am quite strict with my children but only to discipline them about what is correct. I will not smack any of them for being naughty. If they do something that requires punishment, they will have to collect 20 bags of leaves from the lawns, or maybe write out 30 sentences using the key words I give them. Very often, I will not punish them at all in such a fashion. Joseph once scribbled on the wallpaper, so I said to him, ‘Did you do that? Don’t lie and there will be no punishment.’ He sheepishly nodded and so that was that. He knew not to do it again. You have to draw that sort of behaviour out of a child. The only time I will smack one of my children is when one of them has bullied one of the younger ones. That is not acceptable but it does not happen very often either. Some parents believe that the law should be involved if a parent smacks a child. If that is so, not only would I be prepared to go to jail, I need to go there.
When I was in the Celebrity Big Brother house in early 2001, I had a discussion with Vanessa Feltz about how to bring up children. It seemed to me that she was advocating the politically correct way to teach children. I could not agree with her on that. The politically correct way to bring up children means they will call their mother a cow and tell their father to piss off. That’s the end result, in my opinion. I’ve seen this, I grew up in this country around certain people who did that. In a Jamaican household, there is no disrespect whatsoever: you do as you’re told.
For parents, the best thing to do for your child is to have them exposed to the world. The problem is, the hardest thing for you to do also is to expose them to the world. Nevertheless, let the child go. Because of my background, I was given no choice, I was thrown in at the deep end. As a parent, I’m too much of a coward to put them through that. I don’t want to expose them. I want to protect them. My eldest child said to me one day that he wanted to hang out at Churchill Square in Brighton. I said, ‘No way, I will go to prison first. Do something, achieve something, don’t waste your time down there.’ Fortunately, I pulled myself back in time and did the clever thing, which was to let him go.
I am somewhat like my own father when it comes to the children. I don’t have much time for playing with toys and such like. I never played with toys as a kid myself, largely because I didn’t have any. So I struggle to sit down with them for hours on end playing children’s games. I have to go out there and provide for them all. I was never that type of kid, so now I’m not that type of father. I’m more into teaching my kids reason, wisdom and discipline. Yet, I agree with Nietzsche’s thought that, ‘Women understand children better than men. But a man is more childish than a woman.’
Society, or the media, cajoles people to think that you should try to understand your child. But your child will be alright if they understand YOU, the parent. When they do, you will understand them. I say to my little ones, ‘What? Am I supposed to understand why you jump around making noises and ripping the wallpaper up? I’m supposed to understand you weren’t thinking? Well, no, think. I don’t like that.’ They have to come to understand you.
Think about it. When I became a man, I thought how right my father had been and that I wish I had listened to him much more than I did. There is a natural chronological evolution at work here: my father was a complete loser when I was 15. At 17, he was just trying to hold me down, he didn’t understand anything I did. Yet at 21, he was all right. He still wasn’t for me, I couldn’t keep his company that much, but he was okay. Then you get to 30 years old and the only person you want next to you is your old man. Well, let me say this – he hadn’t changed. It was never that he didn’t understand me. It was me who misunderstood him. One shouldn’t make that mistake.
With me in this experience of bringing up the children is Karron, and I am immensely fortunate to have such a wife. Karron is a good woman. She is an exceptional mother who doesn’t really allow anyone else to look after the children other than her sister. She sometimes burns herself out, though, as four children are a handful. My philosophy is this: my job as a fighter was by far, without any doubt, the hardest business or way of life in the world, bar none. The pressure, the solitude, the physical demands, the media attention, it was so demanding. My estimation is that to mother children is 15 times harder.
We had little money, I was trying to get on the straight and narrow, plus I was constantly training. Karron used to work in the jewellery store for two fellows called Kevin Douglas and Burt Wilkins. They were into boxing and knew all the old boys of the business, like Mickey Duff and Jarvis Astaire. Kevin and Burt were very kind to me, they literally used to feed me and take me around to show me a good time. Even then, I was aware of what was correct. For example, one day I was in a car with Kevin and Burt, when this man took a parking space that we had been waiting for. Kevin was known as a hard man, a very streetwise Cockney, who was into his antiques business. He didn’t want to confront this man because of his size, ‘He can’t do that, it is a matter of correctness.’ So I got out and said to the man, ‘Move the car!’ He said, ‘I will only be a minute,’ but I firmly said, ‘Move the car now, not in a minute!’ He moved the car.
Karron and I knew we couldn’t stay in that one room at her mother’s forever, so we managed to get a mortgage and bought a small three-bedroom maisonette in Hartington Road for £64,000. During this time, I met someone who would become one of my closest friends, a man by the name of John Regan. Ronnie was working for him at the time and kept reporting back about my developing career. John started coming to fights and gradually we became very good friends. He has been with me through some of my finest and darkest moments. John is a man of integrity whom I would trust with my children, my mother and my wife. I would trust no one with my own life. I wouldn’t put myself in that position.
Money was still short, so I went looking for a new promoter. I would travel up to London on the train, dodging the fare each time, and visit many promoters to discuss working together. My father had warned me about promoters and managers, saying, ‘Don’t watch the ones who take hundreds or even thousands of pounds. Watch the ones who take hundreds of thousands.’ So I was wary of who I wanted to work with.
I had sourced the names of all the big promoters. One such man was Frank Warren, who had me come up to London every day for two weeks and kept me waiting every time. One time in his office, I had waited for ages then went out to get myself an orange juice. When I came back, the secretary said that Warren had left. This was the type of treatment one had to put up with from some promoters, Warren being one. It was only a matter of one-upmanship though – which failed.
HATE ME, BUT DON’T DISRESPECT ME
As a professional boxer, it is vital that you keep your skills confined to within the ring. Used on a normal man in the street, they could be very dangerous, potentially fatal, even with smaller fighters. This is the reason why I haven’t had a fight outside of the ring all of my career. There is only one instance where I used my fists away from the business, not in a fight, but as a necessary action in a very specific situation.
I was walking along Meeting House Lane in Brighton one afternoon. The streets known as ‘The Lanes’ are very narrow indeed, perhaps only five feet wide at some points. I was strolling along when I heard a commotion up ahead. I looked up to see a man running down the lane, carrying in his hands a tray of gold rings that he had just stolen from a jeweller’s window he’d smashed. He was shouting, ‘Get out of the way! Out of the way!’ and running very fast towards me. This was a power play, I had seen this all the time on the streets. I was walking in my usual precise fashion, but stepped to one side so this guy could pass by when he came level with me.
When this man was about 30 yards in front of me, I could see he was quite large, about 6’ 2” and roughly 1901b. I was ready to stay out of his way. However, just in front of me there was an old lady. She was in her mid-50s, only small, maybe 5’, immaculately dressed with grey pleated trousers and a grey top. She wore circular horn-rimmed glasses, and her hair was 75% grey, 25% black, cut into a smart bob. To me she looked exactly like Miss Marple. She couldn’t have noticed this big man coming behind her but as he approached her, he shouted, ‘Get out