Freddie Mills

ON the subject of plaques, a few years ago I wrote about how a judging panel at English Heritage had turned down an application for boxer- turned-entertainer Freddie Mills to be honoured by its scheme.

And, as I explain here, there are so many rival schemes now that perhaps it doesn’t matter.

Certainly it was pleasing to hear the other day that the borough of Bournemouth had put one up in Freddie’s honour, explaining where he had lived and trained as middleweight and then a light heavyweight growing up.

After his life in the ring he was a well-known face around Soho, opening a Chinese restaurant and then a nightclub, the Freddie Mills Nite Spot in Charing Cross Road.

It’s perhaps a little forgotten now what a household name he was. In the 1950s, he’d pop up in light entertainment programmes, appear on the radio and brought some dishy muscle to several films.

He was dead at 46, however – shot close to his nightclub in 1965.

Nobody has ever been charged with his murder, meaning all sorts of theories about the factors behind his demise have done the rounds in his old haunts ever since.