Then the official body the British Boxing Board of Control granted him a licence. It became clear that he was expected to take his place at the bottom of the pecking order of promoters. "I know the father [who has no involvement in crime] but they are far younger than me," he says. "I have no dealings with them nor do I socialise with them." There is no evidence that Frank has ever been involved in crime.Frank was very successful with unlicensed boxing. I was only 15 when they went to prison."I say I have heard people try to link his name with the Adamses, now North London's most notorious crime family They also grew up near Islington's Chapel Street market. When I first started in boxing people said I was involved with the Krays.

If I wasn't involved in boxing then it wouldn't have come up. Frank has read it.I say to Frank that over the years I have often heard gossip connecting his name with various criminal elements He responds wearily "Yes, your name does get bandied about. "If I met Roy Garner two or three times in my whole life then that's about that." I once co-authored a book on Garner. Garner was involved in organising amateur boxing and prize-fighting "He was the police informer, wasn't he?" asks Frank. As an example, I mention to Frank a once well-known Isling- ton criminal, Roy Garner, who is now serving a sentence for cocaine smuggling. Boxing has had close links with the world of crime since the last war. Nowhere has this been more true than Islington, which is legendary for producing some of London's hardest criminals Many of these villains have been involved in boxing It has always been part of the milieu.

It isn't anything like that - the gangster heavy number."This is hard to believe. As the presentable face of boxing, Frank tries to play down any idea of a relationship between the criminal and boxing worlds "People have this Hollywood image of boxing. Bob Warren went with Mad Frankie Fraser and ambushed Jack "Spot" Comer, slashing him with razors. But I was three years of age at the time so I had nothing to do with it." Those events were a little more serious than Frank portrays. Jack Spot was a so-called gangster in the East End who, I understand, used to intimidate people and so forth.