[silence bracket good morning, everyone, thank you for coming and welcome to the 29th southern festival of books. It is my pleasure to have the opportunity to introduce jonathan eig, and author i admire. I have been reading his book for years and he is to talk about his biography of mohammed ali. Before jonathan speaks i must mention a few things. Book festival is free but if you would like to contribute you can do that at the corners of the book festival outside or online. Also remind you after his remarks jonathan will head to the signing tends next to the parnassus tent on the main players a so he can sign your book over there. Jonathan is regarded as the top writer of narrative nonfiction, fantastic offer, he has written four bestselling books including two that i read on lou gehrig and Jackie Robinson. He has written for the New York Times and new yorker, esquire and the washington books and the wall street journal. His biography of mohammed ali is one of the most anticipated books of the fall. Rave reviews, the most highly rated book of the fall. There is always a national. Mohammed alis widow is a vanderbilt graduate. If you ever had a chance to be the legendary coach of the tiger belt, always told the story of the 1960 olympics where cassius clay was with wilma rudolph. He would come in his pink convertible cadillac looking for wilma. I dont know if you drove down from chicago in a pink cadillac or flew down but we are excited to have you, thank you for coming. [applause] thank you. It is a thrill to be here. When mohammed ali was introduced like that he would say you are not as dumb as you look. I wouldnt do that. There are a lot of things mohammed ali could get away with that i couldnt. We dont have that much in common but we both have unbelievably fast jab. Want to see it . Want to see it again . That is a mohammed ali joke. It is important as a biographer to recognize you do not have much in common with your subject usually. The job of a biographer is to understand the subject the best you can, often from a distance. That means really paying attention to the facts, doing your research. I did 600 interviews with 200 individuals. I interviewed many of them over and over. I counted the number of times he was punched. I worked with speech scientists to look at how they affected his speech rate. I dove as deeply into his life as i could because the biographers job is to help you understand a persons life and how it was shaped and how it shaped us as a country and the people. With mohammed ali, one of the most important men of the 20th century i would argue, was a huge responsibility. The really important piece of biographer has to keep in mind is empathy. You have to try to empathize with your subject. Doesnt mean you have to always celebrated more excuse him. The job is not to glorify were pretty him up. He was pretty enough to begin with. Not necessarily knocking down either but to have empathy. I would like to talk about that process, what i learned along the way. Dick gregory, the great comedian and social activist who passed away said to me when i interviewed him, there is no point in writing this book, white boy, nope point in writing this book if you are not able to explain to me and cleans your readers how black kid growing up in jim crow louisville felt like he could be special. What made him he could go around calling himself the greatest of all time . In america said he was in syria and a secondclass citizen and not just the law said so too. You are going to understand you have to make me and readers understand, to make this kid different. Getting to know mohammed ali, trying to meet him, i would like to take you on that journey. To interview people who knew him best especially older folks in the beginning of the process. People who might not be around, i began with the second wife who came to chicago a lot. She was 17 years old when she married mohammed ali. And she came to call chicago a lot, for a movie premiere, grew up in chicago and lives in florida. I showed up at the movie premiere. I would like to talk to you. Who gave you permission to write this biography . The answer is nobody. Again, a sense of responsibility, im taking this guys life in my hands, he didnt ask me to but im going for it anyway. The kind of biography he deserves, not another lovefest, not other book that makes him out to be a saint but something that shows how important he wasnt who he was and married him for 10 years, the most interesting years of his life from the vietnam protest through the joe frazier fight. I need you to tell me what it was like to be married to this man. How much are you going to pay me . I get that a lot in the boxing world. This is mohammed alis brother, i called him up a few times, just one question. Im not talking to you unless you pay me. I want to know what your dog thinks, 1000. Is that your dogs name . 1000, wont tell you my dogs name unless i give you 1000. I dont pay for interviews but im very persistent. You can ask my wife. And boxing they say you are above your weight, my wife is impressive that she would go out with me tells you how persistent i am. As i set out in this quest, this is a home where he grew up. He used to stand in a crack between the houses there on the right and challenge them to hit him. I measured it, 72 inches between the two houses. The view out his window, the next house over, 72 inches away. Challenge his brother to throw rocks at him. Some say he became so quick by avoiding punches. I learned from his wife that he was dyslexic. Was never able to read well and that is one of the reasons he became a class clown. His father was abusive, alcoholic, running around with a lot of women. He came from a difficult circumstance, he was not for. This is a fairly middleclass neighborhood compared to most boxers who came out of poverty. He grew up with