He feeds himself, opens doors, performs his tricks and writes legibly. He understands perfectly everything said to him and around him, though he is prone to nodding off because of his heavy medication. The body may not function too well, but there is little wrong with his brain.Lonnie is his fourth wife. She is witty, smart and gracious, a business graduate of Vanderbilt University who started cooking for him when he was getting sick They married 14 years ago. A tall, striking woman, she grew up as Yolanda Williams and has known Ali since she was a five-year-old living opposite his family home in Louisville. She remembers him as Cassius Clay, coming home from training camp: “He just wanted to be with the kids from the neighbourhood. He had this great big bus, and he’d take us all over Louisville.

He’d shout, ‘Who’s the Greatest?’ We’d all answer, ‘You are!’ ” Lonnie reckons that by the time she was 14 she was in love with him “It wasn’t just a schoolgirl crush. I knew in my heart I was supposed to be with him.”Three marriages, and three horrendously expensive divorce settlements, later, she is But they met up again in very different circumstances. He had been through a savage beating in his penultimate fight, against Larry Holmes in 1980. “I met him one day for lunch in Louisville and he stumbled getting out of the hotel lift Something was obviously wrong. Then a friend told me he was sick and needed someone to take care of him, or he might die.”So Lonnie, who had just graduated, gave up her job with Kraft Foods and flew to Los Angeles, where he then lived. “He needed someone to be by his side and I was proud to be that someone.” He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1985 and they were married a year later.Ali has eight children, including boxing daughter Laila, from two of his previous marriages, and he and Lonnie have an adopted son, Assam, now nine “Muhammad is wonderful with him,” says Lonnie. “He comes alive whenever Assam comes into the room.”They live in their Michigan farmhouse, which used to be one of Al Capone’s hideouts, but are planning soon to return to their roots in Louisville, from where Ali will continue, with Lonnie’s guiding handon his shoulder, to do what he does best, and be himself, the People’s Champion.

“Some days are harder than others,” she says, “but it is nota heavy burden. There is a quality about Muhammad that makes you want to give him all the love in the world He is a warrior He has always needed something to battle over.”. Visit the local primary school in the Scottish village of Ormiston, East Lothian, at lunchtime on any week day and you will see a large, bear-like man in the familiar garb of a street-crossing warden ushering his young school charges and their mums across the road with a gentleness that belies the fact that 50 years ago he helped engineer the downfall of the American ring legend “Sugar” Ray Robinson. Visit the local primary school in the Scottish village of Ormiston, East Lothian, at lunchtime on any week day and you will see a large, bear-like man in the familiar garb of a street-crossing warden ushering his young school charges and their mums across the road with a gentleness that belies the fact that 50 years ago he helped engineer the downfall of the American ring legend “Sugar” Ray Robinson.
Back in July 1951, this now 70-year-old lollipop man was chief sparring partner to the British and European middleweight champion, Randolph Turpin, taking the blows and imitating Robinson’s counter-punching style so effectively that after 15 rounds on that never-to-be-forgotten night of Tuesday 10 July, the referee had no hesitation about raising Turpin’s hand in triumph.It was a rare world title win by a Briton over an American at a time when there were only eight world champions – one for each weight division.