http://www.boxingnewsonline.net JULY 4, 2019 lBOXING NEWSl 29
URING boxing’s long relationship with
TV in the UK, a number of broadcasters
have been handed the baton of
“The face of boxing”. Des Lynam
earned it during his time with the BBC,
Jim Rosenthal took up the mantle
when presenting The Big Fight Live for
ITV, and when boxing transferred to
Sky, fans took the plunge, paid their subs, and ushered
in Paul Dempsey as the latest face of the sport.
Always ready with the hard questions, the London-born
broadcaster has also enjoyed stints with Setanta and now
BT Sport. However, he told Boxing News that the acclaim
he gets from boxing fans is at once welcome and bemusing
given that, like Lynam and Rosenthal before him, he also
covers a lot of football.
“Working on football and boxing is quite hard and quite
unusual now,” he said. “When I started, everyone did more
than one sport. It is funny to me that some people seem to
associate me with one sport to the exclusion of the other –
as if the other hardly exists.”
A product of City of Leicester Boys’ School, Dempsey has
often said that the school encouraged and developed his
emerging football talent: “We had fantastic teachers in the
classroom and in sport and, yes, I think standards were
quite high.”
Some people move from school to university with a
clear goal in mind, some drift there to simply live and
learn. Dempsey read English Literature at St John’s
College, Cambridge and he revealed that he had no
fixed direction in mind at this point in his life.
“Good question,” he answered when asked if he
had made it difficult to transition
into journalism by not studying
the subject. “I had no real idea
what I wanted to do while I was at
university and that was a mistake.”
What Dempsey did know was
that he had a burning passion
for football. Boxing is widely
acknowledged as a cruel sport, yet
football is equally as heartbreaking
for those who try to break into it,
only to realise it isn’t going to be.This realisation came to Dempsey after stints that included
playing in the League of Ireland for University College
Dublin AFC in the 1982-1983 season. “I was a decent player,
but I learned my limitations, especially my lack of pace,”
he said.
Once this point was reached, there was no choice other
than to put the game he loved in the rear-view mirror
and move forward. The aforementioned lack of focus in
university meant that he had to look for entry-level jobs in
sports broadcasting.
A job with Irish News led to a role with BBC Radio News
and Sport as part of their Graduate Trainee programme,
where he was given a crash course in journalism by some
remarkable teachers before joining SBC in Bern.
“I started making tea at the BBC for some of the best
radio broadcasters ever – Peter Jones, Bryon Butler and
many others. Des Lynam and Jim Rosenthal had recently
left when I arrived, so you can see how high the standard
was.
“One would have been a fool not to learn. When I worked
on the continent, however, I was given a lot more freedom
to go out and find stories and was lucky to be allowed to go
all over Europe. Boxing wasn’t such a big deal in countries
like Italy and Germany then, but the football obviously was
and it proved a great grounding.
“I knew absolutely nothing about TV for the first three
years and I was now working for some of the most brilliant
people in the history of television worldwide. All of the
early chief executives were exceptional, yet [former
BskyB chief executive] Sam Chisholm was on a
different level and having [producer] David Hill as
a direct boss was the greatest good fortune ever.
It was a fantastic time. They were
very demanding and I do believe
people more talented than me just
fell by the wayside because they
couldn’t commit or keep going.
“I must also mention my time
working with Jonathan Pearce
at Capital Radio. We really had
great fun – it was pioneering stuff.
Jonathan was the leader, but
we worked under Richard Park,
a true legend in commercial ➤D
PULLING NO
PUNCHES
PEOPLE MORE
TALENTED THAN ME
JUST FELL BY THE
WAYSIDE BECAUSE
THEY COULDN’T
KEEP GOING”
Renowned boxing broadcaster Paul Dempsey explains
to Terry Dooley what life is like behind the microphone
★PAUL★
DEMPSEY
IN DEPTH WITH