Boxing: Serene Tyson all smiles as he charms Derby audience

RENDALL Munroe, European champion, paid his £20 and stood patiently in line.

Further back in the queue was Ryan Rhodes, another current European champion. Both waited their turn to shake the hand of Mike Tyson and pose for a quick photo and both walked away grinning like star-struck schoolboys.

They were among a crowd of around 200, which included two former world champions, who were at the Heritage Hotel in Derby last night just to say they had been in the same room as one of the biggest boxing names of them all.

With the possible but notable exception of Muhammad Ali, no boxer in any era has captured and held the attention of the world, way beyond the confines of the boxing ring, more than Tyson.

The sheer ferocity of the punching power that took him from the feral streets of Brooklyn to becoming the youngest ever world heavyweight champion at the age of 20, almost 23 years ago to the day, was only the start of his notoriety.

The fall from the top was just as spectacular – the ear biting, the rape conviction, the drug-taking, the absolute car crash of a private life – was all part of what made him what he still is. Four years after his final, ill-advised venture into the ring, he remains one of the most famous men on earth.

Tyson is on a four-date tour of Britain and even though the Derby show was arranged at less than a week's notice, selling tickets was no great problem.

Everyone, it seemed, wanted to have their picture taken with him and Tyson cheerfully posed for them all but after half an hour of serious grinning into the lens he looked positively weary and took himself off to a back room to recover.

Is this really the former "baddest man on the planet" – the man who said he was not only going to beat Lennox Lewis but eat his babies as well?

Middle age catches up with us all, it seems, and Tyson is, after all, 43.

At that stage, there were a few concerned faces among organisers that Tyson might decide he had provided enough entertainment for one night and walk out.

Instead, he headed for the top table without cajoling and, when it came to time to speak to the crowd in a question and answer session, he was charm itself.

What did it feel like, he was asked, to take the world title for the first time when he demolished the champion, Trevor Berbick, inside two rounds in 1986?

"I was just 20. I was just a little kid," he said.

"From 12 years old, this was the zenith of my life. I used to be a criminal on the street and then I was heavyweight champion of the world.

"I don't remember a lot of stuff, I just know that all I wanted to do was to be the champion of the world and everything I did from being a young kid had to go towards improving myself as a fighter.

"I thought everybody felt that way. Every champion I've read about felt that way."

Tyson was also asked about the possibility of a comeback. Was there a chance he could pull on the gloves again to face Britain's new world heavyweight champion David Haye?

"My kids don't want me to do that," he added. "When you look at David Haye it's tempting but I don't want to do it.

"I saw him the other day on television and I'm looking at him thinking 'he's young and cute and good looking – he looks just like a cute little kid, he can't beat me'.

"But that's what people used to think about me and then you realise 'I could die!'

"All boxers know anybody can kick your butt from their couch when they're watching you on television."

So that's official. Mike Tyson has reached another stage in his life where he has left behind the wild, ticking time bomb of his prime.

It has taken a long time for peace to reach Tyson in his world and the road to it nearly destroyed him but in place of the terror that could transmit from those eyes to the heart of anyone caught within a mile of it, there is an air approaching serenity.

Maybe the demons really are dead.

In response to another question about his acting debut in the film hit "The Hangover", Tyson said he was simply happy to have the chance to do the film at a time when he was "down on his luck" and that sense of serenity came to the fore again.

"I'm truly grateful for the life I possess right now," he said. "Truly grateful."