Tommy Fury keeps pointing out how ‘not academic’ he is, but there is a certain wisdom in his analysis of his life. ‘Who on earth goes on Love Island to actually find love?’ he asks.
And yet, he did find love. He was just 20 and taking a break from the day job of professional boxer when he first set eyes on a girl called Molly-Mae Hague in ITV‘s Love Island villa.
‘The minute I saw her I thought ‘YEEEESSS. She’s the woman of my dreams’,’ he tells me.
‘If I could have written down on a piece of paper what my ideal girl would look like, it is Molly.’
What would we have read on that bit of paper? ‘Blonde, perfect body shape, beautiful eyes, smile. Good personality, chatty, bubbly, shared interests.’
Tommy Fury and Molly-Mae Hague met on Love Island in 2019
All boxes were ticked and the rest is history. Collective history too. The journey since has been all so public, from the first flirty conversation Tommy and Molly had on the reality show (in a hot tub, wouldn’t you know!) to the arrival of their daughter Bambi last year.
Then there was the birth of their parallel and interwoven ‘brands’, which are now worth an estimated £9million and counting.
They didn’t actually win Love Island in 2019, but they did hit the jackpot in so many ways.
‘We were together for five and a half years,’ he points out. ‘You don’t stay with someone, have a child with them, get engaged, if it is only a bit of a fling.
‘It is proper love. Do I still love Molly? 100 per cent. I will love her until my final breath.’
Will you fight for her and for your relationship though, Tommy, because that’s the question everyone is asking? ‘100 per cent. I know what I have to do in order to resolve things. And that’s down to me. Nobody else can do that other than me.’
Tommy, now 25, is giving this interview to publicise his autobiography, published later this month and serialised in The Mail on Sunday tomorrow and the Daily Mail on Monday.
He isn’t the reading type (he confesses that he’s only read two books in his life – The Bible and The Tiger Who Came To Tea, which he reads to Bambi), but last year he sat down with a ghostwriter and poured out his life story, a modern day rags-to-riches tale of how he, an impoverished boxer from Salford who couldn’t even afford the bus fare to training, came to win at life.
The couple with their daughter Bambi, who arrived last year
Just two weeks after Bambi was born, Tommy flew to Saudi Arabia to fight YouTuber Jake Paul. The match ended in victory for Tommy
His boxing background is a huge part of the story. His big brother is Tyson Fury – The Gypsy King – his father a one-time bare knuckle fighter and the sport is in his DNA. But it was his segue into the reality TV arena, which made him, and Molly, household names – and highly bankable with it.
Almost overnight this glossy couple became the Posh and Becks of the reality TV world, idols for an entire generation, living in a £3.8million Cheshire mansion with their own names on the Hellmann’s Mayonnaise jars in the fridge (Tommy was signed up as a brand ambassador after Love Island and an advert had him coupling up with Molly-Mayo).
But just as the fairytale life was about to go to the printers last month, calamity struck.
Molly-Mae announced on Instagram that their relationship was over. ‘Never in a million years did I think I’d ever have to write this,’ she posted. ‘I am extremely upset to announce that mine and Tommy’s relationship has come to an end. You have all been a part of our journey and I feel it is right to share this with you all.’
Why, screamed fans, who had not seen this coming. The finger was pointed at Tommy and there was unfair speculation that he had cheated. Then there were the reports about how Molly, literally at home with the baby, had tired of his partying.
Does he care? Is he on the ropes here? Actually, he reacts exactly like a boxer about to get in the ring, knowing he’s the underdog, but determined to fight.
‘The whole world could be against me and I’ll still fight because that’s the mindset of a winner and I am a winner.
‘Everybody could think what they want about me and say what they want about me. As long as my family think I’m a good man and Jesus Christ thinks I’m a good man, I don’t care what anybody else has to say.’
Thomas John Fury, the youngest of five boxing brothers (‘the runt of the litter. I wasn’t meant to do anything or be anyone,’ he writes) arrives for our interview at the upmarket Cheshire hotel that is his home-from-home. Before fights, this place serves as his training ground.
He has been in the gym this morning and will be again this afternoon. I think he’d be way more comfortable if we could just talk bench-presses all afternoon.
‘I train three times a day, six days a week,’ he says. ‘I’ve been doing it since I was eight years old and it’s all I know. I’ve never had a day job. All I know, really, is the gym and boxing. I don’t know what I’m doing anywhere else.’
He says it’s been quite the year with one thing and another (as well as the split with Molly, he’s been battling a hand injury for months now), with his mental health taking a pounding. ‘Probably this past year has been the most my mental health has been tested,’ he says. ‘It’s not been sunshine and rainbows. The gym is my medication. Tell me when you come out of the gym after a great session feeling bad? Never!’
