This article is reproduced with the kind permission of Derek O’Dell, Editor and Producer of ‘The Southern Ex-Boxer’, in which it was first published in 2001.
It was a fine old-fashioned summer during that year in the mid-1930s. We performers in the Wheatley and Legat Boxing Booth were doing well on our tour of Midlands fairgrounds: plenty of challengers to keep the show going and the spectators were quite generous with their "nobbins".Our travellers included such legendary names as Sam Minto, Alf Paolozzi, and Tommy Steele, congenial companions - and all with a deep knowledge of booth-fighting. In fact, everyone was happy except Charlie Wheatley, part-owner and manager of the show, and son of the Professor of that ilk, whose booth had travelled the fairgrounds in the years up to and including the First World War.