School Teachers and principals and lawyers and doctors and undertakers, all africanamerican but nevertheless he saw opportunities and he saw his biggest opportunity to escape from this and find a way out when he was 12 years old. How many people know the story of his stolen bicycle . Most people heard he had his bike is old, happens to one of the great religions that turned out to be true. When i dive into these things, he did not put his arm around Jackie Robinson. This turned out to be true. Hes riding his bicycle, 50 when, big deal, starts to rain, he ducked into an auditorium to escape the rain and comes out on his bicycle looking for a Police Officer, find one in the basement of a gym, tells him his bike is stolen and he will beat up whoever took it. He was cassius clay at this time. He says no but i am tough. Falls in love with it. Transfixed by the site in the gym. Not just heavy bags, then Something Else important. There were black kids and white kids punching white kids. You did not do that in america in the 1950s. You could be arrested for less than that. Mohammed ali sold this and began to rewire his brain increase the ways. What else can i get away with . He begins taking boxing very seriously. He used to race the bus to school, have you heard this . One of the things i learned from robert caro, always ask what it was like to be in the room with your subject and ask it over and over, what was it like to be in the room . I would ask his classmates what it was like to be on the bus when he was racing . I asked it over and over, two four people and it wasnt making sense, couldnt picture it. One of the guys something that bugged me, told me it was a city bus. And it hit me, you said it was a city bus, right . Doesnt a city bus stop a lot . Almost every block. He said yes. So he was racing the busker but it kept stopping. We got off at chestnut and transferred. And he would wait with us for the next bus. Was he really racing the bus . No, of course not. He was just trying to entertain us, remind us he was a big shot boxer and he wanted to be famous. He didnt want to be faster than the bus. This is a key moment for biographer, okay, i get this guy now. He wants to box, to become great but also really wants attention. Now i am starting to get to know him a little bit. This is the gym where he trains, found joe martin in the basement, not only train their but when he got done he went to another jim, joe martin was a white Police Officer. Here is a white Police Officer who is not arresting black people but helping black kids, rewiring the brain of what he has been taught growing up but finds a black trainer and when hes done training joe martin he goes to train fred stoner and another jim and by 1960 by the time hes a senior in high school he is the olympic lightweight champion. Comes back to central fiscal and is a hero. He is failing almost every class. He is boxing all the time but they decide the principle of the school so someday this kid will be famous and i dont want to be remembered as the principal who flunked the champ. He discovered he just loves attention. At the olympics in 1960 which is described beautifully and David Meredith asp okay becomes mayor of the limbic village which everybody wants their picture taken with this guy because he has such charm, such charisma and he realizes being outspoken, being loudmouthed, his nickname is the louisville lip, is good for his career, getting more attention, bigger fight, making more money and he loves money too. He talked about how many cadillacs he had and different shades of the rainbow. This attitude, standing up and making himself known, helping him get bigger fights. By 1964 he gets his first shot against this guy, the biggest baddest meanest man on earth, champion who knocked out his last opponent in a matter of seconds. Mohammed ali is more unpopular, has a criminal record, autobiography is called the champ no one wanted, very unpopular man, mohammed ali is more unpopular because the black kid being unsportsmanlike, bragging about himself is seen as repulsive to most white americans. People are rooting for sonny lipson which he is not used to. This is the end of marmot alis career, no way he can beat him. He is so bad. But marmot ali has something hes not prepared for, incredible speed perhaps learned from dodging those rocks but also something given as a gift to him. He is so fast, he boxes like heavyweight are not supposed to box. They are supposed to duck punches but mohammed ali is so quick he can move out of the way and sometimes miss him altogether. They are so frustrated they cant get near him and that is what happens to lipton. You see him throwing giant punches. The left jab, and getting tired and mad. And he is gone. He gives up the heavyweight championship without being knocked down or knocked out because cassius clay is too much for him. What happens after the fight . Mohammed ali announces he is no longer he is champion, king of the world. He says i told you i am the greatest and i am now a member of the nation of islam. Im not a christian, christianity was a religion forced upon me in slavery, the name cassius clay is a slave name, might as well be a brand steered onto my flesh. I dont have to do that anymore. He makes this unbelievably important pronouncement the changes the world and changes the way people not only see black athletes but black people all over. He says i dont have to do what you tell me to do. I dont have to say what you tell me today. I dont have to be what you want me to be, i am free. In 1964 those are fighting words. If he was unpopular before for being an sportsmanlike, he is way more unpopular now. Soon after he announces he is changing his name from cassius clay to mohammed ali, a name given by the founder of the nation of islam, Elijah Mohammed. In almost every picture of mohammed ali