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Q&A with Joseph Ayodele

2023-05-05 | Q&A

You are obviously hugely passionate about boxing. How did you first become involved?

“I was always around East London growing up but I never felt I had a base, a home, as I was always constantly moving from one family member’s house to another and twice was taken into care, to kid’s homes. I never felt secure, everything was temporary and unknown. Soon I was ‘running wild’, fighting, hanging around with the wrong people and getting into more and more serious trouble.

Luckily, I knew many boxing people and various gyms, and ended up one day, going with two of my brothers to my uncle’s boxing gym. I was hooked and started training. This moment was the start of my life turning around. Boxing gave me structure, pride, discipline and the inner strength to face and conquer the challenges in my life. Most importantly it gave me the consistent, reliable and solid ‘home’ I needed.”

What drove you to write ‘My Name is Fitzroy Malcolm’?

”I officially left school at 16 but had stopped going long before that. I never ever thought of writing. Where I’m from, people didn’t write. It just wasn’t on our ‘radar’ at all. When the moment came when I decided to write this novel, it was more a case of feeling ‘compelled to’. I just had to do it. It’s about amateur boxing in London, my world, the world I grew up in.

The boxing community is full of the most wonderful people you could ever meet. Unfortunately, it also has an element of ruthless, merciless figures in the shadows. These individuals have sometimes caused huge pain and damage to our people and to the sport.

Out of the many experiences and countless stories passed down and shared with me through the generations, there was one so powerfully unjust and shocking that it stayed with me from the day I heard it. It loomed large over me and very soon as I started researching more and speaking to the boxing community, I realised it loomed large over the entirety of British boxing. I was so moved and angry about what happened to this innocent man, I was driven to find out all I can.

After a long period of investigating, I felt a compelling need to write about it. That’s where the novel “My Name is Fitzroy Malcolm” came from. That passion of just ‘having to do it’. I felt I needed to try and find a way of bringing a sense to people, of these cruel and damaging forces, that attempted to destroy this man and the community I love so much.”