Muhammad Ali hit Watford yesterday [October 14, 1971] in the middle of his whistle-stop tour of England promoting Ovaltine.

After a brief visit to the Ovaltine factory in Kings Langley in the morning – where he posed with Miss J.M. Seckington and Mrs V. Twelves – he rolled up at the Caledonian Hotel in St Albans Road for a Press conference, with police escort and even Special Branch in attendance.

 In the afternoon he visited Caters supermarket, undeterred by the crowds of women who had mobbed him on similar visits in Birmingham and Manchester.

“We’re lucky to be here today,” commented Ovaltine marketing chief John Wadsworth.

Ali, wearing a sleeveless shirt in the autumn wind, said this Ovaltine tour was keeping him from training for his next fight.

“If I lose this fight

“I’ll be the worst fighter you’ve ever seen,

“I’ll blame it all on Ovaltine,” he quipped.

But he confessed he was an Ovaltine drinker.

Ali claimed he was going to retire when he whipped Joe Frazier.

“I’m getting old,” he said. “I’m going to retire still beautiful, still unmarked.”

[From the Watford Observer of October 15, 1971]