from the 60s in 70s, his brother named rudy at the time is somewhere in the picture. Rudy is always hanging around with his big brother. That is Elijah Mohammed in the middle. He joined this group that is considered by the American Government a threat to democracy. This is a radical group, not with the doctors on, this is a group that believes black people in america are never going to be treated equally, theres no point wasting your time on the Civil Rights Movement, no point discussing integration khalili ways for black people to forge their own way out, build their own businesses, improve their lives, improve their help and start their own country and america will be forced to give a segment of the United States the nation of islam for black people to start their own country. Mohammed ali grew up hearing something similar from his father who is not a big fan of immigration, thought black people were never going to be treated equally and told him youre never going to be rich, youre never going to be any, is the color of your skin, get used to it. Mohammed ali believed what his father said that was not prepared to get used to it. He believed because he was different, because he was a boxer, he had this platform that america had to listen to what he said, he could fight that and joining the nation of islam gave him a platform. Something gregory pointed out, when other black leaders in his country spoke, when Elijah Mohammed spoke or Martin Luther king their words were filtered by the white media. The New York Times decided which quotes to use, cbs news decided which class but when mohammed ali stood in the center of the ring and said i am the greatest, i talked to allah and allah told me i was going to win this fight and all praise is due to Elijah Mohammed, the whole world heard that and no one could edit it and that gave him a special platform and helped explain why he thought he could cite when a lot of other black athletes were forced to accept it. The deal being that you did your job, performed your sport and kept your mouth shut. Something black athletes are being told today but he didnt think he had to accept that. He paid for it. He refused to fight in vietnam, was convicted of draft evasion. First he said i just dont want to go. Interesting to watch him evolve on this. We think of him as a Conscientious Objector and pacifist but at first he said take my tax dollars and go by all the bombers and jets you want. Im making a lot of money. I dont want to go. Then he said this war is not fair to black people, black people are dying disproportionate numbers and we are not even treated as equals, weiss we fight for a country that treats us like secondclass citizens . Then he said it is against my religion. He evolve as many people who were opposed to the vietnam war evolved but he paid a huge price for us, convicted, sentenced to 5 years in prison, banned from boxing for 31 2 years and loses millions of dollars in endorsements and fight revenue. Finally after 31 2 years out of the ring he gets a chance to come back. This is in many ways the key moment in mohammed alis career as an athlete. He comes back against joe frazier, flight of the century, the two undefeated heavyweights that squared off, heavyweight champion squaring off in a ring. By now it is 1971. Our views on vietnam have changed, most americans feel the war was a mistake. We see that mohammed ali paid for his convictions, he suffered and he was willing to take that, willing to sacrifice for his beliefs whether you agreed with them or not, you had to respect that. Then he gets put on his rear end by joe frazier in the 14th round, a vicious left hook. He was up in a second and a half. He later said he was unconscious on the way down in the ground woke up. He bounces right back up, finishes that fight, he loses and he has to start fighting his way back to a rematch with fraser come a shot at the heavyweight championship and this is when americans show respect for him because his toughness is not in question. Used to be thought he was so quick and pretty and talkative that he wasnt a true champ but now people begin to admire his tenacity if nothing else. Still may not agree with his politics but in the 70s the Civil Rights Movement has moved off the street and into the courts. Mohammed ali is a popular figure, hes on Johnny Carson all the time. He said he hated white people, white people were the blueeyed devil and is still saying stuff like that but also joking with Johnny Carson and has the ability to charm us. Impossible to hate the guy. His High School Girlfriend that you cannot be in a bad mood around mohammed ali. Even people who went into the room thinking this is a draft dodging trader, they couldnt resist the guy. He was so likable. When he starts fighting his way back, in the 60s he was a grizzly bear, wild, untamed, dangerous. By the 70s hes more like a circus bear, still dangerous but fun. He is entertaining. The last act of his life which i will talk about a little bit more, hes like a teddy bear, we want to embrace him. I want to think about why that is the case. He gets his shot at the heavyweight championship again fighting George Foreman in zaire. This becomes a fight for black pride. A fight no matter who is the biggest, toughest black man on earth, don king pulls out a bizarre spectacle in zaire under this dictator, no one has seen anything like this. Mohammed ali is a slower fighter. I counted all the punches he took over the course of his career, calculated probably 200 punches including amateur fights, sparring sessions but by this point he is training to take those punches, his sparring partners hit him as much as he can because he believes he can build resistance and nobody cannot come out as he you take enough punches and you will be immune to a knockout and he lets George Foreman, strongest man in heavyweight