Screen Break
Bruno - Not bonkers, but unhinged enough to do panto in Saffron Walden!
By Martin "horizontal heavyweight" Kelner on Jun 3, 2008 - 10:25:56 PM
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Life, eh? It is not slow to put the boot in when you are down, as Frank Bruno for one has found. Unlike boxing, there is no-one waiting in your corner to pick you up and point you in the right direction when things go awry.
At least I thought there was no-one until I noticed that one of the expert witnesses on Sky’s documentary Frank Bruno Laid Bare was described as a “life strategist.” A life strategist. If only I had known such a thing existed.
There you are, trying your hardest to get by on just life experience, and random scraps of advice – “Always leave a party when someone starts singing American Pie,” “Never try to whistle when you’re eating blancmange,” that kind of thing – when all the time, there are these strategists around to take the wider view; Glenn Hoddle figures with whom to talk tactics when life is winning all the fifty-fifties in midfield, and pulling your defence all over the place.
I am not sure how effective Peta Heskill, the life strategist on the Frank Bruno programme, would be in what Glenn would undoubtedly describe as a half-time-team-talk situation. While it cannot be easy trying to impart great verities in ten-second sound-bites on satellite TV, much of what Peta said fitted neatly into the category of the bleedin’ obvious.
Talking of the death of Frank’s father when the boxer was just fifteen years old, Peta said: “For a young lad to lose a father figure at the age of 15 is a traumatic event.” Absolutely, I thought, and especially if that father figure turns out to be your actual father who, of all the father figures, is probably one of the most important.
Bruno’s troubled past, his time in approved school and so on, has clearly had a part to play in his present difficulties, although you did not need to be much of a life strategist to see that retiring from a sport which gave his life structure and provided an outlet for his aggression, was where most of Bruno’s problems stemmed from. Even the Peter Reid of life strategists could spot that one.
Barry McGuigan described boxing as a Class A drug - an unfortunate choice of metaphor in the present climate – which had Bruno in its grip, an assessment with which it was difficult to argue.
The documentary was largely sympathetic and helpful. I took it as a kind of elaborate apology for the ill-judged headline in early editions of The Sun on the day Bruno was sectioned under the Mental Health Act: Bonkers Bruno Locked Up. Marjorie Wallace, of an organisation called SANE which campaigns for better understanding of mental illness, was even allowed time to say how shocked she was on seeing the headline, which was changed for later editions of the newspapers, while the sub-editor who wrote it may well have been given an opportunity to re-think his or her life strategy.
Interviewees on the programme were almost exclusively friends of Bruno, which meant short shrift for ex-wife Laura, who was little discussed – although it must be said she has not been noticeably tight-lipped about their marriage elsewhere – other than the comment from one of Frank’s friends that she was “better than him at the hard-nosed business side of things.” If you know what I mean.
Boxing, as McGuigan rightly observed, is “the toughest game in the world,” and not just for the obvious reasons. Lennox Lewis’s former manager Frank Maloney was a guest on Frank Skinner’s late-night chat show on Saturday, and was asked how long before a fight it was that boxers put their gloves on.
“About twenty minutes,” Maloney replied. “Well, what if they want to have a pee? Do you have to, you know, help them get it out?” Skinner asked (This is what I like about Skinner. There is never any pretence that his show is about anything other than smut.)
Obligingly, Maloney, who was plugging his autobiography No Baloney, guided the smutmeister through the procedure should a pugilist be caught short, which involved no actual hands-on involvement from the hired help.
“But what if you see a cigarette end?” asked Skinner, “There must be a temptation to sort of grab hold, and direct the stream?” Maybe what is needed to make this aspect at least of a boxer’s life a little less harassing, is some kind of penis strategist.
Maloney appeared on Skinner’s show wearing a Union Jack suit, promoting his proposed candidature for the UK Independence party. He seems well-suited for politics, having once run a pub where a popular pastime was for darts players to throw darts at each other’s back, the winner being the one who could get the most to stick.
One chap, said Maloney, managed to get nine darts stuck in a rival’s back. A man with such close experience of back-stabbing, seems made for Westminster.
Speaking of which, Bruno once mentioned standing as a Tory. Had he gone ahead, it might have been Frank to whom the party was now turning, with the departure of Ian Duncan Smith having created an opening for a recognisable public figure with a reputation for toughness.
Sadly, though, having only left hospital two weeks ago, Bruno is probably too close to the psychiatric ward even for the Tories. To think, it could have all been so different. Where is a life strategist when you really need one?
