Comedian Ken Goodwin dies aged 78

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Continue reading the main storyKen Goodwin was a regular on ITV's The Comedians

Tribute has been paid to the comedian Ken Goodwin, who has died at the age of 78.

One of many personalities who rose to fame in the 1970s TV show The Comedians, Manchester-born Goodwin spent his retirement in Llandudno.

He died on Saturday at a nursing home at Rhos-on-Sea, Conwy, after suffering from Alzheimer's for several years.

Among those who had worked with him was fellow comedian Frank Carson, 85, who has also just died.

Goodwin's former manager and friend Clive Stock described him as a gentle man and a gentle comedian.

Mr Stock said his friend topped the bill at the London Palladium in the 70s after being discovered on the TV show, known for his catchphrase "settle down now, settle down".

Born in Manchester, Goodwin eventually moved to Llandudno with his wife, Vicki, near to Mr Stock, 85, who also worked as a performer with his wife, Gwen, before they retired.

Mr Stock said Goodwin was a quiet man off-stage who saved his gags for the audience, preferring to perform to a live crowd on stage rather than before the TV cameras.

His funeral is to be held at St Hilary's, Llanrhos, Llandudno, on Friday 2 March.

Frank Carson

Frank Carson, who has died aged 85, was Northern Ireland’s best known comedy export during the long, grim years of The Troubles, a standard-bearer for the province’s wellspring of native humour and love of the craic.

Throughout the 1970s Carson’s Tigger-like personality — over the top, and occasionally tiresomely so — hugely amused viewers of such popular television staples as The Comedians (1972-74) and The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club (1974-76). These re-created the quick-fire gag format of the traditional northern working men’s clubs in the days before the demise of the mother-in-law joke related over bottles of stout in smoke-filled rooms.

“It’s a cracker!” and “It’s the way I tell ’em!” were Carson’s incessant leitmotifs, the signatures which he attached to his jokes . Many of his gags were “Irish” jokes, which is to say that they poked gentle fun at Carson’s own people, although the modern pieties of political correctness would probably now prohibit many of them — especially those of the “thick Mick” variety — from being broadcast.

With his heavy square spectacle frames, neatly cut hair, chubby cheeks and short, squat frame, Carson looked every inch the twinkling tradesman that he actually used to be before winning Hughie Green’s television talent show Opportunity Knocks no fewer than three times.

It was a feat that established Carson as television’s pre-eminent “motormouth” — a crown that he never subsequently relinquished. Some producers became reluctant to book Carson for live shows because he would inevitably deviate from the pre-agreed script, would upstage any other comedian, interrupt any business that did not involve himself, and flood the airwaves with non-stop gags of varying vintages.

One of Spike Milligan’s favourite jokes neatly encapsulated the problem: “What’s the difference between Frank Carson and the M1?”

“You can turn off the M1.”

Hugh Francis Carson was born on November 6 1926 in Belfast, to a family of Italian descent; his grandmother was Sicilian. His father, a lapsed Roman Catholic, was a newspaper distributor, and Frank started performing with the Belfast News Boys’ Club at the age of nine. He was educated at St Patrick’s primary school in the immigrant area of Belfast known as Little Italy, now demolished. Although too young to serve in the war, in the late 1940s he spent three years in the Middle East with the Parachute Regiment.

In Palestine in 1947 he was caught up in clashes in the militant Arab quarter in Haifa, and as a fighting corporal he shot and killed one of a group of Jewish prisoners who had broken out of jail and were making a run for it towards the desert.

Carson had left school at 14 with no qualifications and became an apprentice electrician, but at 16 had switched to being a plasterer. In his spare time he worked on his spiel as a stand-up comic, a talent that earned him regular appearances on Northern Ireland television. When he was 25 he sold some scripts to the regional BBC station, and became a professional entertainer, touring with the Australian magician known as The Great Levante.

Encouraged to try his luck on the northern club scene on the mainland, Carson was spotted by the television producer Barney Colehan and signed up for his first network exposure on the music-hall tribute show The Good Old Days. Meanwhile, on ITV, Carson — having thrice won Opportunity Knocks — was also booked to appear on The Comedians, by the producer Johnny Hamp.

This was the show that transformed Carson from an obscure club comedian into a comedy star. His blustering salvos of Northern Irish humour sat well in Hamp’s quick-fire format of one comic after another. Carson’s comedy confrères included Bernard Manning, Roy Walker, Jim Bowen, George Roper and the black Yorkshire comedian Charlie Williams.

