Troubles, boxing and television for McGuigan

The Irishman's accomplishments and impact on his era ranged far further than the WBA featherweight belt he won in the ring,

'The Clones Cyclone' laid bare his fight against discrimination and his stubborn battle to stand for something else during his visit to the Premier Suite.

It came at the time of the Troubles, a war in his homeland which began in the late 1960s when he was a child and raged on until the Good Friday agreement of peace in 1998.

McGuigan's entire boxing career came and went during the conflict and he first saw the disturbing cost of bloodshed when he was barely a teenager.

The strife caused him to leave Wattlebridge Boxing Club, in the Northern Irish county of Fermanagh, and join Smithborough of the Republic.

There his unpaid success began with the All Ireland Championship and 1978 Commonwealth Games gold before he was 18, which caused him to drop out of higher education.

He recalls of his youth: "The railway stopped in Clones, that was really the centre of the town and it connected the regions of Ireland.

"I grew up on the border, where my parents had a grocery business. My father Pat was also working a professional musician.

"I first went to my local boxing club, which was in a school. There were two ways of getting there, the longest being a cycle ride for nine miles.

"You could take the short route and that was half the distance, which me and my friends would inevitably take.

"One night, we were coming home and we saw a guy who had been tarred and feathered and was dead at the side of the road. The police and army were there.

"It was a dreadful ordeal for us and, by the time we arrived back 30 minutes later, it was all over the news. My mother made me find another club.

"I was the first one to box, but my father had five brothers and they were all tough guys. They boxed at the Clones club, but never actually had contests.

"I was always a decent middle distance runner and a decent hurler and soccer player. My dad first took me to the boxing club aged 12 and it just took over.

"I knew that was going to be my profession, but I went to school for as long as I could. I did the equivalent of A-Levels, before I got too busy boxing at international level.

"They didn't make allowances for you to miss your books, in those days, so I had to make a decision. I hadn't done enough of my work, anyway, and I was going to have to repeat a year.

"My father told me that was fine, as long as I read extensively and build up my vocabulary. I can still read and write to a good standard today."

He turned pro in 1981, suffering his first defeat that same year in his third contest with a hotly-disputed points setback to Peter Eubank, older brother of future world champion Chris.

He settled the score with Eubank by eighth and last round stoppage before the year was out, but a tragedy outside of the Troubles was to befall him in 1982.

He beat Young Ali by sixth round TKO but his opponent fell into a coma and, five months later, died. McGuigan became so traumatised by the experience he considered retiring.

He fought on, claiming the British and European titles and defending his crowns, usually to packed houses at either Ulster Hall or King's Hall in Belfast.

He had already courted controversy by becoming a British citizen so he could win the British title but it, ultimately, didn't deter from his drawing power.

Eyebrows were raised further when he married a protestant, Sandra, despite being a Roman Catholic. They remain wed today.

His chance at a world title came along in 1985, against long-reigning WBA and Lineal champion Eusebio Pedroza, at Queens Park Rangers' Loftus Road football stadium.

People from England, who had been dragged into the hostilities, Northern Ireland and the Republic famously packed into the ground declaring "tonight we leave the fighting to McGuigan."

Their man decked the defending title holder in the seventh on route to a unanimous 15-round points victory to claim the honours.

He returned to Ireland for a hero's welcome, with him and his wife hailed by a public reception in the streets of Belfast that attracted over 100,000 people.

He was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year, as a result, becoming the first person not born in the UK to win the award.

His rise to fame would come at a price, though, as fears McGuigan could be made a martyr for the Troubles also heightened.

Even his crowning glory was a double-edged, sword after mother Kate and aunty Brid were caught up in a fire at the family home the same evening.

He said: "There were different religions in the community, but there never used to be any trouble. In the 1980s, though, it got particularly bad during the war years.

"The border roads went up in the 1980s, for a legitimate reason as there were some extremely nasty things going on.

"It was euphemistically termed as 'the Troubles,' but the reality was that people were dying every day. I just sick of being told I had to be on one side or the other.

"I really didn't want to get involved in that, too many people were suffering and they were being threatened by that, in many ways.

"You'd have a Protestant friend on the other side of town, but you couldn't bring him back to your house for their own safety. It was the same for Roman Catholics in some areas.

"I knew that existed, but I was determined not to take sides. It was important to take a stance. I wore the flag of peace and our anthem was 'Danny Boy.'

"It meant a lot to the people and the more successful I became, the more pressure there seemed to be but I didn't mind that. It was still a really special time for me.

"It was an attitude that no one was thinking about, at the time. Segregation and separatism are nasty things and some of the things I saw scared the life out of me.

"I wanted to bring people together through boxing and, although I never got threatened at any time, but there was a red flag on me.

"It was incredible, I came home on the Monday after the Saturday and there was 75,000 gathered in one hour after heating I was going there.

"I was going to stay in England until the middle of the following week but, the night I won the title, my mother's house burned down because of an electrical fault.

"My mother and Aunty smelled the smoke and got out. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that important as no one got hurt.

"I just wanted to bring people together through boxing but, for a while, there were guys in plain clothes 50m behind me everywhere I went.

"I was given a gun and it was a serious threat, both in the north and the south of Ireland. Thankfully, nothing happened."

Family is as important to McGuigan as impartality has been but he came from a musical, rather than boxing background.

His father Pat was a famous Irish singer who came fourth at the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest and released a rendition of 'Danny Boy,' which he would belt out before many of his son's fights.

Grandfather James had already passed singing genes down which Barry claims he does possess, even if they have seldom been seen.

The 55-year-old now has four children of his own with Sandra in sons Blain, Jake and Shane, along with daughter Danika.

Shane is the only one to have followed dad into the fight game, with the two serving as coach and manager respectively to two-weight world champion and fellow Irishman Carl Frampton.

Barry said: "I've actually got a very good voice, so I could have been a decent singer. I didn't play any musical instruments, though.

"My sister played the piano and my mum sang in a choir, so we come from a musical family. My eldest son was in a pop band and my youngest is a decent guitarist. My daughter is an actor.

"My mum is still in the choir. She's 80-years-old, she's been unwell in the past but she's in good health now. When she worked, we had a grocery business.

"One of my boys coaches and they all grew up with a PhD in boxing, without even wanting to. My dad certainly passed his genes down. They are all talented people.

"You are in sport or some form of entertainment, that's the way it seems to be in our family. I didn't realise this until about 20 years ago, but my grandfather was also a great sean nos singer.

"That was the old Irish ballads where there seemed to be about 20 verses to a song. We always had musicians in the house all of the time.

"We were right on the border, so bands would often stop with us as they were travelling to the north. We grew up with them.

"We had a big old tea mill, with a shop and a house, so there would be people practicing and rehearsing down the back. It was an entertaining time."

McGuigan reached the height of his popularity in 1985, when he beat Pedroza and successfully defended his title against Bernard Taylor at King's Hall.

He was even the face of his own computer game, Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing, which came about thanks to the West Midlands' own Tony Clarke.

McGuigan said: "It was actually a guy from the Midlands who did the deal for me, he was from Erdington in Birmingham. He's a great fella, what a nice man."

McGuigan has never been shy to play up to the camera, either, and hosted his own chat shot on BBC1 in the 1980s.

Nearly 20 years later, he was back in the public eye as a contestant on ITV's Celebrity Hell's Kitchen in 2007, where he again became the darling of viewers as he won the competition.

He has no further plans to feature on reality television, though, and has repeatedly turned down offers to appear on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!

He added: "Hell's Kitchen was more of a popularity contest, it wasn't really because of my cooking skills. I wasn't good before I went in and whatever I've learned I've forgotten.

"It reintroduced me to the British public, if you like, and they put you in all sorts of awkward positions, to see how you react under pressure.

"Most people end up falling apart and we had Jim Davidson (comedian and television presenter), who was arguing with everybody. I was the referee of that, more than anything else.

"The viewers seemed to take to me and it was lovely to win the competition, but it doesn't mean an awful lot to me.

"I've had my time on television, I'm not going to do that again. They asked me three times to go into the jungle and turned it down. It's just the thought of making a clown of yourself."