Both represented their sport and their country with a dignity and sportsmanship that should be bottle-fed to many of today’s overpaid, pampered stars, who seem to think sporting celebrity gives them the right to become men behaving badly. There was never a time when our two favourite sporting knights had to reach for the protection of a court injunction.

  There were several of us at Spurs who were boxing fans and we used to watch him in his major contests. When he knocked down Cassius Clay at Wembley Stadium in 1963, I willed the man who was to become Muhammad Ali to stay down, but the bell saved him.

  Henry and I started out together as professional sportsmen round about the same time, he as a boxer in South London and I as a footballer with Chelsea in West London. Our paths often crossed at various sporting dinners and charity events, and I always found him great company, ever ready to share the latest joke and a laugh. In recent years I got to know Henry even better because we travelled together to appear in the road shows organised by our chum Terry Baker, of AI Sporting Speakers.

  I have known Norman Giller for even longer than I knew Henry. He first interviewed me for the local West Ham newspaper where he worked when we were both seventeen, and I have been trying to avoid him ever since. Twenty books together later, I guess I have been unable to shake him off.

  I last saw Norman and Henry together at the funeral of Norman’s lovely wife, Eileen. She and Norman were married for forty-five years. Henry and Albina had an idyllic marriage that matched theirs and when I heard Albina had died, I feared for Aitch. She was his right and left hand, and I worried how he was going to cope without her. Shortly after came the news that his identical twin brother George had passed on and the last time I saw Henry at a road show I knew he was in trouble. He had lost his old spirit and sparkle, and I was not surprised when he took the final count.

  But let’s remember the Henry Cooper who was loved by millions and gave loads of pleasure with his boxing performances and, later, his easy-going nature and willingness to help anybody in dire straits. The staggering amount of time he gave to charity was never for show but out of deep sincerity.

  His life and times are well chronicled here by a writer who knew him better than most. We will definitely not see his like again. Rest easy, Aitch.

  HENRY COOPER: A HERO FOR ALL TIME

  INTRODUCTION

  HENRY MARCO COOPER AND JOHN PIETRO COOPER

  Our Dad became a household name as Henry Cooper, a champion boxer of renown and much admired beyond the boundaries of sport by many people captured by his natural desire to give more than he took from life. We are enormously proud of all that he achieved, not only in the boxing ring, but outside with his many unselfish acts and services to charities that, to his immense pride, earned him a knighthood. Dad did not seek reward for his charity work. He saw it as a duty, having come from a humble background, and never lost sight of the fact that there were those in need who required help, support and funding.

  It was distressing to lose Dad on May Day 2011, his passing coming quickly in the wake of losing his best friend, our Mum, Albina, and his beloved identical twin brother George. For we ‘boys’, it was a triple blow from which we have yet to recover, but the warmth of our memories of three greatly loved people is gradually replacing the pain of the loss.

  Eventually, we intend to produce our own special memorial tribute to our dad and mum. In the meantime, we are very happy to give our blessing to this highly personal book by author Norman Giller. He was there as a witness almost from the start of Dad’s boxing career and their boxer/reporter relationship blossomed into a friendship that later encompassed our mum and Norman’s late wife, Eileen.

  There is much new material in this book that not even we knew about Dad’s life and career, and we see it as a fitting homage not only to Henry Cooper the boxer but also to Henry Cooper, our dad, our Hero.

  Author Norman Giller is making a donation to the Sir Henry Cooper Charity Fund in memory of his old friend, and as a gesture for the support he has received from Henry’s sons in the writing of this tribute memoir.

  SECONDS OUT

  NORMAN GILLER

  This was planned as an autobiography and Henry’s first words were going to be: ‘It’s been quite a life so far, and I want to get some memories down on paper before the final bell…’

  Sadly, we never got round to writing what would have been Sir Henry’s own intimate account of his life and times. The final bell rang earlier and more suddenly than any of us expected.

  The great man’s demise came quickly after the double blow of losing his beloved wife, Albina, and identical twin brother, George, within a short period of time. Our mutual mate, Colin Hart, the doyen of boxing scribes, summed it up when he said: ‘Henry died of a broken heart.’

  How tragically ironic for a man who was all heart.

  The day Henry died – May Day 2011 – Britain lost a national treasure. His fame and popularity transcended the world of boxing in which he made an international name for himself as a heavyweight boxing champion, fighting with skill, power and the quiet dignity that marked just about everything he did in life. Oh yes, and he famously knocked down one Cassius Marcellus Clay – much more of that later.

  I had known and loved – yes, loved – ‘Our Enery’ for more than fifty years and I have been encouraged to go ahead with this book by Henry’s devoted sons, Henry Marco and John Pietro, as a personal memoir of a man among men and one of the most agreeable people ever to cross my path during this ephemeral existence of ours.

  It had been planned as the fourth book I had written with Henry, following on from Henry Cooper’s 100 Greatest Boxers, Henry Cooper’s
Most Memorable Fights and Henry Cooper’s How to Box.

  I approached entrepreneur Terry Baker, a friend and near neighbour of mine in Dorset, who promoted Henry’s popular road show appearances, about the feasibility of publishing a limited edition autobiography, each copy signed by Henry. What a collector’s item that would have been!

  We were about to discuss it with Henry Marco in his role as his dad’s business manager when alarm bells started ringing about our hero’s health. It seemed almost overnight he went from the affable, happy Henry we all knew and adored to a shuffling shadow.

  In a matter of months he had passed on, leaving behind a mournful army of admirers whose lives he had brightened with his pleasing personality and presence, as well as with his achievements.

  In his warm eulogy at Henry’s moving private funeral in Tonbridge, Kent, comedian Jimmy Tarbuck said: ‘Henry was a nice man… a very nice man.’ That captured Henry, simply but perfectly. Yes, a very nice man.

  The publishing baton was picked up by Jeremy Robson, renowned for his illustrious sports publishing ventures over more than forty years. He agreed with me that Henry deserved a biography, putting in context not only his exceptional boxing performances but also his impact as a hero of the people, going far beyond the world of sport.

  In the following pages I plan to paint a personal portrait of Sir Henry that I hope is both accurate and worthy of a man who won the hearts of the nation, with both his fistic feats and his exhaustive work for charities that was appropriately rewarded with a widely welcomed knighthood.

  The quotations I use throughout the book were gathered over years and from scores of conversations with Henry, and I hope his voice comes through to give meat and merit to my memories. Nobody can paint a portrait of our hero without dipping into the meticulous autobiography produced in partnership with former Guardian sports editor John Samuel (Cassell, 1974) or the more cerebral biography from Robert Edwards (BBC Worldwide).

  Oliver Cromwell instructed his portrait artist Sir Peter Lely: ‘Paint me warts an’ all.’ Well, I have spoken to scores of people who knew Henry inside and outside the ring, and I cannot come up with a single blemish. Mind you, his old nemesis Brian London confided: ‘He could be as nice as pie one minute and then knock ten skittles out of you the next…’ I’ve cleaned that up.

  But that was Henry’s brutal business and he went about it in an assassin’s thoroughly professional manner, yet somehow managing to retain his self-respect at all times, even when he was on the receiving end of the punches and the punishment.

  One skeleton in his closet: he was an Arsenal fan. But nobody’s perfect (this written as somebody with Tottenham leanings, always a subject for rivalry and banter between us). You judge a sporting hero not only on how he performs in the sports arena, but also his behaviour away from the cheering throng. Can he meet Rudyard Kipling’s twin impostors of triumph and disaster and treat them both the same?

  Henry had a quiet grumble about a few of the results that went against him, particularly in his farewell fight against Joe Bugner. But outside the ring his general behaviour was impeccable and an example to today’s high-profile sportsmen and women as to how to conduct themselves in public and in private.

  Yes, Henry Cooper – Our Enery – was a hero for all time.

  Come with me now to the springtime of his life as I tell the Henry Cooper story over fifteen rounds, which fittingly was the championship distance when he was hitting and hurting for a living.

  Seconds out, here comes Our Enery…

  ROUND 1

  THE BISHOP AND THE TWINS

  Our first meeting: it was 5.15 a.m. on a freezing December morning in 1958 and Henry Cooper was standing alongside me stark naked, apart from a pair of heavy-duty size eleven army boots.

  No, I am not uncovering a sordid kinky secret from Henry’s past. I had asked for an interview for a feature I was writing for the fight game trade paper Boxing News and Cooper’s manager Jim Wicks told me in raw, unadulterated Cockney: ‘The only time that he’s got to rabbit to you, my son, is when he goes on his early morning gallop. So get a pair of strong daisies and join him on the old frog if you want any nannies.’

  Meet The Bishop – Jim Wicks, the most influential and important man in Henry’s life and boxing career. Jim was not just his manager, he was his minder, mentor and best mate. And an unknowing master of malapropisms.

  Very misleadingly, he was called ‘The Bishop’ because of his distinguished, benign looks and bald dome that would have fitted perfectly into a mitre. But ex-bookmaker Jim’s church was the betting shop and his altar rails were at the racecourse. In those pre-mobile days he would eat only at restaurants where there was a portable payphone that could be brought to the table, so that he was able to place bets throughout the meal. Win or lose, his poker face gave nothing away and his mood would never change from amiable, and he always picked up the bill.

