ONE NIGHT IN LOFTUS ROAD

Bomb, or having a gun pointed at you by a British Army soldier, was something we considered normal.

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And that was the biggest trick Northern Ireland ever played on you. You did ordinary things, like go to school, to the shops, to the cinema and convince yourself there was nothing different about living up there.

Except tragedy could sometimes strike; someone never made it home. There was a man who lived next door who lost his father to the bullet of a UVF psychopath. A friend at school lost his father, another his home, in bomb blasts. Another year, our milkman and his family were shot. One survived, three did not.

Whenever I think back to that brutal period, it is as if you are entering a twilight world where you feel the need to glance over your shoulder to make sure no one is following you.

Northern Ireland was just that kind of place; tense, unruly, paranoid, broken.

And then a little man from Clones came along and started putting the pieces back together.

The impact Barry McGuigan had on my life was profound because ordinarily the people who influence you the most tend to be those you know; a parent or relative, a teacher or a coach.

Yet such was the magnetism of this fighter's personality that it felt like everyone in Ulster knew him. He may have been 5'6 but he was a big rather than a small man.

You see McGuigan was Irish but fought for British titles, a Catholic who married a Protestant. He had supporters clubs in the nationalist Falls Road and also the loyalist Shankill. And when he fought for a world title in 1985, he didn't do so under the Union Jack or Tricolour but instead the blue flag of peace.

"People might have thought it was a gimmick but it was far from that," he says now, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of that title win over Eusebio Pedroza, the Panamanian.

"I was aware I had incredible unity within my support.

"They had spent four years travelling with me as my career progressed from local to European then to world level.