"Words cannot describe the honour I feel to be in your presence, " Alan Minter, the middleweight champion of the world, told him.

He wasn't alone in displaying such reverence in private audiences with the first man to beat Sugar Ray Robinson, one of the world's greatest middleweight champions of all time.

Jake's story was told in the bloody, brutally-frank, awardwinning Martin Scorsese movie Raging Bull which starred Robert De Niro.

"In boxing circles he's Godlike, " said Jim Rock, the current IBO super-middleweight champion. "There's never been a boxer like Jake La Motta before and I doubt if I'll see one again in my lifetime.

He's a living phenomenon."

Former world middleweight and super-middleweight champion, Steve Collins was equally in awe and generous in praise.

"Jake's a living treasurefway up there with Muhammad Ali, " he said.

The old man of boxing - he's now 84 - may not be able to box as well as he once did, but his ability to hold the 500strong audience in the palms of his hands hasn't left him.

"I fought Sugar Ray Robinson so many times, I'm surprised I don't' have diabetes!"

Jake told his adoring audience. "My wife kept complaining she had nothing to wear and I didn't believe her until I saw her in Playboy naked!

"Rocky Graziano and I lived in the same neighbourhood, hung out together and thieved, but we were thieves with class. We only stole items beginning with the letter 'A'fa bike, a radiofa car!"

Former British heavyweight champion Bunny Johnson asked him what he would have become if not a champion boxer: "Without any shadow of doubt, I'd be in jail. Boxing saved me, " he said.

In response to a question from his tour promoter Ken Purchase of Ringside Promotions, Jake told him Robert De Niro was so good, he could have become a professional fighter.

"I had been coaching him for almost a year. At first he withheld his punches . . . he was afraid of hurting me . . .

but after I convinced him no one's ever hurt me, he was fine. He was so good, he could quite easily have changed careers and become a professional fighter. He wasn't acting in the movie, it was he, " said Jake.

Jake is a house-guest in Birmingham of former fourtimes Irish boxing champion Dubliner Joe Egan.

"I doubt if we'll see him on this side of the world again, " said Joe. "He's 84 and although he's not scared of man or beast, he's stiff scared of flying. I tried to get him to visit Ireland and although it's only a 30-minute trip, he said he didn't want to tempt fate."