boxing pound away at him until 4 minutes arms get tired and then mohammed ali begins to fight back. George foreman told me he believes he was drugged before the fight by his own manager. He also told me he gave 25,000 cash to the referee to make sure it was a fair fight and found out later mohammed alis people gave more than 25,000. I call the manager and said george says he gave 25 to the rest and you paid more. s manager said that is the stupidest thing i ever heard. We only gave 10,000. Take it for what you believe. He beats George Foreman, because heavyweight champion again. Elijah mohammed says you have done it all, youre the champion, time to retire. Devote the rest of your life to your religion, your family. After this fight he does or so he marries veronica. He cant stop. Keeps boxing. In those last years he fight another six years are getting slower and slower, taking more punches and you can see the effect on him. He began to ask his friends do you think this is hurting me . Am i getting brain damage . You can watch his speech, watch his videos you can see how much his speech is slowing down, he is beginning to slur his words but hes also a celebrity and cant get enough of it, like hanging out with sonny and cher and doing tv shows, you like the entourage just like when he was a little boy, he loved the attention. He cant get enough of it. This goes on, he continues to fight, continues into the early 80s. Finally in 1981 he fights larry holmes and take the terrible beating and fights one more time, loses his last week to fight, not the way he wants to go out. He gets a third act. In the late 80s early 90s, he disappears. You could hire him for 3000 to come to your used car dealership and sign autographs, he loved to be around people. He would stand in the middle of an intersection and see how long it would take people to notice him. He would invite people from the intersection to go out to lunch and maybe go out to dinner after that and come to his next fight. He couldnt get enough of people. He would call for a taxi and go to a hospital and visit people in the hospital, things nobody knew about. Didnt call attention, he loved people but disappeared and he was depressed and in 1996 how many people remember watching this . The most amazing thing i have ever seen. Nobody knows who will a the elliptic torch in atlanta. Maybe even holyfield, his name is not mentioned and the torch goes up the steps and handed to somebody behind a partition and he emerges in this way tracksuit. The crowd doesnt roar. The crowd doesnt applaud. He decided and then you hear inaudible gasp. It is mohammed ali. Then the chant starts to go up. It is as if we rediscovered him. We had forgotten him. And we have given all of the horrible things he said. Even those who thought he was a traitor for his stance on vietnam, you have to admit, he took his punches and there he is, his hand shaking, cant quite light the torch, looks like it will set himself on fire, the flame keeps going up toward his arm and we are working wont pull it off and then he gets the singlet and the crowd begins to roar and in that moment he is rediscovered. And that moment, the next day you could see from press fringe and he becomes the teddy bear we want to put our arms around. I would argue we dont want to remember him as a teddy bear. We want to remember him for the warrior that he was. It is great that he was willing to do this and let us see him suffering and let us see what this disease, what parkinsons and all these punches have done to him. That is not who he really was. That is not why he matters today. One thing i needed to do in working on this book with model the interview his wives and brother and friends and fighters he faced in the ring but to try to meet mohammed ali. I have been working on this more than three years before he passed away. Several times i went to fundraisers where he was supposed to appear and he was ill, didnt make it that time but i met his wife and told her i was working on this and told her the same thing i told friends and family, why they should talk to me for free. Because i was taking this seriously but i wanted this to be the book his grandchildren and greatgrandchildren would read, not just to see how wonderful he was but how much he mattered and why. His wife said to me there is great. Glad youre doing that. I got back after one of these eventss, wrote lonnie a letter saying how nice to meet her and my daughter who was 5 asked to write a letter to mohammed. I said go ahead. She wrote dear mohammed, my daddy really loves you. Do you love my daddy . That is so sweet and really going to work. Lonnie cant resist this but i stuck it in the envelope and lonnie called and said you should come and bring lola. I said just so happens we will be in phoenix a few weeks, can you come visit . She said yes as long as it is not an interview, and on come with a tape recorder or cameras . No, i want to meet him, spending 5 years of my life and will spend the rest of my life talking about, i want to meet the man. We went to phoenix and went to his house. He wasnt feeling well that way it did come out of his room. We didnt get to meet him. We spent time with lonnie and it was really nice and she loved my daughter more than she liked me which is good. A few months later i found out he was going to be in louisville for an award ceremony. I went to louisville, hung out with his brother and childhood friends. I was so nervous was what will i asked him . What will i say to him . If i get a chance to meet him . I decided to go on a route that mom and ali used to run. I am a big runner and i thought i am running along where he used to run. Ridiculous is this . Empathy is important, try to understand him but i really think me, this little guy, 60 years later running in mohammed alis footprint is going to learn anything