So, the Eddie the Eagle of British pugilism has hung up his gloves and wandered off into the sunset to spend more time with his bruises. The retirement of Peter Buckley will doubtless be a huge relief to the hierarchy in the British boxing community, worried that the poor chap was heading for some kind of permanent brain damage, but he will be saluted by the British public as the latest in a long line of heroic sporting losers.

It is not just Eddie Edwards who thrilled and enchanted us with his dedication to the cause of launching off a ski jump and landing on his behind. There was also Erik “the Eel” Moussambani, from Equatorial Guinea, in the 100 metre freestyle swimming at the 2000 Olympic Games, thrashing around like a drowning kitten before coming home to raucous applause, more than a minute behind the winner.

The key to being a bona fide loser is to be determined, plucky and, most importantly, bloody awful. There is no mileage to be had in being half good, because we get to see half-good losers every weekend in the Premier League. No, to charm fans and spectators requires truly prodigious incompetence, something that was gloriously exemplified by Buckley, particularly in his later years, with his ramshackle defence and a left hook that wouldn’t have quivered a jelly.

Some get a taste for serial defeat. In his savagely perceptive novel The Mighty Walzer, Howard Jacobson describes it as “the corrupt seed of voluptuous defeatism”, something that he acquired playing local league table tennis in Manchester in the 1950s. This is intended not to be a conscious repudiation of competitive values but a fetish akin to masochism.

However, I don’t think this is what was going on with Edwards, Buckley and Co. After all, we can see someone losing for kicks a mile off. No, what we love about geniune losers is that, deep down, they desperately want to win – believe they can win – despite evidence to the contrary. That is what kept Buckley in the ring, Moussambani in the pool and Edwards in the air. Blind optimism allied to a lack of talent: we are all suckers for it.

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