At the conclusion of Mike Tyson's workout, the entourage sets to work transforming a dingy gym in Phoenix into Santa's Workshop. While three of them dismantle the ropes, half a dozen others, aided by a group of volunteers from an Arizona bank, begin trundling in the toys and packages from the car park and stacking them in the ring. There are Beanie Babies and Barbie Dolls, basketballs, soccer balls, footballs, baseballs, video games, and toy aeroplanes.

Tyson split the cost of underwriting the Christmas party with Jamal Anderson, the Atlanta Falcons running back who is the son of his chief bodyguard. To his credit, it appears to have been a genuinely selfless gesture, at least to the extent that not even the local television stations were notified. Somehow the word has gotten out, and children from Phoenix's poorer neighbour hoods, black, white, Mexican and Native American, some accompanied by their parents, soon form a queue that stretches out of the gym and through the car park to the footpath outside, where it snakes around the tin-roofed Hermosillo taqueria next door and extends down the block as far as the eye can see.

"This isn't a charitable thing," insists Tyson. "You've just got to take care of people."

At the same time, he probably wouldn't mind if word of his largesse crept back to the proper authorities. Tyson fights South Africa's Francois Botha at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on January 16th. Barely three weeks later he faces sentencing in Montgomery County, Maryland, over an assault charge to which he has already pleaded "no contest". (The former heavyweight champion was accused of kicking one man and punching another following a multi-car fender-bender in August.)

A jail term is one possible outcome, but that may be the least of his worries. Tyson is still on probation for an earlier rape conviction in Indiana, and authorities there, including the Hon Patricia Gifford, the judge who originally sentenced him, have let it be known that the disposition of the Maryland case will have a substantial effect on their decision on whether to send him back to prison in their state.

In other words, Tyson could earn almost $30 million in the first month of 1999 and be behind bars for the second.

Two months have passed since Tyson's boxing licence, revoked after he disgracefully bit Evander Holyfield's ears in their June 1997 title fight in Las Vegas, was restored. Gone are promoter Don King, co-managers John Horne and Rory Holloway, and other hangers-on who made Tyson's post-prison entourage one of the more loathsome collections of human beings ever assembled under one roof.

Tommy Brooks has been engaged as Tyson's new trainer. Since dismissing the respected Kevin Rooney a decade ago, Tyson had gone through a collection of sycophants and yes-men patently more afraid of the boxer than his opponents were.

"He was training them," says Brooks (44) of his predecessors. "That's not the way it's supposed to operate."

On his first day in the gym with Tyson, Brooks put the boxer through an exercise in which he attacked a slip-bag in 30-second spurts. Sweating, heaving, and gasping for air, Tyson finally vomited on the spot.

"Most trainers would have let him off the hook there, but I said, `Look, Mike, if you throw up in a fight, you got to keep fighting! Get back to work!' "

"Kill me, man! Kill me!" responded Tyson, who wearily re-attacked the elusive bag.

"He wants somebody to push him," said Brooks, who is given to interrupting Tyson's workouts whenever he spots a mistake (which, these days, is often) and pointing it out on the spot.

There is some irony in watching a two-time heavyweight champion return to the boxing equivalent of Sesame Street, but Brooks says: "We've gone all the way back to basics in this camp. If he doesn't learn something new every day, we're just wasting our time."

Tyson says Brooks has him doing things in the gym "I haven't done since I was a kid", but he appears to be a willing pupil. Moreover, he seems genuinely relaxed and content to be back in the milieu he understands - a dank and sweat-stained inner-city gym.

"Mike is a good person," said Brooks. "He just needs guidance. He doesn't want `yes' men around him anymore. I don't think he ever lost confidence in himself as a fighter, but I do think he lost confidence in his corner. He was allowed to go his own way for so long that he forgot many of the things that made him great in the first place.

"You've also got to take into consideration," added Brooks, "that opponents just aren't going to be intimidated by him the way they used to be. The bully syndrome won't work anymore. Now he has to fight."

"Nobody likes taking orders, but that's part of being a fighter," said Tyson. "And maybe being able to fight takes a load off my mind. I'm just happy to be fighting again."

Both times Tyson fought Evander Holyfield, Brooks was in the opposing corner. ("I thought Mills Lane should have disqualified Mike after the first bite," he opines.) "This was strictly a business decision," Brooks says of his departure as Holyfield's assistant trainer to become the head man on the latest version of Team Tyson.

It is also a decision which could backfire if Tyson goes away in February.

Tyson seems almost serenely prepared for whatever destiny may bring him. While he insists that he is not attempting to remake his image (by playing Santa Claus to the children of Phoenix, for instance), he is only too aware of how badly that image is in need of repair.

At one point he compared himself to the embattled American president, noting that: "We knew what he was before he got in office. We all get in those situations. We're just hoping we don't get caught!"

(Asked whether he had voted for Bill Clinton, Tyson reminded you: "I'm a felon. They don't let me vote!")

When it was delicately put to him that "much of the public still considers him some sort of . . ." it was Tyson who gleefully interrupted to finish the sentence.

"An animal!" He clapped his hands.

"I just hope I'm a good animal," he said. "I hope I'm, you know, domesticated."

It was Tyson who recalled an episode in a Phoenix hotel room several weeks ago. When the room-service waiter who had delivered his breakfast addressed him as "Mr Tyson," the boxer replied: "Please, not Mister Tyson. Call me Mike."

"Oh, sir, I wouldn't do that," said the waiter, who went on to tell Tyson how much he admired him and that he wished he could be "just like you".

"No, you don't," Tyson told him. "In fact, I'd rather be you."

"No, you don't," said the waiter. "I'm trying to raise six kids - on one check."

"Yeah?" replied Tyson. "Well, I've got millions of dollars - and no friends!"