The young boxer has been busy repaying his personal debt to the NHS while boxing is suspended due to the pandemic, including to nurses who treated his mother before she died of cancer last year
“When you finish every day it’s an amazing feeling,” Sam Cox says late one afternoon after he has helped deliver the latest batch of meals to NHS workers. Cox, a professional boxer with a 5-0 record, has had to put his promising career on hold during the Covid crisis. But he now moves relentlessly from hospitals to health centres with his mass deliveries.
The 26-year-old looks exhausted but quietly elated as he reflects on work which, amid adversity and tragedy, has such personal meaning. “By the end of last week we’d done 40,000 meals,” Cox says. “I’ve delivered around 15,000 meals personally. Probably more. In a normal job you finish work and think: ‘Aarrghhh, at least that’s over.’ But when you finish this you think you’ve actually done something. It makes me especially proud when I am bringing food to the district nurses at the Goodinge health centre [in Islington, north London]. Two or three were in my house most days changing my mum’s medication and looking after her when she was so sick.