Boxing Champ
FOR a man who’s taken a lot of punches Billy Walker is an excessively cheerful person. Hailed as the George Best or David Beckham of his day depending on who you ask he’s certainly one of boxing’s most colourful characters. He’s just published a biography in which he shares his life’s experiences from an East End barrow boy to sporting fame and fortune recounting many scrapes with the law and beautiful women along the way. Blessed with good looks and a hammer for a fist, he was known as the Blond Bomber from West Ham when he became a literal overnight sensation in the sixties.
At 22 years old he’d been an amateur boxer for three years and this dark November night he stepped up to the ring to face his biggest opponent yet, Cornelius Perry, referred to as the Giant American. “I thought he was going to hurt me”, says Billy, “I thought he’d hammer me.” It was 1961; the competition was the England Versus America Amateur International. “I was as nervous as hell; I was one of the last to fight so I had been sat in the changing room for over two hours. When I saw him I thought bloody hell.”
But Billy triumphed sending Perry flying in the first round and the nation watched on TV as the good looking cockney sent the American goliath flying through the air. No one was more surprised then Billy. He says it is to the invention of TV that he owes his success. “Back in those days there was only one channel on telly, BBC1 and everybody watched it. There was nothing else on that night ‘cept the fight so everybody saw me beat this big bloke and that’s what really done it.”
The next day promoters came knocking with lucrative offers and the rest is history. Since then he has made and lost a fortune several times over. He’d been plucked from amateur obscurity with a £9000 contract, a small fortune in those days. I ask him what he thinks about the huge fees boxers receive now and he’s unfazed by it. “People always say that about the money but look; back in 1967 I remember earning £25,000 for a fight which doesn’t sound like much now. But when you think that same year I bought a beautiful five bed Georgian mansion, on the river Thames, with tennis court and its own private moorings for only £17,500 you see how much it was. The same house today is probably worth over a million.”
He dated beautiful woman, married four times, started and stopped several business and bought and sold many properties. Property is a subject close to Billy’s heart and several times during the conversation he steers it in that direction. When I tell him the paper I’m writing for is based in Cork he’s delighted. “Cork”, he booms, “lovely place, I had a house there once, would be worth a fortune now if I kept it. I bought and sold it for nothing. In a beautiful bay there called Whalsey Bay, visited it several times.”
Billy planned to retire there but said uncertainty around the punt in the sixties made him change his mind so he settled in jersey instead. It was here he bought some land and built five houses, selling them on and making a small fortune. Where’s it all gone now? “Divorce,” says Billy somewhat ruefully. “It’s so expensive. I had to provide for my wife and children too.” He says he has no regrets and has five lovely children. Sadly he lost his third wife Pat to cancer and he writes candidly about this in the book. He tells me it was a ‘devastating’ time for him. But he has since bounced back and is now happily married for the fourth time.
For all his popularity, his record for sold out fights at Wembley still hasn’t been broken, Billy never really made it in the professional boxing world. Notorious for packing a mean punch and taking one too he lacked the tricks and technical abilities boxers were coming through with. Having lost to Henry Cooper for the British Heavyweight Championship title Billy hung up his gloves.
But considering he began his career as a barrow boy at Billingsgate market he’d gone a long way. There’s the fast cars, flash homes and model girlfriends. He loved the women and the drink and his honesty around these areas makes for riveting reading. It is even rumoured that he is the boxer in the Simon and Garfunkel song. According to legend when Paul Simon was on his travels around London he stopped off at a gym and saw the heavyweight training and was inspired by the sweat and toil to write the song. Billy’s not sure if it is him, he says; “It would have been around the right time, but I don’t remember. I met a lot of singers and song writers. Harry Nielson was a good friend of mine. I was even asked to make a record myself. Someone from Decca asked if I could sing and I said ‘no’ but they said never mind have a go anyway. I’d do anything for money.”
A fact born out by the many trades he has turned his hand to from restaurants to movies and boxing correspondent. During that time he met many famous people along the way. He was even rumoured to have had a tryst with Joan Collins at the Monte Carlo film festival but is discreet about this saying only that they’d had a lot to drink. He reels off names of well known east end characters but it’s a sign of the times that there are none I recognise today except Barbara Windsor and of course the bastion of east end culture, the Krays.
“Let me tell you about the Krays,” he says. “Back in the late sixties they were wanting to go straight so they went into boxing competitions. The idea was to raise money for charity, a good thing really. They’d often visit the east end gyms and always want to be photographed with well known fighters. There’s a picture of me with them that’s always dragged out. But they were big into boxing themselves.”
“We all knew each other, all us east end characters. The thing is everybody wanted to get out of the east end back then but now, if you wanted to buy a property in the east end do you know how much it’d be…?” And he’s off on property again. You could spend a long time talking to Billy and not get bored. He has a lot to say and an entertaining way of saying it. This comes through in the book. It’s a cliché but true to say that art imitates life as the book pulls no punches. It’s honest, funny and entertaining, just like the man himself. He’s lead both a charmed life and a hard life, but he says in the end he has no regrets…except possibly selling that house in Cork!
When the Gloves Come Off
Robson Books by Billy Walker
Extract
Looking back, maybe I could have done better, gone further, in my
career if I’d lived a cleaner life. But I have no regrets – absolutely none. Who knows if the booze did me any harm, stopped me from winning a title? What I do know is that it certainly helped me enjoy life. Without a good drink with good mates, I’d have had a boring time, wouldn’t I? As it was, I had fun. I earned money, I lost money; I found love, lost it, then found it again. I lived.