IT was called Heart of Harlesden and ran for eight episodes back in 2001. I recall, as a 19-year-old, becoming increasingly consumed by the trials and tribulations of people living in a part of London I had never heard of let alone visited. Prompted by the alarming number of gang-related murders that had been committed in the area the previous year – 11 – the BBC commissioned a documentary that, while suitably urban and gritty, focused on the dreams, struggles and accomplishments of Harlesden’s ‘strivers’ – long before David Cameron appropriated that phrase. These were the embryonic days of reality TV; there was no script, no guaranteed happy ending.
James DeGale turned 15 a few weeks before the show premiered, but it’s unlikely he watched the series, despite residing in the borough where it was filmed and his life at the time mirroring many of the project’s core themes. DeGale had been kicked out of school over a year before, the teachers unable to harness his misguided energy and the teenager himself steadfastly unwilling to focus on his education. When he was not being tutored at home, DeGale wasted time and endangered his early boxing promise by smoking, maintaining dubious friendships and eschewing the gym.
It’s a chapter of his life that rarely emerges now DeGale is a 29-year-old millionaire owner of three properties, an Olympic title, the IBF 168lbs world championship belt and has a girlfriend, Kelsey, who is training to be a lawyer – not to mention his having achieved history-making distinction as the first Briton to capture each boxing code’s most revered prize. Much has changed but when I meet DeGale we find ourselves in Harlesden, back where it all began. The boxer owns the swanky flat in which he and I, his mother, sister, young nephew and Action Images photographer Alan Walter all congregate, but it is about to be placed on the lucrative rental market, as he moves to a new house in leafy St Albans, near his dad, Leroy, and mum, Diane. DeGale is also the proprietor of his sister Eloise’s flat in Wembley and both women work for him: lithe and pensive Eloise is a long-suffering PA of sorts, with blonde, bullish Diane serving as a manager few sensible characters would dare cross.
Harlesden itself looks in dire need of regeneration. It’s desirable London location is offset by abandoned buildings, faded architecture and groups of youths who could easily be perceived as threatening.
A brief scope of his soon-to-be-former bachelor pad inspires admiration at DeGale’s progress as both fighter and businessman. The open-plan kitchen is immaculate and I’m charmed that no attempt has been made to hide the box of Celebrations on top of the cabinet or the bottle of champagne that rests on the work surface and enhances the impression of luxury. Diane frequently interjects from the glass dining table near the door, while Eloise mostly listens and Zack darts in and out atop a Segway. Light relief is provided by a miniature model near the kettle, supposedly depicting DeGale – his name adorns it – but looking nothing like him; the figure appears Caucasian for a start, while DeGale is mixed race, but thankfully the gold medal around its neck is coloured accurately.
I opt to sit on the grey sofa while Degale – displaying a constant restlessness that echoes his youth – fidgets on the matching swivel chair like some demented Bond villain. As DeGale gazes out from his balcony onto a concrete-filled landscape that has sadly failed to keep pace with his own development, he is moved to reflect on the factors underpinning this rapid rise.
“When I first turned pro I got my signing-on fee and bought my first property, this one,” he remembers, twisting the seat slowly back and forth. “Everything’s just getting bigger and better. I’m lucky coz I’ve got good parents behind me. If it weren’t for them I’d have loads of cars, loads of clothes and no investments; I’d just spunk my money basically.
“It started off very well, obviously Olympic gold medal. Coming back, I signed with Frank Warren. I won the British title within nine fights. Then I had that one loss against George Groves. But that was a blessing in disguise coz it’s part of the journey. It’s a learning curve.”
Soon after suffering his first defeat, DeGale left Warren to be promoted by Mick Hennessy but, in spite of drawing impressive figures for terrestrial TV station Channel 5, he became synonymous with fighting in small halls before moderate crowds, regularly appearing at one venue in particular. Earlier, when I’d told DeGale I lived near the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, which boasts a nightclub, Glow, that doubles as a staging ground for boxing, he responded, with a wry chuckle, “Yeah, I know it pretty well.”
“I wasn’t motivated and I was getting a bit depressed,” he says, shaking his head ruefully, but now able at least to process a situation which until recently had deeply saddened him. “I weren’t getting my chances and I was seeing different fighters that I’m better than, get chances, boxing for world titles. It was very frustrating and it was annoying me. I was getting depressed for about six months.”