what it was like to be him, black kid growing up in jim crow louisville . It is preposterous. That i thought okay, now i know what im going to ask him. Came to me while i was running that day if i get to meet him i know what im going to say. I went to the event that day and he was there, sitting at a table and one of his friends grabbed me, come on, we got to go meet him before anybody else gets there. Ran to his table and lonnie introduced me and i leaned over and put my hand on his arm, looked him in the eyes and said my name is jonathan eig and im writing a biography, and unbelievable privilege, so hard to get it right and i want to know if theres anything you want to say. And he didnt answer. He looked at me and i think he knew what i was saying. He knew who i was and what i said but didnt answer. It was hard for me. But i think it was in a way a good thing because it is my book and it is his life. He lived it. He told us every day why he mattered and what he was trying to do. [applause] thank you jonathan i think this is ultimate treat for us as readers to have such a fascinating subject in a Brilliant Writer come together. So thank you again for coming to nashville and if you would look to ask a question because wii on cspan today to come to the microphone here to line up to ask your question of jonathon we have about ten or 15 minutes for questions to come on over, and then again after jonathon has entered questions will be head over to the tent to sign copies of his book. Thanks again. Yeah, the question i have is i admire ali and one of the stories about muhammad ali was after he won the olympics, that he threw his gold medal into the river. And ive read that but i dont know if thats true or not. Have you discovered in addition about that . Yeah. So good news is is that bicycle mess turned out to be true. Gold medalness probably not. So the story goes and first appears in ali autobiography that he was back from the olympics and he was wearing his olympic melds he wore it every where. He just , obviously, wanted to show it off he slept with it on. And he was in a restaurant and couldnt get served so according to his autobiography a white motorcycle gang chased hill out of the restaurant and as he was flee, going across the bridge of the ohio river he threw it into the river and in frustration and in protest that even a gold medal doesnt earn you service at one of these restaurants. When his book was published somebody asked him about that. And alex said what are you talking about . He said i didnt read the book, what are you talking about . And [laughter] i asked alis brother about it and he said no. He definitely lots the melds and he was frantic for days searching for it where could it be how could he have lost it and several other poem and kids who knew ali at that time and said he just lost it so i think thats one of the myths that doesnt turn out to be true unfortunately. I can make one comment im a vietnam veteran and at the time, i was also involved in a Civil Rights Movement. And i did find that the majority of the people drafted were those of us who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement in black. My unit was mostly black so theres a basis for his belief that the government was out to stop that Civil Rights Movement at time. Thats interesting certainly no question that black americans were serving and dying in disproportionate numbers if you can see the documentary they went into that quite a bit. Morning jonathon im a published author as well and when you spoke about really capture essence and so forth and be sure that you were getting getting expressing things the way that they actually were and debunking myths and so forth, im in the process right now of ghost writing a book, and so ive got that same obligation but even a little more of finding their voice. What im wondering is before when you started asking questions they were asking how much money before that did you pfer consider an authorized if i or o want to be totally free and so forth . When i started working on the book in alis family and his lawyer found out that i was doing this one of his lawyers called and asked if i would be will be to make this authorized project and exchange they would give me access to the family and access to ali and they would take half of the money too. But that wasnt really the issue for me it was the question of what kind of book i wanted to write and if youre writing an authorized book youre subject to your partner. And their wishes for the book and they may not want certain things in there ali was clear about the fact that he was not a saint. Late in life he talked about it a lot. He said there was tallying angel who was watching everything he did and keeping track of all of the good and bad things and if he had more good than bad thing he would go to heaven but he said he did a lot of bad things and he needed to make up for those in the second part of his life. And he believed that he had a chance to do that, and worked very hard for act of charity with act of diplomacy but he was not a saint. And i thought it was really important that this book showed man in full, i didnt want to write a book where yadz my hands tied in any way, and so if i never even considered the idea of of doing an authorized book with the ali management team. Yes, sir. Good morning so youre the author of icon and sports Jackie Robinson and lew gerrick was your love affair with muhammad ali what made you want to write that book is . You know im really interested in stories of rebels. I also wrote a book about inventor of the Birth Control pill and i was a huge fan of ali, and i was thinking about why he seemed to me so different from all of the other sports heros he was at a different level than you know Terry Bradshaw or o. J. Simpson he was like almost like a superhero. Because first of all