This Is Your Life: Charlie Magri

Charlie MAGRI (1956-)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Charlie Magri, boxer, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the York Hall in Bethnal Green, having been led to believe he was there to watch a boxing match.

Charlie was born in Tunisia of Maltese descent, and moved to London with his family in 1958. He first started boxing at the age of 10 at the Arbour Youth Boxing Club in Stepney. After leaving school aged 15 he found work as a tailor's cutter, but continued boxing as an amateur, becoming the ABA Flyweight Champion in 1975, a title he held for three years.

Charlie won a bronze medal at the 1975 European championships, and boxed for Great Britain in the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He turned professional in 1977 and won the British Flyweight title in December of that year. He won the European Flyweight title in May 1979, and then, despite several defeats, he went on to be crowned WBC World Flyweight Champion in March 1983.

"Thank you! Unbelievable!"

programme details...

Edition No: 622
Subject No: 616
Broadcast date: Wed 23 Mar 1983
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Tue 22 Mar 1983
Venue: Royalty Theatre
Series: 23
Edition: 23
Code name: Fly

on the guest list...

Jackie - wife
Andre - father
Rosie - mother
Rita - sister
Mary - sister
John - brother-in-law
Peter - brother-in-law
Maria - sister-in-law
Diane - sister-in-law
Joe - brother
Walter - brother
George - brother
Tony - brother
John - father-in-law
Pauline - mother-in-law
Steven - brother-in-law
Joanne - sister-in-law
Danny Scur
Rita Baker
Audrey Sutton
Ray Winstone
Jimmy Levey
Sylvester Mittee
Robbie Davis
Pat Cowdell
Clinton McKenzie
Dave Odwell
Terry Lawless
Sylvia Lawless
Steven Lawless
Lorraine - Terry's daughter
Trevor - Terry's son-in-law
Reg Gutteridge
Colin Derrick
Murad Hussein
Mark Taylor
Lloyd Honeyghan
Dempter Roons
Tony Adams
Ray Cattouse
Gary Nickels
Frank Bruno
Maurice Hope
Jim Watt
Dave Boy Green
Walter McGowan
Ray Clark
Emma - daughter
Freddie Starr
Colin Jones
Bill Kiper
Ted Kirkland
users of The Kirkland Centre, Bow

production team...

Researchers: Charmaine Carter, Vivien Lind, Michael Waterhouse
Writers: Tom Brennand, Roy Bottomley
Directors: Paul Stewart Laing, Terry Yarwood
Producer: Malcolm Morris

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

Life In The Ring

from flyweight to heavyweight

The Night of 1000 Lives

a celebration of a thousand editions

Screenshots of Charlie Magri This Is Your Life

Charlie Magri recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his autobiography, Champagne Charlie, The Greatest Boxer of His Generation...

When you achieve your life's dream, I tell you what, it's the strangest feeling. Lots of people have dreams, but not that many of them get their hands on what they dream about, they're just dreams. When you actually get there, it doesn't feel real, because you've suddenly achieved what you've been working for all your life. When you reach the end of the journey, you don't know what to do next, and you're sort of in a daze.

The week after I won the world title, I was on cloud nine. I was walking around in a daydream. It's an unbelievable feeling being a World Champion, because, as a fighter, that's the thing you dream about your whole career, and, suddenly, you've done it, and you're the champion. Everyone wants to talk to you and shake your hand, the newspapers are in touch with you all the time, and suddenly everyone knows your name.

Now, because of this, I guess I wasn't really on the ball, and I can remember during the week after the fight my wife kept on popping out all the time, saying she had to do this and that. What I didn't know was that she was off meeting up with Terry Lawless, making arrangements for what turned out to be the biggest surprise of my life. A week after I'd won the world title, she said to me, 'We're going to the York Hall, Charlie. Jim McDonnell's having his first fight, and they've invited us along.' Now the thing was, my missus hated boxing, she never wanted to come along to any of my fights, and she certainly normally wouldn't have wanted to go to someone else's. But Jimmy was one of my best mates in boxing, and I'd planned on going along anyway, whether I'd won or lost the world-title shot.

I was very close to Jimmy, we always sparred together at the Royal Oak, and I'd tried to help him along in getting himself down to featherweight for his debut as professional. I sparred countless rounds with Jimmy, and there was no way that I wouldn't have gone to his first fight. He'd been there with everyone else to watch me win the world title and, as a pal and stablemate, I owed it to be there for him at his debut.

So we arranged to go to the fight and then on to this restaurant called The Venus, on Bethnal Green Road, that we always used to go to for a nice meal afterwards. I was due to make an appearance in the ring before Jimmy's fight, just to sort of set the stage. So I was standing there in the ring, and all of sudden I saw this big bloke in a dressing gown with the hood over his face come running into the ring with the spotlight on him. As I looked round, his hood came down, and there was bloody Eamonn Andrews, saying, 'Charlie Magri, this is your life!'