Next – page 2 of 3: DeGale the mature, successful man
THESE days, as the IBF super-middleweight champion, allied with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom group and advised by omnipotent Premier Boxing Champions guru Al Haymon, DeGale has little to be downbeat about.
“Chunky” still has significant affection for the place in which he was born and raised but, having grown up a great deal in the last decade, he desires a home that befits his current mindset.
“I think 15 years ago this was the gun capital of London,” he points out. “I’m proud to be from Harlesden, I’m a Harlesden boy, I’m north west and I love it, but you get a bit older and I wanna be somewhere a bit quieter. I don’t wanna hear police sirens constantly and yeah, to see some more greenery would be nice.”
Vegetation? Tranquility? Who is this man and what has he done with James DeGale? Jokes aside, it feels like a radical departure from the largely misspent youth he enjoyed and his loved ones endured. He was brought up as the baby of the family in an old Victorian house (the clan occupied the entire ground floor) that remains only a few hundred metres away – ironically we could see it from here were it not for an example of the foliage DeGale values so highly – alongside his two older brothers, Eloise and three of his cousins. It was a hectic, loving environment and DeGale struggled when left to his own devices, a wavering attention span proving his most significant handicap. Neither the stage school he followed Eloise in attending nor traditional education succeeded in calming him down and DeGale was ultimately expelled from the latter, aged 13, gaining no academic qualifications.
“I was naughty at school so my granddad sent me down the local boxing gym at the age of 10,” James comments. “I was just mischievous, fighting, didn’t do my work. I wasn’t a horrible child, just cheeky, init mum?”
As if she had been awaiting her cue, Diane picks up the subject. “Concentration,” she swiftly concludes in the manner of a university lecturer. “He couldn’t concentrate for a long length of time so he’d drop his pencil on the floor and cause a fuss.”
“That’s just like in the ring,” DeGale adds, as if only at this moment making the connection. “Sometimes it’s so easy I go into cruise control and switch off and that’s how I lose rounds.
“Boxing has been in my life since then. I loved it, I loved the sparring side and the pads but for the first seven years of being a boxer I wouldn’t run or do groundwork, I used to hide. When I got to about 13 or 14, I was hanging around with my mates, weren’t very good at school, smoking, doing stupid s*** and I didn’t really wanna box. My mum and dad… not forced me, but pushed me.”
Even Diane and Leroy found their son exceptionally challenging at times. A turning point came the evening DeGale snuck through his bedroom window to hang out with his misbehaving mates across the road. Diane sent James’ brother Alex to locate the errant child but by the time his sibling arrived on the scene stealthy DeGale had re-entered the their abode via his initial escape hatch. A formidable and resourceful woman, Diane identified an opportunity to pull her boy into line.
“I said, ‘Go in your room and pack your bag, I’ve had enough’, coz the boxing gym in Stonebridge where he trains now used to be Social Services,” recalls Diane, a natural story-teller with a resonant voice. “So he’s there crying but me and his dad had this plan, ‘You be good cop, I’ll be bad cop.’ James got his bag and he’s outside going, ‘Dad, please don’t do this, don’t let her do this.’ Leroy said, ‘Let me go and try to help you.’ We’d already decided that he had to go back to school – because he wasn’t going or he’d get sent home – or have tuition at home every day, he had to get rid of the friends he was hanging round with and he had to go back to boxing.”
Their cunning plan worked and DeGale summoned a degree of focus. He finds it hard, even today, to pinpoint why he was so erratic, but Diane is convinced she has the answer. “I’ll tell you why, because he was spoilt,” she states firmly, brooking no argument. “You ask my first two sons how strict we were. You have a girl, you mellow a bit, then you have your youngest. He was the most miserable baby going, we called him a ‘hip baby’ because he was constantly on my hip.
“You was a momma’s boy,” she continues, looking her son dead in the eye, “and always ill, always had a snotty nose or a chest infection. I think it’s being the baby as well, they get away with blue murder.”
DeGale frowns and pouts – he’s not entirely happy with his mum’s diagnosis and briefly reverts to the petulant kid under discussion. The pair bicker, playfully for the most part, but it never descends into anything more. DeGale clearly has the utmost respect for his mother and all she has done and continues to do for him, while Diane is well-accustomed to the occasional diva strops emanating from her youngest, but remains immensely proud of the huge amount he has achieved and overcome.
