BoxRec

Anyone know much about him?

I saw an episode his The Gambler TV show in the early hours a few years ago and found it on All 4 and watched it this week. I didn't realise he had such a boxing connection till I looked up his books and his articles. He was part of Collin McMillan's team and I read a great Right to Reply in the Guardian fro, allegedly about him.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2003/ ... g.features

Got his books this week and am working my way through them, knocked the one about his adoption off pretty quickly just started his book This Bloody Mary is the Last Thing I Own. He talks about an incident with Frank Bruno attacking his colleague and he mentions Steve (Bunce? Perhaps?), can anyone shed any light on any of this.

He's a decent writer, I've been enjoying his articles.

He died a few years back now. He wrote another couple of books, Twelve Grand, which was a fairly entertaining account of how he spent his advance for a book he was writing by having bets. He wrote an autobiographical account of his search for his mother which was somewhat darker. This Bloody Mary was probably the best of the lot.

Yeah shame he's gone. He wrote well and loved boxing.

levi billups wrote:He died a few years back now. He wrote another couple of books, Twelve Grand, which was a fairly entertaining account of how he spent his advance for a book he was writing by having bets. He wrote an autobiographical account of his search for his mother which was somewhat darker. This Bloody Mary was probably the best of the lot.

I've got all three, just starting The Bloody Mary one. I only found out after seeing the show that he died a couple of years ago. There's a couple of nice pieces about him in the Guardian and the Independent after he passed.

Very talented writer....I used to buy The Independent just for his very different takes on the big fights and ability to describe the personalities as well as the punches thrown.

He sometimes turned-up writing for The Times, The Guardian and The Observer as well, but was just as likely to be discussing the merits of booze as the boxing business.

The fact that The Independent hired Jonathan for the big fights was probably testament to the fact that they had the courage to take a risk or two and realised they'd get some great copy on the build-up and not necessarily a fight report on time...he had long-standing booze and gambling addictions that did not make him a reliable guy who worked to reporting deadlines (especially when put on a plane to Vegas) and he was never going to get a gig with someone like The Daily Telegraph.

Here's Kevin Mitchell's excellent piece on Rendall. Mitchell sometimes gets a hard-time on this board....but this is an excellent, warm tribute.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/ ... an-rendall

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... n-memoriam

Richard Williams' piece in the Observer is a little less warm but still worth a read.