BRUNO
Life is a constant fight. You’d never say you are winning, but you need to keep jabbing away
THE right eye carries the detached retina that ended his career but it is the left that tells the wider, more brutal truths of Frank Bruno’s extraordinary life.
‘This scar,’ he says, pointing to a line running beneath the eyebrow, ‘that was Mike Tyson. Our second fight, a right hand in the first round, I think. There’s about 13 stitches in there — good hit, that one.’ Then that magnificent, escalating laugh, the huh-huhhuh-huh of a giant who was so gentle and yet violent enough to be the heavyweight champion of the world, if only for a while.
It was that night in 1996 against Tyson that it ended, a reign that lasted six minutes and 50 seconds of fight time before Bruno, on his first title defence, was sliced open and left in a heap.
That was it for Bruno. He had briefly touched the top after the hardest of climbs and it felt like he had done enough. So he quit, to protect that right eye, never to be considered Britain’s greatest ever sportsman but a fixture in any conversation about the most loved. Big Frank, fallible Frank, panto Frank, our Frank who got there in the end, know what I mean, ’Arry?
Except, no one would want to go where Bruno went when the music stopped. And too many times, tragically, people couldn’t possibly know what he meant.
He points to the other scar, the one above that left eyebrow. ‘Six stitches,’ he says. ‘I think I was in hospital in Northampton, so that would have been 2012.’
It was the third time he had been sectioned. ‘The medication was too powerful,’ he adds. ‘I was a zombie for five weeks, out of it, stumbling about, and then I fell over one day, hitting my head.’
Two scars, two centimetres apart, and two lives of awfully hard knocks. ‘Sometimes life isn’t easy,’ he says. But there’s no laugh this time.
BRUNO is crammed into the tiny staff room of a Waterstone’s in London. He looks a million dollars, this 56-year- old in his threepiece suit. Sales of his new book, Let Me Be Frank, are going well and more than 200 people, young and old, are queuing outside for signed copies. He has been on the go a lot over the past month or so, promoting his tale.
‘I have to be careful not to overdo things,’ he says. With his history, it’s more than idle concern. He appears exceptionally fit and weighs 16½ stone, a stone less than when he faced Tyson 21 years ago, two years before he was diagnosed as bipolar.
‘Exercise is a big thing for me,’ he explains. ‘It’s good for the mind as well. I’ll go to the gym five or six times a week, do maybe 45 minutes of running, rowing, circuits, a few weights. I am there to work, get those endorphins going, stay on top of myself.’
Staying on top of himself — it is the battle that defines the second half of his life. Three times he has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, from 2003 to 2012, when he was twice brought in ‘kicking and screaming’ against his will in two weeks. As recently as 2015, he checked himself into a mental health facility for six weeks, evidence in the view of his doctors that he is learning to control a brutal disorder.
‘It is a constant fight,’ he says. ‘You’d never say you are winning, but you do get more experienced.’ His book is a vivid account of those experiences, taking in the highs, foggy lows, paranoia and peculiar decisions of his condition. ‘A lot of it starts with leaving boxing,’ Bruno says. ‘ You lose your sport and some of yourself. It wasn’t the only factor, though.’
There was the divorce from his wife, Laura, in 2001, the separation from his three children, the suicide of his trainer, George Francis, in 2002. What started as erratic behaviour eventually developed to sleeping in a tent in his garden and long cycle rides while bare-footed. There was the Bentley he misplaced and the cleaning addiction.
‘One day an ambulance comes to my house and I’m being taken away,’ Bruno says. ‘I fought it, thought I was fine. But then the door shuts and you are alone.’
He vividly recalls the crunching of plastic sheets on his bed and the smeared handprints of past patients on the walls. His difficulties were compounded by one of his inner circle stealing £300,000 while he was sectioned.
His condition stabilised but the gut punch is that it can return. By 2012, booked on ITV to showcase how well he was feeling, he started to behave erratically again, run down with exhaustion and anxiety. Within days of going on television to say he was well, Bruno was back in hospital.
HIS family had made the call against his will, and his return was tough, punctuated by rows with staff over his belief that medication does not work for him and an incredible encounter with another patient. ‘I was eating my lunch and this guy is staring at me,’ Bruno says. ‘I said, “You OK, boss?” and he grabs a knife from the table and goes for my chest. I had a tray ready to stop him but the staff got to him first.’ Bruno was released from the hospital after protesting that he was healthy, but within days was back on the insistence of family. There is a heart-rending passage in his book that details the police and health workers arriving at his home to take him away, and his helplessness in arguing the toss before giving up and mowing the lawn while waiting for the ambulance. In hospital, there was a call to the Prince’s Trust in the hope of an intervention from Prince Charles that never came. He was in for five weeks, a former heavyweight world champion reduced to a ‘miserable zombie’ by his medication.
His last episode came in 2015 but those around him put stock in Bruno going voluntarily. The hope is that he knows this opponent so well he can keep jabbing it away. BRUNO is talking boxing. His life has been unimaginably tough since he left the ring, not least because of the deaths of his mother and brother Michael on top of everything else.
He always found comfort in the glory days. In hospital, he would re-watch the Oliver McCall bout, when he finally won the crown, having three times been knocked out in title fights. That night at Wembley, he seemed to achieve everything he would ever need.
But the resurfacing of a desire to fight again was spelled out in an erratic interview last year, prompting concerns.
‘The thing I said about wanting to fight again is because I feel in my body that I might be old but I am still fit enough to look after myself,’ he says. ‘I will always be a fighter — but I won’t fight again.’
Over the course of an hour, he is unfailingly polite, but the past 14 years have left him deeply cautious about perceptions over his health. ‘If I have a limp in the morning, people will see me in the street and start thinking, “Poor Frank, he’s gone again”,’ he says.
That’s Bruno’s lot these days. He just gets on ‘ducking and diving’. He’s just got his trainer licence and wants ‘to put a toe in’, coach office workers, maybe a pro or two. There are also the speaking engagements and a counselling course he has taken.
‘It took me a long time to learn that talking about your mental health helps,’ he says. ‘If I can help someone by talking, I will.’ With that he has to go. Books to sign. A man stops him on his way out and says: ‘Keep going, legend.’ There’s that laugh again. Scars and all, the legend will keep going.
Let Me Be Frank is available in all good bookshops, or you can order a signed copy from www.frankbruno.co.uk