VOICE OF BRIGHTON BOXING
ALIFE in boxing doesn’t have to be spent swapping punches. Though Derek Leney traded his fair share of leather as a 50-bout amateur in the 1940s and early ’50s, he found his true calling away from the rings and gyms. Derek, now 85, was the voice of Brighton boxing for 28 years – his vivid descriptions and apt observations enlightening BBC radio listeners across Sussex and beyond. You’ve heard of love at first sight? Well, Derek experienced love at first listen. And the love affair started in the small hours of August 30, 1937. Tommy Farr was fighting Joe Louis for the heavyweight world title when six-year-old Derek was awakened by a noise from the family kitchen. He found his father glued to the radio, too engrossed to send him back to bed. So Derek listened to the blow-by-blow account of Louis vs Farr, which Farr lost on points despite a valiant effort. “When it was over,” Derek recalls, “I watched my father cry. I thought if a box in the corner with sound coming from it can do that to my father, then there’s got to be something in it. I was hooked.”
Fast-forward 30 years to October 22, 1967 and Derek was working as a postman and writing fight reports for the Brighton and Hove Gazette in his spare time. A bout of great local interest was taking place: Brighton’s Ronnie Davies (later trainer to Chris Eubank Snr and Jnr) was to face Winston Laud of St Ives for the vacant Southern Area lightweight crown. But the fight, on a pricey dinner show at Brighton’s Hotel Metropole, was too dear for most of Ronnie’s friends to attend. As a favour to Ronnie, Leney took a tape recorder along and recorded a running commentary to be listened to later by Davies’ pals.
Ronnie won the bout and the Southern Area title, and fortuitously he was playing back the tape of Derek’s commentary when a broadcaster from the not-yet-opened BBC Radio Brighton (now BBC Sussex) came to meet him. The BBC man heard the tape and was so impressed that Derek was offered a role as the station’s fight commentator.
He seized the opportunity and so began a career that spanned four decades and earned him numerous
How Derek Leney went from delivering letters to erudite fight commentaries, almost overnight
awards. In that time, while still working as a postman, Derek rubbed shoulders with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Henry Cooper and many more. But one particular fighter stands out as extra special.
It was the 1970s and the great Jack Dempsey was at a fight show in Brighton’s Hotel Metropole at the request of the promoter Jack Solomons. “Of course, I wanted to interview Dempsey,” Leney recalls, “but I couldn’t get near him. All evening he was inundated with boxing fans wanting to meet him. So Jack [Solomons] arranged for me to visit his hotel room the next day. Well, Jack Dempsey was one of the nicest men in boxing I’ve ever met. I still have a recording of the interview.”
When I ask Derek that obvious but essential question – “What was the greatest fight you commentated on?” – he answers without hesitation. “Hove Town Hall, 1977. We had a local boy, Terry Knight. He fought Micky Minter, Alan Minter’s brother. I expected Terry Knight to win, but he didn’t. That was a great fight! The best I’ve ever covered.”