Carson appeared in every series, and also toured with the record-breaking stage version of the show. He found himself in demand for cabaret dates and club bookings across Britain and abroad; his workload affected his health, and when he underwent heart surgery in 1976, it was suggested that this would mean inevitable, if premature, retirement.

But Carson continued working — he became a regular on the ATV children’s’ series Tiswas — and also made television acting appearances and had roles in two feature films. He claimed to be the Queen’s favourite comedian and that he had met her more than 100 times.

In 2004 his planned appearance on the reality television show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! was shelved by ITV executives on account of prohibitive insurance costs due to Carson’s age and concerns about his health.

He was planning to call his autobiography Rebel Without A Pause, and claimed it ran to more than a million words.

In 1987 Pope John-Paul conferred on Carson a Knighthood of the Order of St Gregory to recognise his extensive work for charity. He appeared in the Royal Variety performance of 1992, and was the subject of This Is Your Life. He was a member of the entertainment charity the Grand Order of Water Rats.

In later life he lived at Blackpool, and became involved with the Eurosceptic UK Independence Party.

Carson, who underwent surgery for stomach cancer in July 2011, is survived by his wife, Ruth, and three children.

Frank Carson, born November 6 1926, died February 22 2012

Marie Colvin

Marie Colvin, who has been killed by shellfire in Homs aged 56 while covering the current uprising in Syria, was a fearless, passionate and ebullient foreign correspondent regarded by many as a latter-day Martha Gellhorn.

Marie Colvin in the mountains of Chechnya in 1999 

The two women became friends before Gellhorn’s death in 1998, and shared an extraordinary bravery that put them in a position to deliver the wartime stories of rebels, underdogs and ordinary citizens. In recent times this ensured Marie Colvin an array of prizes and awards.

But she did not put her life on the line to win acclaim. Instead it was by being in the line of fire, by sharing the risks of those she was writing about, that she was able to produce her immensely powerful coverage of conflict’s human toll.

She was doing precisely this when she was killed, telling the world of indiscriminate government shelling of “a city of cold, starving civilians”. Her eyewitness accounts were broadcast on CNN or the BBC because, though a staff reporter of more than 20 years’ standing for The Sunday Times, she was – as usual – the last journalist not to have fled.

Such dedication and proximity infused her coverage with emotion. In Syria, she said government forces were committing “murder” and she described how she had witnessed a baby die from shrapnel wounds. She was never mawkish, but nor was she minded to stand idly by and witness massacres.

In East Timor in 1999, for example, as Indonesian troops closed in on a United Nations compound in Dili where 1,500 people had taken shelter, the UN wanted to pull out and leave the refugees to their fate. Marie Colvin and two other female journalists remained in place, defying the UN, and the world, to do nothing. Eventually, shamed by the courage of the reporters, Indonesian forces allowed the refugees to leave and the international community stepped in. Marie Colvin’s presence had undoubtedly helped save many hundreds of lives.

Marie Catherine Colvin was born on January 12 1956 in Oyster Bay, New York, to William and Rosemarie Colvin, both schoolteachers. Her father was a former US marine who had served in Korea, and he eventually gave up teaching to become a political activist for the Kennedy Democrats.

Marie, who attended Oyster Bay High School and had an idyllic childhood on the Long Island seaside, soon demonstrated a campaigning nature too. To the disgruntlement of many conservative locals, she organised an anti-Vietnam demonstration in the streets of Oyster Bay, then created minor mayhem by designating her family home’s front yard an ecological recycling zone.

She studied American Literature at Yale, where she got her first taste of journalism by working for a university newspaper. After graduating she began her career in unorthodox fashion by taking a job on the in-house magazine of the Teamsters union. Named “acting editor”, she eventually asked when the permanent incumbent would be coming back. Taken aside, she was gently informed that he would be away for five years, less with good behaviour.

Moving to the press agency UPI, she was appointed to its bureau in Trenton, New Jersey. Finding it desperately drab, she based herself in the West Village of Manhattan and commuted to work, demonstrating a commitment to enjoying herself that endured as long as her compulsion to report.

Her urge above all, however, was to become a foreign correspondent. She swiftly convinced UPI to promote her to the Paris bureau, where her dash, good looks and dark curls soon won her a host of admirers.

Her break came in 1986, when she was in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, as America launched its biggest aerial attack since Vietnam. Filing copy while scrambling to avoid the explosions, she set a pattern that would last the rest of her career.

