Sir Henry Cooper never made his mark as an Olympian – he boxed for Britain at light-heayweight in the 1952 Helsinki Games but was eliminated in the early rounds- yet if ever a boxer – indeed any sporting figure - exemplified the true spirit of Corinthianism it was 'Our 'Enry.

His sudden death this week, two days short of his 77th birthday, brought genuine sadness to a multitude of fans and friends.

I feel a personal loss because it was on the likes of him, and his era, that I was weaned in journalism.

Henry represented a different age, an age when guts meant as much as glory and ambition outweighed avarice.

The tributes that have poured in for boxing's first and only knight, not least from his most illustrious adversary Muhammad Ali, are well merited.

He was never a world champion but Henry surely was the last of the Gentlemen Gladiators.

I last interviewed him shortly before his 75th birthday. For the first time in 48 years it was one he was to be celebrating without his beloved Albina, the Italian-born wife who had similarly died of a heart attack at their home in Kent just under a year before.

Henry admitted: "I soldier on but it's left a big void in my life. I'll never get over it. I've shed tears every day since. I just can't help myself. I think about her all the time. She was my rock, my inspiration. I suppose I'm coping ok, but you never do really, do you?"

Not that Cooper's life was empty. He saw his two sons and two grandchildren most days and remained one of Britain's most in-demand sports figures.

The diary that the delightful Albina, whom he met when she was a 17-year-old waitress in her uncle's Soho restaurant, kept so meticulously was crammed with after-dinner speaking engagements and had rarely shown a blank date since he finished fighting following a still-debated loss as a 37-year-old to Joe Bugner.

It is 40 years since Cooper last slung his famous left hook, 11 since 'Our 'Enry' became Sir Henry.

Since then a succession of British heavyweights have been and gone, the good, the bad and the plug-ugly. But none, with the possible exception of Frank Bruno, not even Lennox Lewis, have touched Henry's hem in terms of public endearment.

Henry Cooper was a name in every British household in the sixties, and remains up there with Sir Bobby Charlton as probably the most loved and revered of our sporting idols.

Henry always talked a good fight, though mainly of yesteryear. "It's a different game now," he said in that interview.

"They get millions. A Premiership footballer earns more in a week than I did for twice fighting Ali. I was 20 years too early.

"I boxed in an era where there were some great fighters, now you can count them on one hand. There were twenty young heavyweights in the country when me and George [his twin brother who fought as Jim] were boxing. Now there's about three or four."

The subsequent death of his beloved brother from a muscle-wasting disease also hit Cooper harder than any punch, and these past few months saw his health and usual gusto in rapid decline.


He remained an icon not just because of 'Enry's 'Ammer, which so famously put the then Cassius Clay on his pants only for him to be saved by the bell in the spring of 1963. If Cooper had clouted him 10 seconds earlier it might have changed boxing history.

He will always be remembered for his two fights with Ali, both of which ended with lacerations to his vulnerable eyebrows. Whenever we encountered Ali he always spoke with affection and respect of Cooper.

"Say hello to my friend Henry for me," he'd ask us while rubbing his jaw. "He hit me so hard he jarred my kinfolk in Africa."

"Yeah, he was a real card," said Cooper, "You had to laugh at some of his antics but blimey, was he fast."

Cooper himself was hardly a heavyweight - certainly not in terms of today's tonnage. The second time he fought Ali, 45 years ago this month, he unofficially weighed well under 13st.

He was bang in the button when he remarked: "The heavyweight division is the worst it has ever been. Look at America, they have got no-one. The big guys can earn good money discus throwing or shot putting. So why get a punch on the nose? I look at things today and I think 'Gawd blimey - what's 'appened to the game?'

"I know I sound a right old misery, but counter-punching is a dying art and all those ring walks drive me nuts. I've even seen them bring in fighters on Harley Davidsons and magic carpets, and some of them take 40 minutes to get into the ring. Bleedin' hell, when I was fighting, if you took five minutes to get there, you'd get a slow handclap."

Although it was years since his own sweet smell of success and the great smell of Brut, people still stopped him and asked if he was still splashing it all over with Kevin Keegan.

It was easy to appreciate the enduring affection for Cooper. He embraced modesty, dignity and an unswerving naturalness alien to most of today's untouchable sporting mega-rich.

It is sad to realise that he is no longer in there punching, 'ammer and tongue.

However, one of his contemporaries still is. Terry Downes, almost as popular as Cooper in his heyday, is 75 on Monday (May 9), which makes him Britain's oldest surviving world champion.

As with Henry, I have a special affection for the "Crashing, Bashing Dashing." Paddington Express, as he was billed. He was the first world boxing champion I ever interviewed as a cub reporter and his was the firsty world title fight, against the Boston fireman Paul Pender, I covered in America exactly 50 years ago.

Downes was the first Briton to hold the world middleweight title since Randolph Turpin and he also fought Turpin's legendary foe, Sugar Ray Robinson.

He was among the most courageous and certainly the most honest fighters I have ever known, and like Cooper almost Corinthian in attitude.

When someone congratulated him on beating an over-the-hill. forty-plus Robinson he retorted: "I didn't beat Sugar Ray. I beat his ghost."

But his most memorable quip came earlier in his 44-bout career, after only his third fight.

Fresh from serving in the US Marines, and tipped as a rising star, Downes was pitted against an unknown Liverpool-based Nigerian, Dick Tiger, brought in as an easy touch for the up-and coming Cockney kid.


The Ricky Hatton of his day without the booze, bingeing and snorting, Downes was floored, cut and stopped in six rounds by Tiger (pictured left), who, as did Downes (right) himself, went on to win the world middleweight title. In a sombre dressing-room there was much embarrassed feet-shuffling before Downes was gently asked: "Who do you want to fight next?"

"The f****r who made that match," he famously growled.

After his retirement Downes was for many years a regular at boxing shows, big and small, preferring to sit at the back of the hall rather than ringside, from where he could be heard yelling words that weren't always of encouragement.

He didn't suffer fighting fools gladly, and in his stentorian monotone he fruitily let boxers know he thought they were "bleedin' useless" if they weren't pleasing the crowd.

Only once was he ever verbally-counter-punched. A rather foppish over-the top MC, a part-time actor, was taking a long time introducing celebrities. "And now a big hand for the wonderful, the marvellous, the one and only..."

From the back Downes roared: "Get on with it, you old poof!"

The MC sniffed: "Not so much of the old, Mr Downes"

Downes is much quieter these days, living in Hertfordshire, with his wife of 53 years, Barbara (all his four children went to public school and one of his eight grandchildren is at Oxford University).

He has beaten bladder cancer and like Cooper has never been touched by any semblance of sleaze or scandal.

Yet while Henry had his knighthood, Downes hasn't even got a modest MBE, unlike nearly all other world or Olympic boxing champions. Time that was rectified.

Actually Cooper and Downes had much in common. Both were immensely likeable Londoners who fought with their hearts as well as their hands and both bled buckets of blood – Cooper from his eyebrows and Downes mainly from his roller-coaster nose which he dubbed 'my perishin' 'ooter.'

In fact his autobiography was titled "My Bleeding Business".

The sort of  seven-stitches cut which controversially ended Irishman Paul McCloskey's world title challenge against Amir Khan last month would have been dismissed by Messrs Cooper and Downes as a mere shaving nick.

Two kindred spirits of the ring. We mourn Our 'Enry. We salute Our Tel.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire