End of the Ceausescus and the King of the Ring (E313)

On the 25th of December, the red royal family of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu came to a brutal end. He had ruled Romania since 1965 and his reign ended in 1989 after the Central Committee's HQ was stormed. There followed a hasty show trial accusing him and his wife of genocide, and then execution by firing squad. Bob Wylie arrived in Bucharest as the smoke was still rising from the brief period of fighting between Ceausescu's Securitate and those who'd overthrown their president. He wrote a book about the events and continues to write. He has been a political organizer, a trade union official, a BBC television reporter and much more, so we invited him into the studio to talk about those events from 30 years ago.

He was the king of the ring with a mass following among the English working class. Pound for pound, you could make the case that Kevin Mitchell was the greatest of English fighters. His ferocious fighting style had crowds on their feet all over this land. Like many fighters before him, he fell on the hardest of times. Sometimes the inner demons are harder to beat than the prize fighter with you in the ring. But like a real champion, he got up off the canvas and has won as many fans since he stopped boxing. Kevin Mitchell came into the Sputnik studio to tell us more.

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