It was while there she was summoned to meet the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, and over the next quarter of a century she frequently met him, as well as many other political leaders and despots. But a peculiar effect of her beguiling character and her journalistic talent was that tyrants were charmed by her, and sought her out, even as she eviscerated them in print. Last year she published an account of her encounters with the late Libyan leader over 25 years. It was entitled “Mad Dog and Me”.

While in Libya in 1986 she began freelancing for The Sunday Times, which soon lured her over full time to become its Middle East correspondent. Her exploits quickly attracted the attention and envy of less bold colleagues – a broad category. During the Iran-Iraq war, for instance, she smuggled herself in disguise into Basra, a city then completely closed off. In 1987 she reported from Bourj el Barajneh, the Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, which was under fire from the Syrian-backed Amal militia. There she met Pauline Cutting, a British surgeon who was a lone medical hero amid the carnage. The story was typical of Marie Colvin – illustrating a fearsomely complex conflict by finding the most dramatic, personal, story at its heart.

At the same time she met and married The Daily Telegraph’s Middle East correspondent, Patrick Bishop, and they lived together in Jerusalem from the early 1990s. It was not a union based on typical domesticated bliss. While Marie Colvin might be reporting from Baghdad on the aftermath of the first Gulf War, Bishop might be covering the wars that erupted in the Balkans (where he was himself wounded).

Marie Colvin herself reported from Kosovo, and freely admitted that she constantly weighed “bravery against bravado”. Around the turn of the century that balancing act took her closer to the edge than ever. First, in 1999, she scored her dramatic triumph in East Timor. Then, while the world was celebrating the new millennium, she appeared to have pushed things too far in Chechnya.

Based with Chechen rebels as Russian troops cut off all escape, she found that the only route out was a 12,000ft mountain pass to Georgia. During an eight-day midwinter journey she waded through chest-high snow and braved altitude sickness, hunger and exposure. Bishop set off from Paris to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where, together with her Sunday Times colleague Jon Swain, he helped organise a helicopter from the US embassy to pluck her off the mountainside to safety. As Marie Colvin wrote: “I was never happier to have an American passport.”

She did not often require such assistance. And her time in Chechnya did not make her change her ways. Instead she was soon in Sri Lanka, as ever heading into rebel – this time Tamil Tiger – territory. As she tried to cross the front line back into government-held ground, she was hit by shrapnel in four places. Despite specialist surgery, she lost the use of her left eye and afterwards wore a patch.

She promised that she would take things easier. But that was always unlikely. And as the US-led invasion of Iraq triggered the most dramatic events in the Middle East for decades, remaining on the sidelines became impossible. Soon she was back in the thick of things in Baghdad. There, as ever, she frayed editors’ nerves not only with her derring-do, but by filing her stories up to and far beyond deadline. Her copy was well worth waiting for, but the price to pay could be high. On one occasion in Iraq, her satellite phone link was not properly shut down and remained open overnight. It was never quite clear who was to blame, but to the amusement of other journalists, if not her paper, the bill ran to more than $20,000.

Like many journalists who covered the Middle East, Marie Colvin welcomed the optimism of the Arab Spring. Though she knew that it would not effect an overnight transformation, she was compelled to see it through; where cynicism had blunted the determination of so many of her contemporaries, she remained unwearied. Agonisingly for those who knew and loved her, however, that meant the nature of her death had a certain inevitability about it.

Marie Colvin, of course, did not see it that way. She loved life, and brought an American exuberance to the countless parties she graced over many years. From the Gandamak Lodge in Kabul to Harry’s Bar in Paris, she could be found at the heart of the conversation, cigarette and brimming vodka martini in hand. Sitting under the date palm in the garden of the American Colony in East Jerusalem, she would preside over the chatter and laughter as the balmy nights stretched on.

Apart from reporting, she loved sailing. As a young woman she had worked at the local yacht club to save enough to buy her first boat and in recent years had revived her passion for the sport, buying a new craft and gaining a skipper’s licence between assignments. Those assignments no doubt contributed to her eventual separation from Bishop, and from Juan Carlos Gumucio, her second husband, who predeceased her. But all who knew her remained devoted to her.

She is survived by Patrick Bishop and by her partner of recent years, Richard Flaye, whom she met while sailing.

Marie Colvin, born January 12 1956, died February 22 2012

Whitney Houston Dies Aged 48

Whitney Houston has died aged 48.

The legendary songstress was found dead in her hotel room in Los Angeles at around 4pm on Saturday 11th February, just hours before she was due to perform at a pre-Grammy awards event.

