In silent sullen cknowledgement of this fct the cnteen crowd melts wy nd smll

In silent, sullen cknowledgement of this fct, the cnteen crowd melts wy, nd smll, gentle mn mterilises in the corner, pprently out of nowhere. He extends his hnd with the timid ir of smll woodlnd creture tht hppens upon clering: "Hello, I'm Nick."Lst time he went to the Oscrs (the second Wllce nd Gromit dventure, The Wrong Trousers, won best short nimted film in 1994, his poignnt zoo confessionl Creture Comforts hving done the sme in 1991), Nick Prk ws sitting next to Nomi Cmpbell. Now, despite trials for insurance fraud, allegations of unpaid taxes, and law suits from aggrieved fighters whose winnings he withheld, King is himself a despot with dynastic pretensions. If you want to be a boxing champion - and violence, for the American underclass, is one of the few career options available - you more or less have to have a contract with King; and that contract will be written to his advantage, with his son demanding an extra percentage for managerial services.

With subsidies from Third World despots - Mobutu in Zaire, Marcos in the Philippines - he matched Muhammad Ali against George Foreman and Joe Frazier, pocketing his first fistful of millions from the sale of television rights around the world. His voice occasionally yelped, "Goddam!" as he was told of croneys who had dropped dead at the race track or broadcast rights which had been bartered; I heard a volcanic chuckle which travelled up his body and jolted through his quiff Babies were passed into the scrum to be dandled. Don King, marked out as a Messiah by his hair, suffered the little children to come unto him Waitresses pushed paper napkins between the heaving bodies. Sometimes they were returned with King's signature; once or twice they came back in a soggy knot, having been used to wipe off the intimidated infants.I asked one of the waitresses, just arrived from Vietnam, why she wanted King's autograph. She smiled with sweet vacuity: "He famous, right?"Yes, he is - but for what? For beating raps? For cheating boxers? For killing people? King, who acquired his business expertise in illegal gambling, first achieved celebrity in the Seventies, after serving a prison term for homicide. He disappeared into the crowd, only his crest, like the surf of a breaking wave, visible above it. Another anecdote, perhaps more trustworthy, dates the standing shanks to an occasion when a Cleveland gangster, to prevent King from testifying in a court case, peppered him in the back of the head with a shotgun.

The pellets lodged in his scalp and continue to affright his follicles.In the hotel, the news travelled fast, relayed through walkie-talkies: "The King is in the house!" Soon he was surrounded by fixers, fawners and would-be contenders. One story has it that they're a souvenir of the electric chair: King calmly strolled away when they turned off the voltage, but his hair still thrills to the memory of the current. His barber, as he fondly acknowledges, stepped down from on high to tease it upright: "It's an aura of God; He did it to me. I feel it's indicative of my being ordained and anointed by Him."Diana Ross, referring to the frizzed jungle from which her tiny face peeps out, once remarked: "When you have hair like mine, it's a great responsibility." King's coiffure might be called a great irresponsibility: the visible sign, not of divine favour, but of his skill at evading all laws, including that of gravity Legends breed about those locks.

I staked out the lobby, and recognised him when I saw his hair get out of the limo, followed by a loose, baggy monster in a purple jumpsuit Don King's hair is famous It is the glory which crowns him, literally his aureole It quivers above his head like a petrified forest. Since he operates in conditions of chaos - moving in a fog of bluff, pretence and misinformation which outwits rivals and befuddles legal investigators - no one knew for sure when he would appear. You is dead meat, feller." When I nervously turned back, I saw a young black man - shaved head like a boxing glove, a jagged gold toothpick parked behind his ear, wearing cowboy boots for which tribes of lizards had laid down their lives - smiling with mystical abstraction as he poked and pummelled the empty air. I waited until he had knocked out his imaginary opponent, and asked how he had come to join this travelling circus "Don King," he said, "signed me up fresh out of prison They had me in there for selling a whole mess of cocaine Leastways they said I did But I was snitched on, it was entrapment. Now I just want someone to know who I am, and Don King puts on the best shows."The show always stars King himself, as I discovered when he arrived, a day late, at the hotel. The hotel, on a highway outside Richmond, the state capital of Virginia, braced itself for his arrival, as for that of a hurricane. In the lobby his minions confabulated in blobs: roly-poly men like waddling molecules, their bangles jangling, their pinky rings glinting, walkie-talkies jutting from their polyester rumps.