A. J. Ayer vs. Mike Tyson

On the genesis of a story.

A. J. Ayer popping up in the sports pages of the Sun newspaper more than thirty years after his death is not something that many people would have predicted. At least, not before the publication of Ben Rogers’s biography of Ayer – A. J. Ayer: A Life – in 1999, which contained a story that for a while dominated the publicity for the book. The story’s cast of characters is a headline writer’s dream: Freddie Ayer, Mike Tyson and Naomi Campbell. Its setting is a party thrown by clothes designer Fernando Sanchez in his Manhattan apartment. Here’s how Rogers tells the story:

Ayer was… chatting to a group of young models and designers, when a woman rushed in saying that a friend was being assaulted in a bedroom. Ayer went to investigate and found Mike Tyson forcing himself on a young south London model called Naomi Campbell, then just beginning her career. Ayer warned Tyson to desist. Tyson: “Do you know who the fuck I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of the world.” Ayer stood his ground:”And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.” Ayer and Tyson began to talk. Naomi Campbell slipped out. (A. J. Ayer: A Life, p. 344)

According to Rogers, this incident was widely reported at the time, so let’s see what we can find out about the genesis of the story.

The first mention I’ve been able to track down is a short Associated Press piece that appeared in a number of North American newspapers (e.g., The Philadelphia Enquirer) in December 1987. It’s the same setting, the same cast of characters, but there’s a different outcome and no confrontation between Tyson and Ayer. The bones of the report are that despite the presence of high profile guests at the party, including Ayer, nobody could stop Tyson from hassling Naomi Campbell. On being told that Campbell was just a baby, Tyson replied, “I’m a baby too.”

The next time the story pops up, in the London Evening Standard on February 1st 1988 (p. 13), it has morphed into something much more familiar to us. The reporter is John Heilpern, and we can conjecture that Freddie Ayer was the likely source of the story, as we know the two men were in contact at the right time–Heilpern mentions attending what is almost certainly the 1987-89 Broadway revival of Cole Porter's Anything Goes with Ayer.

This is how Heilpern tells the story:

Visiting Manhattan, and game for anything, he practically risked his life by being brazen enough to confront the world heavyweight champion at a party given by Fernando Sanchez, the chic underwear designer. He’d gone to the party with young relatives, but thinking Mike Tyson was coming on too strong with a beautiful model, he decided to rescue her.

“Leave this to me!”... “But Freddie, he’s the world heavyweight champion”... “I know that!”

“Look here,” he announced boldly to a stunned Mike Tyson. “We are both supreme in our field. I suggest we talk about this like rational men.”

Most of the familiar ingredients are now in place, although we’ve lost Naomi Campbell. This might explain why a year later in a story published in the Telegraph, written by John Doughty shortly after Ayer’s death, Campbell has been replaced by Robin Givens (Tyson’s one-time wife). Doughty explicitly states that Freddie Ayer is his source, though enough of the details of the story are wrong (as far as we know) to suggest that someone somewhere has got their wires crossed.

In Doughty’s version it’s not a party, but rather drinks with friends in a New York hotel. Ayer heard cries from another suite in the hotel, and went to see what was afoot.

He was surprised to see “Iron” Mike Tyson manhandling a certain Miss Robin Givens… Freddie strode up to Tyson and tapped him on the back of a small part of his 19 and a half inch neck. When Tyson swivelled round to confront his tiny adversary, Freddie asked him to leave the lady alone, and added for good measure that while Mr Tyson was undoubtedly the heavyweight champion of the world, he, Freddie Ayer, was one of its intellectual champions. Startled, Tyson dropped Miss Givens, who scuttled off. (June 30, 1989, p. 21)

At this point, it is right to say something about the tone of these reports. Phrases such as “slunk off” and “scuttled off” are belittling when used to describe a woman’s escape from aggressive, unwanted sexual attention. There might be humour in the idea of Freddie Ayer taking on Mike Tyson in unarmed combat, but there is nothing at all funny about the situation that sparked his intervention (assuming it has been accurately described).

Let’s get back to our genealogical enquiry. The story next appears a couple of years later, again in the Evening Standard (January 29, 1992, p. 11), this time told by Nigella Lawson, no less (this isn’t quite as bonkers as it sounds–Lawson is the daughter of Ayer’s third wife). Again, it differs in the details from previous accounts–not least, Robin Givens is now absent, even if Naomi Campbell hasn’t yet returned.

Many years ago, when Tyson was still invincible, he was at a party in New York also attended by my late stepfather, A. J. Ayer. Freddie Ayer was at the time over 70 and had the build one might expect of a philosopher who had once entertained a modest ambition to be a soft-shoe shuffler.

At one point he saw Tyson on the other side of the room giving more attention to a woman than she was apparently willing to receive, and, ever pleased to come to a lady’s assistance, he walked over to them.

“I say,” said Freddie, “I don’t actually think she wants you to talk to her any more”.

Lawson provides no further details except for the fact that Tyson immediately desisted from “his attempts to impress himself on the woman”.

Before circling back to Ben Rogers’s account, it’s worth looking at a report of the incident that appeared in The Independent on September 19, 1993 (p. 20). This account, written by Charles Nevin, is noteworthy partly because it marks the return of Naomi Campbell, but also because it provides just a hint of independent corroboration of the events described.

The incident itself is by now familiar (though again, there is the same variation in the details). But Charles Nevin, for the first time, as far as I can tell, asks the crucial question: Is it true? He seems to think that it is:

Dee Wells, Ayer’s second and fourth wife, confirms it, but seems to remember that the Ayer response was the more simple and dignified “I am a philosopher”. The problem, says Ms Wells, is that only minutes later Campbell was back with Tyson: “So much for logic,” is her conclusion.

It’s difficult to know what to make of all this–there’s so much variation in the story and so little in the way of firsthand corroboration.

Ben Rogers’s source for the story is Gully Wells, Freddie Ayer’s stepdaughter (the daughter of Dee Wells, above). But it isn’t clear from his account whether Gully was actually at the infamous party. So, in and of itself, that doesn’t get us much further–if Ayer were the source of the story, then it is to be expected that Gully would echo his account.

Luckily for us, we don’t have to leave it there, because Gully has written a memoir, The House in France, published in 2011, in which she tells us exactly what happened that night. The relevant context is that Ayer and Fernando Sanchez had first met the week before at a party given by Sarah Giles, a friend of Gully’s, and Sanchez had invited them all to his party.

Gully Wells describes the event as it unfolded (The House in France, p. 88):

Freddie was just about to get up and pile lots more smoked salmon on to his plate, when Sarah came rushing over to our table. “The most terrible thing is going on upstairs. This poor girl is pinned up against the wall and the man won’t let her go.”

Who better than a seventy-seven-year-old philosopher to take on an overenthusiastic suitor? Perhaps he could try engaging him in a discussion of ethics.

The scene was just as Sarah had described it. Naomi was squealing, the man had her rammed against the wall, and, distracted by the effort of trying to shove his tongue down her throat, he didn’t notice when Freddie tapped him on the shoulder. So Freddie tapped him a bit harder; the man swung round, adjusting his fly, and glared at the old geezer. “And who the fuck are you?”

“I happen to be rather a famous philosopher. My name is Professor Sir Alfred Ayer. And who are you, if I may ask?”

“I’m Mike Tyson—the heavyweight champion of the world.”

“Well in that case, my dear boy, we are both supreme in our field.”

Which settled everything.

Whether Naomi really needed rescuing, I’m not so sure. All I do know is that Freddie was thrilled with his heroic feat that there was no dragging him away from the party.

So there we have it. Not everything about this account rings entirely true, and its treatment is bizarrely minimising of the incident itself, but it’s certainly the best we’ve got. As implausible as it seems, it really does appear that A. J. Ayer intervened in the hope of preventing Mike Tyson from assaulting Naomi Campbell, a young model about to embark on a stellar career.