Belfast boxer’s life story is worthy of a Hollywood script

IHAD already chosen a couple of publications to review on my last visit to The Book Centre when one of the friendly and helpful assistants asked if I’d seen an eye-catching recent arrival to the shelves.

Sure enough, I had picked up ‘The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee’ by Paul D. Gibson, taking note of the Belfast boxer’s haggard features in a striking front cover but neglecting to read the blurb on the back.

I was assured it was worth another look, and so it proved. Indeed, I was so taken by those words that I relegated the other two books and decided that this one simply had to be reviewed first.

How about this for a paragraph to entice a budding reader?: ‘A book? Listen, I’ve been beaten with baseball bats, I’ve had my throat slashed, I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been exiled out of the country. My family’s been held captive in our home as well. I’ve been shot twice, I’ve been in prison and my son’s just been stabbed to death. Amongst all that, I was the welterweight champion of the world while drinking the bar dry and doing enough coke to kill a small horse every night. My life’s not a book. It’s a f***ing movie script.’

After such a dramatic build-up, the book certainly lives up to expectations as Magee isn’t exaggerating in any shape or form.

His life has been an unrelenting train wreck, and there’s no immediate sign that it’s going to settle down, but that’s what makes the book so engrossing.

It’s hard to credit that a sportsman with so many vices outside the ring could have become a world champion in 2003, but his lifestyle does make an absolute mockery of the belief that boxers have to be monastic in their outlook in order to make an impact.

Perhaps Magee was merely an exception to that rule, but if that’s the case he spectacularly broke all the boundaries.

Born into the staunchly nationalist Ardoyne community in north Belfast at the height of the troubles, Magee’s father was active in the IRA and his youngest son became involved with the Fianna, the paramilitary organisation’s youth wing.

Trouble was never far from his door, and the grim reality of life in Northern Ireland throughout the seventies and eighties jumps off the pages.

Take the maccabre and somewhat surreal circumstances surrounding one of the times Magee was shot, as an example.

He had fallen foul of the local IRA leadership as a result of drug-dealing, and there was no escaping the punishment for that offence, meted out via a gun.

However, Magee’s boxing prowess was recognised, so it was agreed by all parties that he would be shot in the calf rather than the knee to ensure that his career wouldn’t be ruined.

Accordingly, he made his way to a back alley for a pre-arranged appointment, with his father waiting nearby in a car for the sound of the gunshot before rushing to the scene and ferrying him to hospital.

Magee’s life was already a mess in so many ways before it was shattered completely when his son, Eamonn Jnr., was stabbed to death by his new girlfriend’s jilted ex-partner.

There’s no silver lining or hope for a better future as this book concludes, with its subject losing his battle against alcohol addiction and depression.

But as far as life stories go, this one is about as raw as they come, and that’s why it’s so hard to put down.

ALAN AHERNE

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