FINANCIAL adviser Richard Skerritt has built up a £6 million business from scratch, counts the rich and famous as friends and clients and is the father of six children. So why would he willingly choose to step into a boxing ring and take a pummelling? FINN SCOTT-DELANY finds out...

BOXING fan Richard Skerritt always liked the idea of stepping into the ring, but his wife hated the thought of him suffering a head injury.

This put a stop his fantasy career before it even got started – until a crafty bit of negotiation on his part.

While still not keen on it, he managed to soften her up with a fancy gift during a trip to Paris.

Having got her reluctant agreement during a moment of weakness, he now has a free reign to lace up his boxing gloves.

But why is he see keen to risk getting bloodied, bruised and potentially knocked out cold in front of hundreds of friends and family?

“I do these things in life”, he said. “I like a challenge.”

Challenges asides, a big motivation is to create a night of entertainment which will encourage the business community to dig deep.

Taking no half measures, Richard has enlisted Underground Gym owner and former Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) professional fighter Sol Gilbert to train him.

The notorious task master takes a zero tolerance approach to training, meaning he takes no truck with Richard having a hangover, working him even harder.

“He’s really, really tough. He doesn’t care if you’re not feeling good”, Richard said.

While the planned bout in August might be entertaining for spectators, for Richard it is serious, and the social drinker will be giving up alcohol for the full eight week run-in and going on a strict diet which should see the imposing 6ft5in man drop one and a half stone.

And the well-known figure, who runs one of the most influential financial services firms in the South East, is confident he can pull in the crowds.

“I know a lot of businessman in the city who will quite happily pay to me get beaten up,” he jokes.

Rather than put on just a white collar fundraiser, he wanted some higher-level action to entertain the crowds, so after Richard’s bout there will be a programme of amateur fights.

In benefit of Action Medical Research, a Horsham charity that funds research to prevent and treat disease and disability in babies and children, Richard hopes to raise a total £50,000 at the black-tie event at The Grand Brighton.

With three rigorous training sessions a week he has already noticed the personal benefits.

“Running a business is stressful”, he said. “I’ve got six kids, which is also stressful.

“So going into the gym and punching someone is definitely therapeutic.

“It’s knackering initially but it’s definitely increased my energy levels over all.”

Skerritts, based in Coleridge Street, Hove, is no stranger to charity and the firm gives away some £100,000 a year to mainly local causes.

It is a headline sponsor of the Mid Summer Ball, an annual benefit for the Rockinghorse Children’s Charity.

It was here that Richard got his first taste of the limelight after being persuaded to enter a Strictly Come Dancing type competition by friend Zoe Ball.

“I’ve got no coordination but Zoe said if I didn’t do it she wasn’t going to judge," he said.

“I was really out of my comfort zone; it was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.

“I’m the world’s worst dancer and I had to do it in front of all my mates.”

Not one to let a weakness get the better of him, he took lots of lessons and ended up winning – though he admits the odds were stacked in his favour.

“I think the fact I raised £11,000 in sponsorship, which was by far the most, that we sponsored the event, and that Zoe Ball is a good friend might have helped!”

The impressive fundraising record is the culmination of 25 years of hard work at Skerritts, which now has 27,000 clients and £700 million invested.

But it was not an easy journey, with Richard spending five years scraping by, and being told many times to give it up and get a proper job.

Arriving in 1985 to study business at Brighton Polytechnic, he was keen to go into advertising and landed a good job in London after graduating - but he quit after just one day.

“They told me no one had ever quit the firm before, but I decided I just couldn’t work with these people", he said.

It was an ad in The Argus which led to his first proper job selling life insurance for a then eye-catching £18,000 OTE.

While he did well, earning more in a month then three years being a student, it was soul destroying work.

“I was selling really inappropriate investments to little old grannies”, he said.

“I liked the industry but I hated the organisation.”

After this became too uncomfortable he took the plunge and set up on his own.

From his bedroom, with just a telephone, pen and pad, he set to work cold-calling and roaming industrial estates selling pensions and investments.

“Most people told me where to go”, he said. “The first five years where a real struggle.

“I had absolutely no money. My mates would have to take me out and buy me a drink.

“I thought about giving up many times.”

By 1995 he was still working from a tiny office-bedroom on Old Shoreham with his wife, where the filing cabinet doubled up as a chest of drawers, but the hard work was beginning to pay off.

“I was quite tenacious. Once I started doing something I never want to fail

“I knew if I worked hard enough it would come good. I’ve got a lot self-belief.”

It is this tenaciousness and penchant for a challenge that is seeing Richard through his rigorous training schedule - and he hopes will raise lots of money and see him to victory.