The day Muhammad Ali met Robert Burns – a curious tale for Burns Night gatherings

Muhammad Ali is greeted by pipers from plane in Scotland.

Whisky, served in the kind of weighty lead-crystal glasses that billionaires prefer, will be flowing at Burns Suppers across the world tonight (25 January). Robert Burns’ most popular Scottish-dialect poems will be awkwardly garbled by many, a few drams in. But there is one Burns-related verse that is unlikely to be performed by anyone this evening – the one Muhammad Ali scribbled down during his little-known visit to Burns Cottage in Alloway, west Scotland, in 1965:

I’d heard of a man named Burns – supposed to be a poet;