WERE it not for the count-your-fingers-afterwards- and-check- if-they’re-all- still-there handshake, I’d be tempted to say Tansy James comes over more pussy cat than growling bear.

But that would be to fly in the face of evidence from the five girls who Baby Bear James knocked clean out in her career as a boxer.

In fact only an untimely bout of hepatitis, which laid her low shortly before a fight in Kansas City on her 21st birthday, stopped this former Evesham schoolgirl becoming Ladies World Featherweight champion. The subsequent points loss to American Toni Lear was the only blotch on her record and remains a frustration to this day.

Tansy/Baby Bear, said: “I was so drained by the hepatitis I had no stamina. Toni Lear was just too strong for me.”

While losing the world title fight, after which she retired as a fighter, was one of her low water marks, training for it in Muhammad Ali’s gym and meeting him and his legendary trainer Angelo Dundee were definitely high points. And there aren’t many pupils, girls or boys, from Merstow Green primary and Blackminster Secondary Modern who can say that.

Thirty three years on from her Klash in Kansas – as opposed to the famous Rumble in the Jungle – Tansy James is now a middle aged mum and remarkably unmarked by her former career. While many male ex-boxers frequently look like they’ve walked into a door in the dark, she would easily pass for a human resources manager in some large corporation. Bubbling with enthusiasm and firing off quotes with the speed of Ali’s left jab, she comes at you like a whirlwind. It’s easy to see why her opponents in another life were often overwhelmed.

She said: “When I began boxing, women fought four two-minute rounds with 10oz gloves but that handicapped me a bit because I was only just getting going then.

Stamina was my strength. When they changed it to 10 two-minute rounds with 8oz gloves it was much better.”

Stocky and powerful, Tansy frequently found herself fighting opponents much taller than her own 5ft 2ins to equal the weights.

She said: “But I didn’t mind that.

If they were tall girls I could get right in there and hit them in their midriff. It was just my height.”

Tansy was born near Romford, Essex, but moved to Evesham at the age of five when her father, an agricultural contractor, changed jobs. After primary school at Merstow Green she began to show sporting prowess at Blackminster Secondary. However, when she left school at 16 it was to become a children’s nanny. Then she moved to Canada.

Tansy said: “My father was always keen on boxing and I remember watching one of the Ali- Frazier fights with him when I was 14. Then when I was in Canada I began going to a gym to exercise and met a man called Vern Stevenson. He taught me how to defend and how to punch properly.

We soon found out I had a powerful right cross and I could also take a punch, which is important for a boxer. To toughen me up, they used to make me spar with the lighter men.”

Tansy acquired her Baby Bear nickname in her very first bout.

She said: “I was a novice and the referee thought I was starting to take some punishment, he gave me a standing count. I thought he was stopping the fight and I went crazy because I knew I wasn’t hurt.

When we began again I went ballistic. They said I fought like a baby bear and the name stuck.”

At the end of four rounds the result was called a draw, but Baby Bear James was on her way.

Transy said: “I was quite cute and pretty and I had to do publicity shots that sometimes made me look younger than I was.

Short skirts and pigtails, that sort of thing.”

Certainly Tansy looked nothing like a boxer. More Britney Spears in the Baby One More Time video.

But she could pack a punch and her fighting career in Canada and later America read five wins (all by KO), two draws and one loss.

One of the draws was a fight before a crowd in a Las Vegas hotel.

While in America training for one fight, Tansy used the same Florida gym as Muhammad Ali.

The great man was there going through his own pre-match routines with his trainer Angelo Dunee. She said: “Ali was a real gentleman. Very quiet and polite and you realised all this shouting on television was just an act for the cameras. He was also very encouraging and respectful.”

After giving up fighting, Tansy turned to refereeing, obtained her professional licence and refereed quite a number of men’s bouts in America. Later, she returned to the UK, got married, had five children and now, rather bizarrely, writes books for children.

This interview originally took place because Tansy was promoting a women’s boxing tournament to be held as part of Evesham Vintage Rally at Badsey on August 13-14. And why not?

After all the sport features in the 2012 Olympics for the first time.

But the tourney has been cancelled due to “health and safety” issues. Wouldn’t you just know it?

However, Tansy will still open the show and give talks about her life. There will also be plenty of steam engines, old machinery, vintage cars, motorbikes and tractors, but somehow that’s a bit tame compared with Baby Bear at full grunt.