According to TMZ.com, members of Houston's entourage found the singer in her bath and prescription sleeping pills have been recovered from the room. Police said paramedics unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate Houston after the alarm was raised at 3.43pm.

In her final interview last November, the I Will Always Love You singer revealed she was 'older and matured' following her battle with drink and drugs. 'I've been in the industry for 30 years,' she said. 'There'll be ups and there'll be the downs. But you believe in your faith and your determination.'

Mariah Carey paid her respects to the singer on Twitter, saying 'Heartbroken and in tears over the shocking death of my friend, the incomparable Ms. Whitney Houston. She will never be forgotten as one of the greatest voices to ever grace the earth. My heartfelt condolences to Whitney's family and to all her millions of fans throughout the world.'

'I am deeply saddened by the news of Whitney Houston's very untimely passing,' Christina Aguilera said. 'We have lost yet another icon in music. Whitney's voice was so special to me. Her notes soared to places most singers dream of reaching. She will be missed.'

Ben Gazzara

Ben Gazzara, who has died aged 81, was one of the most enduring actors of his generation, appearing in a multitude of film and television roles over a period of more than half a century.

Ben Gazzara while filming an episode of 'Run for your Life'

Biagio Anthony Gazzara was born on August 28 1930 in New York City; both his parents were Sicilian immigrants, and his father, a roofer and carpenter, died young. Brought up in an Italian neighbourhood, Ben (as he was known from childhood) and his elder brother spoke Italian before they learned English.

Unhappy at Stuyvesant High School, he left after two years without telling his mother. For eight weeks he spent most of his time in cinemas before confessing his truancy to his mother, who sent him to St Simon Stock School in the Bronx, from where he graduated in 1947. His first concern was to earn a living and he embarked on an Engineering degree at night school, while working for a silversmith during the day.

It was a production in 1948 of Sartre’s Les Mouches that inspired Gazzara to turn to acting. He won a scholarship to Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop, and three years later was accepted by the Actors’ Studio, run by Lee Strasberg and the cradle of “Method” acting.

Aged 23, Gazzara was on Broadway, playing the sadistic Jocko De Paris in Calder Willingham’s stage adaptation of his novel End as a Man, about the brutality of life in a Southern military academy. He took the New York critics’ award for most promising young actor, and went on to appear as the original Brick in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and as Johnny in A Hatful of Rain.

His screen debut came as Jocko in The Strange One (1957), a film version of End as a Man, and this led to the role of Lieutenant Manion in Otto Preminger’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959). Other films of this period included The Passionate Thief (1960), in which Gazzara was the pickpocket, opposite Anna Magnani; The Young Doctors (1961), in which he was an idealistic physician; and Convicts 4 (1962), where Gazzara portrayed John Resko, a real-life figure convicted of murder who became an artist while serving his prison sentence.

In between these roles, Gazzara continued to work on the stage. He had also moved into television, and in 1965 he embarked on what would become one of his best-known roles, that of Paul Bryan, for the television series Run for Your Life (1965-68) — Bryan is an adventurer who is diagnosed with a fatal illness and tries to pack in as much experience as he can in the time he has left.

Proud of his Italian heritage, Gazzara also worked extensively in Italy while continuing to appear in a range of films and television dramas in the United States.

His many other films included If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969); Husbands (1970), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night (1977), all three directed by his great friend John Cassavetes; Saint Jack (1979), based on the novel by Paul Theroux; The Spanish Prisoner (1997); and The Thomas Crown Affair (1999). Despite failing health, he continued to work, appearing in Eve (2008), Christopher Roth (2010) and in Chez Gino (2011).

In 2004 he published an autobiography, In the Moment.

His first marriage, to Louise Erickson, was dissolved in 1957 and he married secondly, in 1959, the actress Janice Rule. He is survived by his third wife, Elke Krivat, whom he married in 1982, by her daughter (whom he adopted) and by a daughter of his second marriage.

Ben Gazzara, born August 28 1930, died February 3 2012

Florence Green

Florence Green, who has died aged 110, was the last veteran of the First World War, though she saw no action.

Instead she served with the embryonic Royal Air Force at a base which, like many military establishments, was suffering severe personnel shortages following the astonishing casualty rate on the front line and the introduction of conscription in 1916.

Florence Patterson, as she was then, was one of those who stepped in to fill the breach, volunteering for the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF). Though it was created just months before the end of the war, the WRAF counted 25,000 women in its ranks by the end of the conflict.

Florence Beatrice Patterson was born on February 19 1901 to Frederick and Sarah Patterson. Her early years were spent at Edmonton, north London, but she lived for most of her life at King’s Lynn, Norfolk.