he was an individual sport which ali loved he said he would never bother playing football too many guys on the football field and he wouldnt get enough attention so he had to wear a helmet and nobody could see how pretty he was. But ali almost seemed like a superhero because he was unbelievable entertainer who was so white you think about his tv star he could have been had his own o variety show. He was also this pun believably important political figure taking stands that were making front panel news so he seemed like more than a sports figure to me and ive never been interest interested in writing a sports book and sports tbhoox tell us who we are as a country and ali seemed like best possible story. I mean, to me it was like the greatest opportunity of my life to be able to tell that story i was just so thrilled that i got the chance. Thank you, sure. Good morning i was wondering what you learned about cosell and ali. In some way it was a Business Partnership that they they were good for each other. Cosell first journalist to accept ali name change and to say he can do whatever lnl he wants maybe because he was jewish, but you think about it we didnt tell hollywood actors they couldnt change their names. We didnt tell, you know jewish people they couldnt drop their long jewish sounding names to come up with more american sounding ones so why tell ali that he cant change his name for his new religion it was hypocrisy and racism. But cosell saw past that and one of the few in the beginning, and ali recognized that being on tv with cosell and clowning around with him showed warm and human side too so good for both of their careers i dont think they dined and one another homes but i think they have a real mutual professional admiration. Can i get you to comment on the i find it real odd when i read the muhammad ali obituaries that we praised him for his resistance for his courage and then what, later the year when did he die . June of 16. So six months later, three months later, were dealing with or my math is off. A year later, were dealing with kneeling football players, national anthem, and it just seems like alis legacy is just evaporated. Thats a good question and a good point a troubling one because youre right. You would think that we would have learned something that ali sacrificed and showed it that athletes black athletes in particular should be unu titled to be more than athlete it is that theyre entitled to political opinion same as all americans yets here we have at the nfl we have a president saying it that do their jobe and keep their mouths shut but i think it is cads and shows how some deemly engrained some of these Racial Attitudes are. Thanks for coming to nashville and thank you the writing is so good. Ive read soo. Stories so many times and still you brought them back to life theyre all interesting even though ive heard so many of them before i think thats a real testament to the bock and your talent in writing it. My question is, a lot of books about ali king of the world houser, biography, obviously, and even recently blood brother these are all written by white men and now jonathon ike has a new biography and what does it say about most intense or o most well known books about him are all written by white men why arent people from the black comupght writing books about him . You know, i dont really know and i cant speak for why somebody isnt writing a book but collection on ali is superb. There are a couple of others written by africanamerican writers that are wonderful too. I dont know why but i think ali was somebody who appealed to a lot of people and appealed to a lot of Sports Writers backs in the tile he was bight at the time, at that time, youve had very few africanamerican Sports Writers covering boxing for daily price that might have been a factor so if you look at who is in the press pit who was covering the fightses and manila all all white writers that doesnt excuse it but thats probably something to do request it. Thank you, sure. Last question im afraid and then ill be signing books afterwards. Yeah i wanted to know what you learned about i understood that i think up until maybe his deaths joe frazier had really disheart fund by during those fights, you know ali would, obviously, do what he did and his promotion and everything but frasier thought he took it too far and reference a gorilla and ive thought that frasier died bitter about that and wondering if you found out that relationship was ever rectified in either way. That was one of the things that al e lee was not proud of and tallying angel gave them bad scores for. Joe frazier was kind to ali and out of boxings legend him money and offered to help him piengtd work, and when ali returned to ring he was really brutal and merciless towards frasier called him an awl l tom and tried to humiliate him and hurt joe and his whole family his son that he was taunted at school because your dad is uncle tom and it was strange because ali always treated his white opponent better than he treated black opponents so im not sure i can explain that behavior. And its a shame no nobody ever said to him, you know if somebody and ali entourage said back off it is not funny anymore. I think ali thought it would give him an i think in the ring to have a schol edge to get under skin of his opponents. But he later apologized to joe late in lives. But i got the impression from gees response that maybe it was too little too late. So thank you very much for being here it has really been a pleasure. Great festival. Thank you so much. [applause] she worries raises a very serious point. It was an appalling tragedy not only did we receive a ton of responses. But at the request of the old party group was delayed until the end of october. Ive already committed and been made to the task for the recess. Questions to the prime minister