Boxer takes the stain of false blood from carpets

It is not everyone who can get ketchup stains out of a carpet but Rob Hayes-Scott and his dad can take up three carpets, all blemished in this way, bundle them into the back of the van and have them back good as new a few days later.

Arguably, after the Christmas party season, we need good carpet cleaners more than we need another professional boxer but, as it is probably difficult to get finance for an in-depth documentary about the removal of marks from tufted Wilton - salt, I am told, is rather good - what we got instead, on BBC2's Friday night documentary, was a look at Hayes-Scott's parallel career as a cruiserweight boxer.

More specifically The Lady and the Champ followed Tania Follett, the only woman in Britain ever to have a boxing manager's licence, as she tried to guide Rob towards a world title, a quest you knew from fairly early on was doomed to failure.

I am no psychotherapist - never having had the Latin - but it was plain to see that where boxers like Chris Eubank and Mike Tyson might be said to suffer from too little mother-love, Hayes-Scott was in danger of being smothered by too much. His mum Julie, shown carefully ironing Rob's shorts before his first professional fight, admitted to pampering him. "At the end of the day he's still my baby," she said.

A good kick up the backside, you felt, might have done her son more of a service than the pre-fight snack she cooked him of a bacon-and-egg sandwich dripping ketchup (but not on the carpet: these people are professionals).

You could see, though, why women felt the urge to mother Rob, with his winning smile and charmingly casual disposition. In their early days together Tania thought she had found a "little diamond" in Rob. "He trains," she said. "And he calls me." She was beside herself with joy. He had a girlfriend, too. His childhood sweetheart Toni, described by Rob's mum as "a little dolly bird", was pregnant with their first child. There was a touching tableau of Rob and Toni reading the Motor Trader, looking for vehicles to ferry the little one around in. But this project, too, you felt, was destined to end in tears.

There was a definite air of Greek tragedy around this excellent documentary, which gave as vivid a picture of life on the lower rungs of the professional boxing ladder as you are likely to see.

Rob's first professional fight, against Kev "The Rock" Burton from Doncaster, took place in an East London badminton hall with temporary seating. Shots of vending machines and changing rooms conjured up that unique sports-centre atmosphere. You could almost smell the training shoes.

The Rock had been bricklaying all morning in his native Doncaster but shot down to the capital because "the money was all reet". His manager described it as "bread-and-butter boxing". Within two rounds Kev was as horizontal as a row of his bricks. A very short while later, with a wad of tenners in his pocket you suspect, he was halfway back up the M1. In these circumstances it was important for Rob not to get carried away.

Which is precisely what he did, incessantly talking the talk, while neglecting Tania's diet regime. "Fight two is one week away and Rob is putting on weight," went Steve McFadden's throaty commentary. The story told by the diet sheets the boxer was sporadically filling in for Tania was not an encouraging one, a tale of Big Macs, Kentucky Fried Chicken and late-night kebabs.

But Rob flashed Tania one of his little-boy smiles and was forgiven. He just about got away with it in the ring, too, surviving a knock-down to win a points victory and receiving some invaluable advice from his trainer, the former super-middleweight champion James Cook. "Don't get hit on the f****** chin, man," were Cook's words of wisdom.

Toni, who by this time had given birth to their son, was less forgiving than Tania when she discovered that Rob had secretly booked a week in Tenerife with his mates on a Club 18-30 holiday. He was hoping presumably that the mother of his child would be unaware of the unique selling point of this type of holiday, which of course she might well be, if she had not read a newspaper or watched television for the last five years.

Rob said he had booked the holiday without telling Toni but hoped "to sort it out later", which unfortunately appeared to be his attitude to his fight preparation.

Tania, however, was more driven. The programme followed her to America where she had gone to pick up tips from her Stateside equivalent, Jackie Kallan, a hatchet-faced air-kissing Beverly Hills type who took calls from Don King on her mobile and made airy promises about Rob fighting on one of her undercards. "It's like anything can happen here," commented a starry-eyed Tania.

Back in London what was happening was Rob was being attended to by paramedics after being knocked senseless by a bruiser called Radcliffe Green. He was "economical with the truth regarding his training", said Tania, who prepared to search elsewhere for her "little diamond."

The programme gave no information about Rob's next move but he would be well advised not to forget how to get ketchup out of carpets.