A commitment to private tuition and a brief plumbing apprenticeship illustrated DeGale’s new-found application as he approached manhood, but this characteristic was put to best use in the boxing gym, as James first excelled as a senior amateur then belatedly came good as a pro. Having experienced myriad ups and downs since the amazing high of Beijing 2008, DeGale finally, six years after his professional debut, garnered the vacant IBF belt against the talented Andre Dirrell on away turf in Boston.
Next – page 3 of 3: The future for DeGale
THE Dirrell victory was in May and things are also functioning well outside the ring. Advisor Haymon has a sizeable stable of boxers and can offer a potentially vast free-to-air TV audience in the States, but if DeGale, after he meets Lucian Bute on November 28, is to secure domestic megafights of the like enjoyed by his celebrated super-middleweight predecessors Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank and Carl Froch, then Hearn’s Matchroom – who have promoted all three – may still hold the trump card. Two such showdowns fell by the wayside this year when Froch retired and Groves, who also beat DeGale as an amateur, lost a challenge for the WBC strap – his third world title shot – to Badou Jack.
“Froch, deep down, didn’t really wanna fight me,” DeGale asserts, getting even twitchier as the subject moves to his rivals and the probability grows of his being late for training with taskmaster Jim McDonnell. “He makes all excuses like how I’m not good enough, it’s just b******s, it’s stupid.
“Groves let us both down.”
Any agitation disappears and is replaced by a huge smile as DeGale starts singing. It is startling to observe that although Groves’ setback probably robbed DeGale of both his biggest purse and most high-profile contest, James is practically giddy that his arch-nemesis fell short once again. The enmity remains.
“The cream always rises,” he spits rapidly, fully aware that he is gloating. “Look what’s happened to that little mug. I just remember back four years ago [when he first fought Groves as a pro] and the way I was feeling, the grief he give me, how smug he was and how spiteful. It’s all turned around; karma’s a bitch. He’s got those two wins over me but I’ll always be the bigger, better fighter.”
Diane moves to soften the pervading tone.
“But when he lost to Jack and he was down, you did…” she begins.
“You do have a heart, James,” Eloise chips in.
“If I’m being honest,” DeGale finally relents, the self-satisfied grin changing to a self-conscious smile. “When he was depressed, deleted his Twitter and Instagram, I said, ‘Mum, do you think he’s alright?’ coz I remember how I felt. Course there is compassion there, I’m being a bit harsh, I am, but I keep bringing my mind back to four-and-a-half years ago – what I felt and what he was like – he showed no compassion for me.”
DeGale, summarily booed during several of his early pro bouts and the nominal villain versus Groves in 2011, has seen public opinion gradually shift in his favour.
“The majority of it is success and what I’ve achieved. I’ve backed everything up. But I’m also 29, I’ve matured as a man,” he says, somewhat undermining his point by stepping aboard the Segway before whizzing across my path. “Life experiences change you, right? That’s what’s happened to me, plus I’m getting older.
“My story, from being kicked out of school, the teachers telling me I wouldn’t be nothing, I didn’t do no exams, people looking down at my mum, saying, ‘Your kid…’, and me being from Harlesden… You asked me how satisfying it is right now and it’s unbelievable. People thought I was gonna be the one out of all my mum’s kids that don’t do nothing with their life.
“When I turned professional, I set out to win a world title and I’ve done it. I can retire tomorrow, I’d be satisfied, happy and humble.”
“Yes,” agrees Diane, joining in one last time. “And there was more pressure on you, with the likes of [fellow Olympic champions] Anthony Joshua and Luke Campbell coming up.”
“But they can never be the first now,” DeGale revels. “I could be a quiz question in years to come,” a possibility that appears to amuse him greatly.
Later, DeGale agrees to have some photographs taken outside Harlesden station. If parking his four-by-four with insouciance and perceived impunity on a double-yellow line suggests a sense of entitlement, this is belied by his insistence on signing autographs and posing for fans despite risking a ticket or a clamp. “It’ll be fine, this is Harlesden,” he declares, surveying his kingdom. Wherever he lives, DeGale may always embody the carefree spirit of the ‘ends’ where his journey began. He will never forget where he came from.