  Jim and his betting cronies could have stepped out of the Cockney equivalent of Damon Runyon’s Guys and Dolls, a sort of Geezers and Birds. I wish I had the Runyonesque skill to transfer them to the page, the likes of ticket spivs and gamblers synonymous: Johnny the Stick, One-Arm Lou, Fat Stan, Razor Laugh, The Hat, Italian Al, Beryl the Peril (the first female boxing promoter, Beryl Gibbons), Harry the Hoarse and, of course, The Bishop. Come to think of it, scriptwriter John Sullivan managed it with Only Fools and Horses.

  These were the sort of Del Boy oddballs surrounding Henry. But he never allowed himself to become distracted, tainted or stained by them, just nicely amused by the sort of larger-than-life Cockney characters you just don’t see around anymore. Jim Wicks, ex-publican son of a Bermondsey docker and a pioneer of sporting spin and propaganda, was the most memorable of them all.

  I will translate for The Bishop as we go along. ‘A pair of strong daisies’ – daisy roots, boots. ‘Frog’ – frog and toad, road. ‘Nannies’ – nanny goats, quotes.

  Our meeting place for the early morning road run was the Thomas a Becket gymnasium, bang in Del Boy territory down the Old Kent Road, where Henry was training for an upcoming challenge for the British and Empire heavyweight titles against his old foe Brian London at Earls Court.

  He ran a regular four miles around South London streets every morning before they became polluted by traffic fumes and here I was about to accompany him, along with his spitting-image twin brother George and trainer Danny Holland, who allowed himself the luxury of a bicycle. I introduced myself to Henry and he showed no embarrassment as he warmly shook my hand while wearing nothing but his boots.

  ‘Watchyer, Norm,’ he said with his huge trademark smile, instantly putting me at my ease as if we were old mates. ‘I always put me boots on first. It’s habit from when I’m getting ready to fight – boots first, then jockstrap, protector, shorts, hand bandages and me dressing gown last. Then the gloves of course, yeah.’

  He had a rhythmic way of talking that you could have set to a snare drum accompaniment and he would invariably end a staccato run of sentences with a sign-off ‘yeah’, like a cymbal crash from a percussionist. Sometimes, as if influenced by the Beatles, he would put in a ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’. It was the equivalent of Frank Bruno’s ‘Know wot I mean?’ or the ‘y’know’ of a million Cockneys, a spoken punctuation mark.

  Henry pointed down at the boots. ‘These are all I’ve got to show for serving Queen and Country.’

  ‘King and country, ’n’ all,’ chipped in brother George, who was already in his Army boots and tracksuit. ‘We swore allegiance to King George when we started our National Service and the Queen was on the throne by the time we were demobbed.’

  If you had your back to the Cooper twins you had no idea which one was talking because their voices were of the same timbre and tone, and for such big men surprisingly soprano-pitched at times, particularly when they were excited.

  I had just stripped off and was about to pull on a tracksuit when The Bishop arrived, looking immaculate as if he were on his way to morning prayers. A
smart, grey trilby protected his bald head from the cold morning air and he was sheathed in a fine-check Crombie overcoat. He had probably just come from a Mayfair casino or an all-night card school.

  ‘Bleedin’ ’ell,’ he said, catching sight of my skinny-as-a-pipe-cleaner, nine stone featherweight frame alongside the, by comparison, perfectly chiselled Adonis that was Our Enery. I was a blushing boy of nineteen, Henry at his physical peak of twenty-five. ‘I’ve got greyhounds fatter than you,’ said Jim, in unmerciful mood. ‘You need a good meal rather than a good run. For gawd’s sake, Enery, don’t let him fall down any drains.’

  Henry came to my defence. ‘Don’t listen to him, Norm,’ he said. ‘You can’t fatten thoroughbreds.’

  From that day on it was a catchphrase between the two of us, as what started out as a working relationship blossomed over the next fifty-plus years into strong friendship.

  Four weeks later Henry took the British and Empire titles away from Brian London with a convincing fifteen rounds points victory. I told him that it was down to the fast pace I had set in our road run together. It was not at all funny but Henry, bless him, was polite enough to laugh. ‘Yeah, Norm, yeah,’ he said. That somehow captured his spirit of generosity.

  Henry and George had been born in the York Road hospital, Westminster, on 3 May 1934. George V was on the throne, Ramsay MacDonald was leading a coalition government, Hitler was about to declare himself Führer, the Ambling Alp Primo Carnera was world heavyweight champion, Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express, a pint of beer cost twopence and a semi-detached house in London would set you back £800, and more than 40 per cent of people in the United Kingdom – including the Coopers – were living on or below the poverty line.