She was 17 when, on September 13 1918, just two months before the Armistice, she began work at the East Anglian aerodrome of Narborough (later called Marham, and today the home of a large force of RAF Tornado bomber aircraft). Her duties largely involved waitressing at the officers’ mess, and she remained until July 18 1919, when she was demobilised. Her personal character was described as “very good”.

The aerodrome at Narborough had been opened in August 1915 and was initially home to a number of squadrons, some involved in night operations against Zeppelins. At the time that Florence arrived, ancient biplanes were being used to train pilots and observers who were later transferred to squadrons in France. The aerodrome closed in 1919, but was reopened before the Second World War.

Florence’s story came to light in 2009, after a local newspaper story about her great longevity. The article was spotted by Andrew Holmes, a British researcher who tracks and verifies reports of so-called “supercentenarians” – people who live well beyond 100. He tracked down her service record at the National Archives, and she was subsequently recognised as a veteran of the war. At that time there were thought to be three other surviving veterans; she outlived them all.

To celebrate her 110th birthday, last February, the catering staff at RAF Marham baked her a special cake which was presented to her by officers who had travelled to see her at her daughter’s home in Kings Lynn.

Even at her great age she had detailed memories of her time in uniform: “I had the opportunity to go up in one of the planes, but I was scared of flying. I would work every hour that God sent. I had dozens of friends on the base and we had a great deal of fun in our spare time.”

A year after leaving the WRAF, Florence married Walter Green, a railway porter; they were married for 50 years before Walter died. They had two daughters and a son.

Florence Green, born February 19 1901, died February 5 2012

Angelo Dundee

Angelo Dundee, who has died aged 90, never boxed himself, but became the most famous cornerman in the world as the trainer of Muhammad Ali.

Angelo Dundee with Muhammad Ali at a training session in White City in 1966

Hired to train the then 18-year-old Cassius Clay soon after the young Kentuckian’s gold medal triumph at the 1960 Rome Olympics, Dundee remained continually at Ali’s side right up until his crushing, one-sided defeat by the rising Larry Holmes on October 2 1980.

Dundee’s association with Ali tended to obscure the rest of what was a remarkable curriculum vitae: he worked with 15 other world champions, among them Sugar Ray Leonard, José Napoles, George Foreman, Jimmy Ellis, Carmen Basilio and Luis Rodriguez. Explaining his role, he once reflected: “When you’re working with a fighter, you’re a surgeon, an engineer and a psychologist.”

Fiercely loyal and protective towards his fighters, Dundee admitted deliberately ripping open a tear in Ali’s glove to buy precious seconds after his fighter had been flattened by a Henry Cooper left hook in their famous non-title clash at Wembley Stadium on June 18 1963.

More than a decade later, after the 32-year-old Ali had sensationally reclaimed the world heavyweight crown with an eighth-round knockout of George Foreman in Kinshasa, Dundee was said to have loosened the ring ropes to help Ali win the fight by using the so-called “Rope-a-dope” technique. This time, however, Dundee consistently denied the claims.

Despite coming across as a fast-talking hustler, Dundee had a reputation as one of the kindest men in boxing. Howard Cosell, the long-time boxing commentator, who famously turned against the sport in the 1980s, once observed: “Dundee is the only guy in boxing to whom I would entrust my own son.”

Dundee was born Angelo Merena on August 30 1921 in Philadelphia. Growing up in a tough area of the city, he quickly became streetwise. “Philadelphia is not a town, it’s a jungle,” he once recalled. “They don’t have gyms there, they have zoos. They don’t have sparring sessions, they have wars.”

He served with US Air Force in the Second World War, by which time he had changed his name. His brother Joe, a boxer, fought professionally as Joe Dundee, and Angelo followed suit (as did a third brother, Chris). Though the moniker was a tribute to the former featherweight champion, Johnny Dundee, some have suggested that the boys changed their names as their parents frowned on boxing as a pursuit.

During the war Angelo Dundee spent time on air bases in England, which helped foster in him a love of this country (he always enjoyed returning to Britain with Ali). He gained experience as a cornerman during military boxing tournaments before, at war’s end, heading to New York, where he learned the finer point of boxing science while working as a “bucket guy” for trainers such as Charlie Goldman, Ray Arcel, and Chickie Ferrera at the celebrated Stillman’s Gym.