The gym always was his balm. He still trains with his dad, his mentor and idol, and not even his father’s incarceration could dent their bond. When John Fury, a popular but controversial figure in the Irish travelling community, was sentenced to 11 years after gouging a man’s eye out in a fight, Tommy insists this period was the making of him. ‘It turned me from a boy into a man,’ he says.
‘I was a young kid – nine, ten –when my dad went to prison, but when he came out I was a man, lifting weights at the gym.
‘It taught me that life isn’t going to go the way you want it to and there are going to be bumps in the road but there’s no good crying over it. You’ve got to just get on with it and approach it in the best way possible. I don’t wallow in it. There’s no point because wallowing won’t fix it.’
Molly-Mae announced last month on Instagram that their five-and-a-half-year relationship was over
Ironically, given the day job of being punched in the face, in the flesh Tommy looks quite unreal, a polished beefcake with implausible shoulders, a precision barber cut and piercing blue eyes.
They light up when he talks about Molly. Or ‘his missus’ as he has been known to refer to her. He knows what Molly saw in him. ‘She liked the muscles and I liked the way she looked as well. It kind of went from there,’ he smiles.
There isn’t one word of criticism about Molly. She went from being the perfect woman to the perfect mum. Just two weeks after Bambi was born he flew to Saudi Arabia to fight Jake Paul, the YouTuber. It was a controversial career point (there is much debate about the phenomenon of pro boxers taking on big money fights with social media stars).
‘Molly held the fort at home. She was super strong. I came back to a super strong mother and a beautiful baby.’ You were both very young to embark on parenthood, though. ‘We took the bull by the horns. I can honestly say, for two young parents, we are two great parents. I couldn’t have picked a better mother for Bambi.
‘And I know Molly would say the same. She couldn’t have picked a better father for Bambi. We father and mother that baby like an egg in a shell. There is nothing more important. Being a father is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. Ever. Having Bambi has changed my whole life.’
Molly might have a different take on the past year, because Bambi has two perfect parents who, for whatever reason, are no longer together.
Hence the fact that Tommy’s autobiography will be published with an extra chapter, referencing the split. It won’t be a mea culpa, though. The thing he wants to stress today is that he did not cheat.
‘All the allegations that were made of me recently are completely false,’ he says. ‘The truth will come out in time and when it does I think a lot of people might regret their actions and unkind words.
‘The whole world will, I reckon.’ So why have they split? He wasn’t entirely blindsided by Molly’s announcement. ‘What the public thinks is going on isn’t what is going on. It’s not something I envisaged happening, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s a thing that was there previously to all this happening, but the only people who know what is going on in our relationship is me and Molly.’
But you categorically haven’t cheated on Molly? ‘Absolutely not. I think if you were going to cheat on someone you should just sit down and say, ‘I don’t love you any more’, clearly, because you want to go and pursue other people.
‘When you get to that stage, I think you should just call it a day. If you want to go out there and have affairs with women then you definitely shouldn’t be with your partner. Definitely not. And have I ever reached that point? No.
Ever tempted? ‘No, never.’ Is that because Molly is the perfect woman? ‘Yes, 100 per cent that.’ What about the reported partying? ‘It’s nothing, isn’t it? I think every 20-year-old,
23-year-old lad in the country is in a club. And believe it or not, it was work.’
I’m not entirely sure he knows himself what his next step will be, but when I suggest he might be feeling a bit lost, he shakes his head. ‘No. I know exactly what needs to be done. I have this clarity.’ He taps the side of his head. ‘It’s like tunnel vision.’
And is this situation fixable? ‘I do think things will work themselves out.
‘Do I love my family very much? Yes. Do I want me and my family to be back together? Yes, 100 per cent. I will always love my family.’
What is clear is that Tommy had no idea how hectic life would get when he signed up for Love Island, effectively placing his whole life in a goldfish bowl.
It’s poignant learning what his dreams used to be. ‘I wanted to be a good boxer. I never said I wanted to win millions of pounds.
‘I never wanted to be a celebrity. I just wanted to be good at boxing. And that dream’s never changed. I still want to be a world champion. I still want to be good at boxing.’
He stresses that he was only on the show for two months – ‘whereas I’ve been boxing for ever’ – but it was a pivotal period in making him famous.
He makes me laugh talking about his simple tastes.
Yes, he has the sports cars and the designer labels, ‘but you can’t beat a trip to B&M or Home Bargains’.
He says: ‘There was no big plans in my life, really, to do anything extravagant. I just wanted to do my fights and look after my family, and that’s all I still want to do. So, like I say, simple life.’
And did you pick the right girl to have that life?
‘Yeah. 100 per cent. Because Molly has given me the best thing that anybody could ever give me. And that’s family.
‘So I thank her every single day for that.’
Lightning Can Strike Twice by Tommy Fury (Sphere, £25) is published on October 10. To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to 19/10/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
