Boxer Charlie Flynn: People think I eat fry-ups and I'm oan the Buckie

Charlie Flynn is still basking in the glow of his gold medal-winning performance at the Commonwealth Games, but there are times it does not feel particularly warm.

Entering his second year in the paid ranks and four weeks away from his seventh professional contest at lightweight against Ismail Anwar in Glasgow, he is living a rigid, spartan existence which involves setting his alarm for six in the morning and fitting in three training sessions before leaving the gym at 8.30 at night.

It is the stark reality of the life he has chosen.

The 22-year-old has become defined, though, by the unguarded, unaffected style that led to so many memorable television interviews on his way to the head of the podium at Glasgow 2014. With that red hair, big grin and relentless one-liners, his freewheeling gallusness charmed a nation.

The good news is that he has not changed since that magical summer. He has been able to give up his job at the Royal Mail sorting office in Wishaw thanks to key sponsors, but he is still living at home with his parents, Mary and Tom, in Newarthill, near Motherwell, and remains self-deprecating enough to laugh about how he continues to live in a world of square-goes and fishing while old friends are out buying engagement rings.

It is easy to understand why he has become loved by the public in an age of bland, media-trained sports stars and easy to forget that his true speciality lies in a hard and often brutal world of discipline, self-denial, black eyes and broken bones.

Flynn’s core business is no laughing matter. He did not rise to the top of the tree as an amateur on a quick line in patter. He likes to think that those who regularly accost him on the street in search of photographs and banter will come to respect the talented, dedicated sportsman behind the wee guy without a care in the world, but accepts that cheeky chappie image is something he is never likely to shake off altogether.

“Even if I was world champion, I think everyone would feel I had just rolled out of bed and won it,” smiled the 22-year-old.

“People just think that, don’t they? They just think I ate a few fry-ups, went to the Commonwealth Games and won a gold. They don’t seem to get the bottom line that there was more than 10 years’ worth of graft that went into it.

“If I won a world title, folk would still be saying: ‘Aye, he just came up and done it. He lives up the road fae me. Eats fry-ups and he’s oan the Buckie and all that’.

“It is just what people seem to think. I don’t know why. I might be talking to someone in Glasgow and they’ll go: ‘Ye waant a fag?’

“I’m like: ‘Do I want a fag? What are you talking about?’

“Folk just seem to think I am just this guy on the street who is exactly the same as them. It’s mental, but I find it funny.

“Nothing has changed where I live because everyone knows me there, but, in the likes of Glasgow, there are always folk pointing at me and saying: ‘Haw, you’re that boxer, aren’t ye?’

“People wanting autographs is still the weirdest thing to come from what happened at the Games. If I was told back then that I would be wandering around Glasgow 18 months later with people still stopping me for photos, I would have told you to go and bile yer heid.”

He feels the same way about finding himself in demand on the public speaking circuit. It started when he was asked to address Scotland’s rowing team ahead of their Commonwealth successes of 2014 and has spun into delivering motivational talks, always without notes, to schools, universities and trade gatherings.

“I went to this really posh do in Dumfries, all tuxedos and that,” recalled Flynn. “I couldn’t be bothered driving in my suit, so I put it in the bag and headed down there. When I arrived, I realised I had forgotten my suit trousers.

“I called home and said I wasn’t doing it. My mum was nearly greetin’, but the organisers heard me saying I was heading off and came over to give me my fee and more or less make sure it went ahead.

“I ended up sitting at a table with all these top knobs in tuxedos, wearing a pair of jeans and a pair of trainers, giving it: ‘Awright, big chap. Howzitgaun?’

“I did the talk and they said it was the best thing they had ever seen. I still have no idea why. I get quite a bit of work through it, though, and it is a good laugh.”

For the moment, though, Flynn’s mind is purely on what he refers to as the square circle, the ring. He already has five or six fights in the book for this year, planning to move up to 10-round contests and hoping to reach British title level somewhere in 2017.

His father trains him on a daily basis with his mother making all his meals. Several of his siblings have moved out of the family home, though, and that, generally, has led to a more restful build-up to his contests.

“I have three brothers and three sisters, but it is only me and a couple of the younger ones left here now,” he reported. “I sleep in one of the downstairs rooms and had my big brother knocking my door the other night because he’d left his keys in my room.

“I had him sitting there at three in the morning with a kebab, trying to make me take a bit.

“I used to get it all the time. Nowadays, the only temptation comes from the fact the weans have chocolate and sweets everywhere you look. I suppose it is good for the mental toughness.”

It is, indeed, a tough road he is following, but Flynn, like so many before him, dreads to think what he would do without the order that the Sweet Science has brought to his life since he first picked up the gloves aged seven.

“Your youth, in a way, almost gets sacrificed, but I think I would be lost without boxing,” he said.

“I wanted to be a joiner when I left school, but I went looking for an apprenticeship and couldn’t get one. A part-time job in the Royal Mail came up and I took that and stayed there.

“If I wasn’t involved in boxing, I guess I’d be a joiner. Some wee stumpy guy with a big belly, probably.”

Flynn, instead, is plying his trade in a division that has delivered the likes of Dick McTaggart, Ken Buchanan, Jim Watt and Ricky Burns. He believes he is more than capable of carrying on their legacy at lightweight.

“I want to fill football stadiums in Scotland, bring all the big names,” he said. “It is a slow build to the top and a long way off, but we will get there. You sacrifice so much of your youth for this. What keeps you going? A desire to be the best."

Watch the now famous interview Charlie did after the Commonwealth Games victory: