Old Campaigner still fighting after all these years

Despite it, or quite possibly because of it, he became one of the most thrilling boxing prospects that the North-East has seen since the war.

George Jowett, who has written and published an epic poem about Brian Graham's rough road to glory, was a decent schoolboy boxer, too.

"Thirty five years later he is still fighting, though these days he loses more than he wins" says George's potted autobiography.

"Recent points defeats have come at the hands of his ex-wife, the legal profession and life in general.

"Despite these setbacks, George still believes that with better management he could have been a contender."

Were it not for the fact that it's on the back cover, you'd really want to read on....

His little book of boxing verse is called The Old Campaigners, its title taken from a poem about two arthritic former battlers taking a clapped-out final bow at the Borough Hall in Hartlepool.

He has avidly watched North-East boxing - "from the cheap seats" - for 25 years.

Another poem followed Ray Gilbody's victory, around 1980, in the ABA quarter-finals at the Beehive Ballroom in Darlington.

Out of the ring he was just a little feller, a bantamweight in a 5ft 4in suit, and someone (as always happens) pushed in front of him at the bar.....

And then I realised that even champions

Must sometimes stand and wait before they're served.

Jowett's all-time hero, however, remains the little lad from what Middlesbrough folk call Over the Border - the wrong side of the railway tracks - who simply refused to take his near death experience lying down.

The poem was composed without Graham's knowledge, the author seriously worried about the subject's reaction.

"It's a cracking story," he says, "it just needed someone better to write it."

He'd first considered an epic on Muhammed Ali, would have called it the Aliad and won top marks for the title, but thought Brian Graham a more suitable subject.

"It's typical of his luck," he says, "that when other people get Jeffrey Archer to write their biography, poor Brian gets me."

He might instead decide to sue for libel

(Though any claim he makes will be defended)

The whole thing's true, I swear it on the Bible,

(And every error in it's been amended.)

It first appeared about five years ago, the fighter politely declining any publicity which might have helped its sale in the area where he became a lionized local hero with a huge fight night following.

"It was a lot of years ago, I found the poem a bit embarrassing to be honest," says 44-years-old Brian, steward of Beechwood and Easterside Social Club in the Boro. Now, however, there's a new book and a second round.

Even Waterstone's in Middlesbrough have agreed to take it, though doubtless for a promoter's meaty cut.

"Well, all I remember," says Brian, reluctantly....

The bairns were playing in a derelict building, didn't realise ("until I grabbed hold of a power cable") that the owners had left the electricity supply on to work a lift.

"It just blew up. I only remember a white flash and the next thing running down the road on fire.

"One of my mates pushed me over and put me out.

"They put me in a taxi to take me to the hospital, but I set it alight and they had to put me in another."

He'd been an aggressive little kid, he says, a good footballer but never much of a boxer - "just swinging at the bags down St Peter's" - until forced to endure the hardest fight of his life.

"My arms and back were so badly scarred that in my first fight I wore a T-shirt instead of a vest.

"I had a complex that people were staring at me. It was something else I had to get over."

As an amateur he had 27 fights and just one defeat, representing the North of England in Norway. "Norway had just one Olympic representative and, just my luck, it was me he had to fight."

Encouraged by his dad, known locally as Dickie Robbo and reckoned Boro's hardest street fighter in the 1940s, he turned professional.

He won his first fight in the second round, George Jowett watching from the cheap seats, stopped Londoner Pete Long in the next, topped the bill at Middlesbrough Town Hall in only his third.

Though he beat Joe Dean on points, Graham had suffered a fractured cheekbone.

A comeback fight in March 1981 against a no-hoper called Jerry Golden - "as threatening as a frightened rabbit" writes Jowett - ended in the first minute when the same thing happened.

For Brian Graham it was the final bell. "To be truthful," he says, "the people who trained me expected me to become British middleweight champion at least.

"It was a broken dream but you just have to accept these things, as I'd had to before. There's always someone worse off than you are."

George Jowett, his biographer, lives in Richmond, is a social worker in Hartlepool, watches boxing less frequently.

"We had a super generation with Billy Hardy, Glenn McCrory and John Davison," he says. "The present generation doesn't yet match up to it."

As a poet, he remains his own most fretful critic....