Angelo then followed his brother Chris to Miami, where the latter had opened the Fifth Street Gym. Chris had moved on to promoting fights when, newly installed as chief trainer, Angelo was in the corner when Carmen Basilio defeated Tony De Marco for the world welterweight crown at Boston on November 30 1955.

Dundee first came across Ali in 1957, when the 15-year-old newly-crowned Golden Gloves champion of Louisville rang him and, after announcing that he was going to become an Olympic and world heavyweight champion, asked to come up to Dundee’s hotel room and meet him. “I thought there was some nut on the line,” the trainer remembered.

He later supervised a sparring session Clay had with the world light-heavyweight champion Willie Pastrano and, in December 1960, trainer and fighter teamed up together at the Fifth Street Gym. Eight days later Clay knocked out Herb Siler in the fourth round of what was only his second professional fight. “No matter what happened after that, [Angelo] was always my friend,” Ali said. “He was there when I needed him and he always treated me with respect. There just wasn’t any problem ever between us.”

Dundee would later recall the fun of those early days and how training Ali was a totally different proposition to working with other fighters: “It was like jet propulsion — just touch him and he took off.”

Ali (then still Cassius Clay) was on the cusp of a world title shot against Sonny Liston when he travelled to London to take on Britain’s hugely-popular Henry Cooper. In the build-up he had labelled the Englishman “a bum”, a description he clearly had cause to regret when dropped by the famous left hook in round four.

What happened at the end of that round has become part of boxing folklore. “They accused me of cutting the gloves,” said Dundee. “Can you imagine me doing something like that? There was a rip in the gloves. All I did was make it a little bigger. They’re hunting around for gloves and I’m buying my man time.” Clay went on to stop Cooper on cuts in the following round.

For all his brazen self-confidence, “The Louisville Lip” was the underdog going into a world title challenge against Liston in Miami in February 1964. Dundee, however, felt victory was assured so long as his fighter did not succumb to the champion’s powers of intimidation. As it was, Liston had no answer to Clay’s fast hands and lightning reflexes.

At the end of the fourth round, however, Clay suddenly complained of a burning sensation in his eyes, possibly caused by ointment from Liston’s shoulder. Afraid the referee would intervene and stop the fight, Dundee rinsed his man’s eyes and pushed him out towards the centre of the ring with the words: “This is the big one, daddy.”

Midway through the fifth, Clay’s eyes cleared and in the next round he took complete control, hitting the champion at will. At the start of the seventh, Liston failed to get off his stool, claiming a damaged shoulder. Although victory made Clay a world star, Liston was still made favourite for the rematch in Maine, 13 months later, by which time Clay had converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

This fight lasted little over a minute before Liston was sent crashing heavily by an Ali punch so quick that most spectators never even saw it. Inevitably, rumours persist that the fallen champion took a dive, although Dundee himself had no doubts: “He [Ali] hit him so quick the cameras couldn’t take it. He bat him with a shot Liston didn’t see. They’re the ones that knock you out. The ones you don’t see.”

Dundee travelled the world with Ali, and was in the corner for his fights against Floyd Patterson; the famous trilogy of bouts against Joe Frazier; “The Rumble In The Jungle” against George Foreman; and for his rare defeats against Ken Norton and, later, Leon Spinks.

After Ali’s retirement, Dundee saw an emerging star in Sugar Ray Leonard, whom he described as “a smaller version of Ali”. He acted as cornerman for Leonard in many of his biggest fights, including those with Wilfred Benítez, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns.

In Leonard’s first bout with Hearns, on September 16 1981 in Las Vegas, Dundee, thinking that his fighter was trailing on the scorecards before the start of round 13, famously reprimanded him with the words: “You’re blowing it, son! You’re blowing it!” Leonard duly unleashed a barrage of blows and was awarded victory in the following round.

Dundee later teamed up with George Foreman and was in the corner for his losing world heavyweight title challenge against Evander Holyfield on April 19 1991, and for his memorable clash against the undefeated Michael Moorer in Las Vegas on November 5 1994, which saw Foreman sensationally reclaim the title at the age of 45 with a 10th-round knockout.

Describing what he looked for in a fighter, Dundee said: “Balance is a must; so is great co-ordination of hands, feet and body. But I guess the most important ingredient is desire: the desire to be a fighter, the desire to win and the desire to be the best there is.”

Angelo Dundee was inducted into boxing’s International Hall of Fame in 1994. Last month he attended the party to celebrate Muhammad Ali’s 70th birthday.

With his wife, Helen, he had a son and a daughter.

Angelo Dundee, born August 30 1921, died February 1 2012