RIP George Foreman

I was lucky enough to interview George Foreman in Houston in 1990. A lot of top sports people are surrounded by minders. Not George. Former heavyweight champion of the world he might have been, but when you rang his number, a friendly voice answered: 'Hi! This is George'. By then, of course, he was a Christian minister.

I met him at a gym in a fairly rundown area of the city. He was a mountain of a man, gently sparring with a white boy in his early teens. George had to get down on his knees so their heads were at something like the same level. The ex-champion was charming and friendly, but if you had told me that in five years' time he was going to regain his title, I would have been rather surprised.

On the same trip to America, I interviewed another former world heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson. When Foreman lost his heavyweight championship in 1974 it was famously to Muhammad Ali who created a sensation by regaining the title, but Patterson was the first man to perform that feat, in 1960, beating the Swede Ingemar Johansson who had surprisingly defeated him the previous year.

Patterson, who had been the youngest ever heavyweight champion, was also entourage-free, charming and unassuming. I interviewed him on army base, where I think one of his children was serving in the military. He had been born into poverty and talked about how he felt boxing had saved him from a life of crime.

Fireworks and nightclub fires

At least 59 people were killed in the North Macedonia nightclub fire which appears to have been set off by fireworks. As I reveal in my recent book A History of Fireworks (Reaktion Books), accidents of this kind have become disturbingly familiar.

The North Macedonia fire happened on 16 March in Kocani, 60 miles from the capital Skopje, where about 500 people were attending a concert by DNK, one of the country's most popular bands. The blaze seems to have been started by sparks from flares hitting the ceiling which was made of inflammable material. 

There were reports that the venue was not licensed, and survivors spoke of there being only one exit, and of those trying to escape being trampled in the crush. Only one member of the band survived, and police detained 15 people.

In 2003, 100 people were killed at a club in West Warwick, Rhode Island, USA as they watched the rock band Great White, who had just incorporated pyrotechnics into their act. Sparks set fire to inflammable foam lining the ceiling, walls and even an exit door. One band member was killed. 

The following year, nearly 200 people died in an eerily similar fire at a nightclub in Buenos Aires. Among those gaoled were members of the rock band who had been performing. Then in 2009, 156 people perished at the Lame Horse club at Perm in Russia. The building had no fire exits.

But the worst disaster came at the Kiss club in Santa Maria, Brazil in 2013 (pictured). Again, the band set off a flare which ignited soundproofing foam on the ceiling, filling the place with toxic fumes. Police said the club had no working fire extinguishers and exits were poorly signposted. The death toll was 242.