Sweet Agony

Product Information

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. 293pp., yellow pictorial laminated wrappers. Crease in upper cover, but a very good copy. Notorious memoir of a violent criminal and, briefly, professional boxer. Sykes was a drunken thug who spent much of his life in prison, but his book is nevertheless the work of a sensitive and intelligent man. Uncommon: COPAC lists just the Bodleian copy; OCLC finds five more in provincial UK libraries. Despite disparate datings (1990, 1991, 1993) this seems to be the sole edition. His boxing career concluded two years after it began and it included a failed attempt at becoming the British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion. His intellectual abilities were discovered in jail when he began spending time reading books before publishing his own. Sykes died at the age of 60 in March 2007 at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield after suffering from pneumonia and liver cirrhosis. When not inside, he travelled the world and was banned from pubs in his hometown of Wakefield, West Yorks, after his alcohol abuse caused chaos in the community.

Paul Sykes - BoxRec Paul Sykes - BoxRec

Use italics (lyric) and bold (lyric) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part And on the morning after the clash, an emotional Sykes said: “‘He’s on a life support machine. You think when you’ve belted them they are going to get up at 10. You don’t want them to get up at nine but you want them to get up at 10. His first bout was in 1978 and ended with his opponent being unable to get off his stool for round two. During his prison stints, Sykes met the notorious Charles Bronson, and he left quite the impression. And during one legendary trip, he claimed he had no choice but to swim across the Straits of Johor, a stretch between Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia that's avoided by locals because of the sharks lurking.

He also earned money as a debt collector and one story involved him turning up at a man’s wedding to demand money. He left behind children - including Paul Leighton Sykes and Michael Sharp who are serving life sentences for murder. It’s all the same machine and I didn’t realise I had such a good brain until I took the wraps off and started using it. I've got a brilliant brain.” While jailed for violence, Sykes spent his time passing an Open University degree in Physical Sciences and earning the Arthur Koestler prize for prison literature.

Paul Sykes: Boxer / Prisoner - video Dailymotion Paul Sykes: Boxer / Prisoner - video Dailymotion

In March this year, The Gazette told how a Teesside author had taken an uncompromising look at the life of Paul Sykes - a professional boxer, violent criminal and notorious jailbird. And Sykes later claimed from prison: “What’s got me into trouble in the past is having my physique trained as a child but not my emotions.”An enjoyable read until he says he has no problem having sex with a child and then describes doing it!

Sweet Agony by Paul Sykes - Original - *** Rare - First Sweet Agony by Paul Sykes - Original - *** Rare - First

Jamie said he was approached by Sivell and Western Edge after the release of Unfinished Agony earlier in the year. You’d be forgiven for thinking Sykes’ upbringing was far from desirable when you consider how he once described being put behind bars. And it was violence that led to Sykes spending over two decades of his 60 years on Earth in prison - where he became pals with fellow tough guy Charles Bronson. And he also suggested the hydration was “necessary” for his kidney after he ruptured it playing football in 1966. The life of an infamous underworld debt collector who operated in Teesside is being adapted into a film.

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He was handed his first pair of boxing gloves aged four by his dad who had spent 10 years in the army before ironically becoming a prison officer.