Well that's it. That's my story; what a tale.

Dramatic, poignant, tragic and all true.

I really cannot see how it can fail,

But then I wrote it. Let me ask, can you?

Since he does ask, Backtrack thought the whole thing was original, vivid and generally terrific.

l The Old Campaigners is available for £3.99 at Waterstone's in Middlesbrough or, post free, from Redbeck Press, 24 Aireville Road, Frizinghall, Bradford BD18 4LQ. As part of the Swaledale Festival, George Jowett reads his poems at the Tan Hill Inn from 7 30pm this Sunday.

Though versifying is not generally encouraged in a column so prosaic as this one, Tom Purvis in Sunderland sends - by happy coincidence - a contribution to the debate which for the past ten days has occupied the nation's more eminent broadsheets.

It concerns, of course, the propriety of Mr David Beckham (and others) wearing brown shoes with a black suit, a matter also raised in The Times by Mr Peter Bottomley from Middlesbrough.

The guideline, ruled The Times authoritatively, was never wear brown when in town.

Tom remembers similar problems faced when on parade by the late Stanley Holloway:

Sven's team has flown away.

We said farewell today,

And it was a posh affair

Had to have ten p'licemen there.

The plane was luv'ly, all first class

And wot a turn out wi' wor lass,

We'd fah-sands cheering fans galore

But Becks, our hero, - wot d'er fink 'e wore?

Why brahn boots! I ask yer, brahn boots.

Fancy going to the finals in brahn boots.

I will admit 'e 'ad a nice black tie

Smart as a carrot wi' a gleam in his eye.

But you can't cheer people orf when they wear brahn boots!

And Man Utd had been so very good to 'im

Done all that any club could for 'im

And Becks, the lad, to show his clars

Rolls up to make it all a farce

In brahn boots. I ask yer - brahn boots.

There is, of course, a gleam in Tom's eye, too.

"If he scores the winner in the final he can wear diamonds in his navel and brown boots on his feet and I, for one, will cheer him to the rafters."

Huxter's, a bar in Newcastle city centre, is among 300 listed on a website of breakfast time pubs likely to have the best World Cup atmosphere.

The pub has one giant screen and 32 "ordinary" televisions, including sets in both ladies and gents. "Screen visible from the bar?" the website asks itself. "Undoubtedly," it answers.

If it's true that no one is indispensable, former Durham polliss and FA Cup final referee Peter Willis seems to be coming pretty close.

Though he stands down next month after 18 years as national president of the Referees' Association, not a single nomination has been received to succeed him.

Instead, Peter will become immediate past president - but still the RA's senior man.

"I've said I'll still chair meetings and conferences but the rest will be delegated," he insists. "I won't walk away from it, but my work load will be reduced by 70 per cent,."

Though it has become an effectively full time job, he has done it unpaid and with deliberately frugal expenses. Others can't follow the example.

"Refereeing has always been done on the cheap," he says. "It has cost my family £5,000 a year but I'm lucky that I have a pension and I accept that."

A management consultancy, meanwhile, has finished its review of the RA's affairs. It recommends that most of the presidential responsibilities be taken over by a highly-paid chief executive.

A memorial service is being held in Catterick Village parish church this afternoon for Noel Heaton, a dedicated servant for many years of both the Darlington and District Cricket League and of umpiring particularly.

Noel, who died suddenly in Scotland, had been league secretary for 12 years, became vice-president three years ago and was also training officer and data protection officer.

"It will be very hard, if not impossible, to fill the posts that he has so ably occupied all these years," said league president Brian Dobinson.

Noel was also much involved with umpire training and was himself a meticulous and highly knowledgable umpire. The president recalls bowling the final ball in a match for Haughton from which the visitors wanted three to win.

"Their chap smacked it towards the boundary. We thought they could run three, kept them down to two and then when I turned around, Noel was signalling a short run.

"It was a game we'd lost, drawn and won within the space of ten seconds. Noel never missed a thing."

the footballer who has made most FA Cup appearances in his career (Backtrack March 21) is Ian Callaghan - 88 for Liverpool between 1959-81.

Readers are today invited to name the three Leeds United players of the Don Revie era who went on to manage the club in the 1980s. The column returns on Tuesday.

Published: ??/??/2002