'You're fucking joking, aren't you?' I said.

He wasn't though.

I said, 'I'm meant to be going for a meal now, What's going on? Where am I going?'

'We're going to take you away now, Charlie, to the television studios,' said Eamonn.

What a lovely bloke that Eamonn Andrews was, a lovely feller. He sat in the back of the car with me on the way there, and said,

'What a great little fighter you are, Charlie, it's an honour to be presenting you with this.'

'It's a great pleasure to be in this car with you, Eamonn.'

Of course, Eamonn was a boxing commentator earlier in his career, and what a lot of people might not know was that he was a good amateur boxer himself in his younger days; he was the Middleweight Champion of Ireland as an amateur.

So we went to the hospitality room back at the ITV studios, and there was a big room full of food and booze, loads of champagne, loads of grub, everything you could want, and Eamonn said, 'Help yourself, Charlie, it's all for you.'

So I had a couple of glasses of champagne to take my nerves away. There was everyone there that night, it was unbelievable. All the England amateur squad that I'd fought with, all of Terry Lawless's stable, all the Royal Oak boys. My old pal actor Ray Winstone was there, who's been a good friend of mine from the age of 12. At that time, though. Ray was just a young actor trying to make a name for himself. Freddie Starr did a live link-up to the studio; he did this funny little boxing sketch with him falling all around the place, which cracked me up.

Even Miss Sutton, my headteacher from Stebbon School, was there, and Miss Baker, the deputy head. It's amazing how when you're on This Is Your Life nobody's got a bad word to say about you, isn't it? If you'd listened to my teachers, you'd have thought I was the best, most well-behaved pupil who ever walked through the gates to the school; I guess everyone wants to make it look good for you in front of the cameras, but, I can tell you, they didn't feel that way when I was actually at the school! It was: 'Magri, you're trouble, you are!' Magri this, Magri that! I wasn't exactly their favourite pupil, but they certainly turned it on for the cameras.

Terry Lawless turned up with his entire bloody clan in tow - aunties, uncles, brothers-in-law. Uncle Tom Cobbly and all! You name it, they were there. My old pal Reg Gutteridge was there as well and Harry Carpenter. Dave Boy Green came, and even Walter McGowan, the last person from the British Isles to win the flyweight title. [Bigredbook.info editor: Harry Carpenter is not a guest on this edition of This Is Your Life]

Of course, my whole family was there as well, and I remember how proud my dad looked up there, and my mum laughing when she was telling them how many candles she burned every time I fought. Oh! It was such a great day, seeing all these old faces. It was a terrific feeling, everyone turning out to say their bit and pay tribute, well, that's something money can't buy, that was something really extra special in my life.

After the show, we all had a big party in the green room, and my old pal Ray Winstone came over to me and said, 'Magri, how d'ya like being famous then?'

I said, 'It's fucking great, ain't it, mate? It'll be your turn one of these days.'

Of course, I didn't know just how famous Ray was going to become in his own right. Me and Ray had known each other for years from the boxing circuit, because he used to fight for the Repton Club at welterweight, and he was pretty good too, winning the Schoolboy Championships twice. Most people don't know that Ray was a pretty tasty fighter in his own right, so remember that the next time you see him playing a hard nut.

The whole evening was one of the happiest memories of my life. I'd just won the world title, and to be whisked off to a studio to have my whole life gone over like that was lovely.

At the end of the show, just before they finished, they had a terrific surprise for me as well. Eamonn Andrews had heard from Terry Lawless that I'd been going mental asking where the WBC belt was, because they hadn't given it to me yet. When he'd heard this, he got on to the president of the WBC, Jose Sulaiman in Mexico, who contacted a BBBofC official, who happened to be there in Reno for Colin Jones's challenge of Milton McCrory for the vacant WBC welterweight title which was just a few days after my fight. Colin showed up on a live video link as well on the show.

Anyway, they got the belt, and then presented it to me on the show. Right at the end, they called my daughter Emma out, who was only about two at the time, and she came toddling over to me. What a day that was, standing there with my big red book, my WBC belt and my daughter in my arms. It doesn't get much better than that.

As soon as I got that belt, I kept a promise I'd made to the press when they asked me what I'd do when the belt finally arrived, and I walked up and down Bethnal Green Road. I can remember walking up and down with my title belt on, posing for the cameras and feeling like bloody Superman! I'd waited my whole sodding career for this moment. I'd been waiting and waiting and waiting for that title shot, and it had felt like it would never come, but, in the end, I got there - and whatever anyone had to say about me, all the knockers and the newspaper men - I was WBC World Champion!

Series 23 subjects