After nightfall, Park Lane has few pedestrians and is governed by a gloomy opulence, with the street semi-lit by sleepy hotel foyers and the reflection from pristine car showrooms. City traffic zooms past unceasingly, cutting between the street and the threadbare, lonesome Hyde Park, where Mike Tyson jogs in the black hours before dawn.

It isn't surprising that the McLaren car caught the fighter's eye during the first of his nocturnal runs, for the silver F1 limited edition is isolated and spotlit in the window. The machine is impressive in a daunting way; aesthetically superior, all Batmobile angles and cold leather. It is like a visual from a Bret Easton Ellis novel, money sculpted as empty beauty, as status, and right away the one time champion of the world desires it. So he orders one.

Dollar signs and debt are just part of the fascination with Mike Tyson. As with every other aspect of his life, his financial affairs are grotesque. Four years ago, he had the US inland revenue chasing him for $100 million. Now the debt stands at just $10 million. What difference can blowing $600,000 on an English car make?

All this week, Londoners did not quite know what to make of the Mike Tyson curiosity show and gleefully marvelled at his unabashed spending sprees.

Sky TV posted a vigil outside Grosvenor House, where the boxer stays and trains and by mid-morning the gateways are daily crammed with cameras and Tyson fans. Asian schoolkids, young black girls, white guys, middle-aged couples . . . the profile is dominated by neither sex nor race. Each morning, the fighter's aides stroll down and pick a few hopefuls from the crowd. Steve Fitch, who did five for manslaughter, is all smiles and flash attitude but the others adopt a baleful surliness.

On Tuesday, a track-suited minder shuffles on to the street and is engaged in conversation by a photographer. They talk some and a crowd gathers - media mostly - and then, the minder turns, yelling: "What the f**k are ya all doin' in my conversation? Get da f**K." Instantly the small crowd retreats.

There is no malice or aggression in his tone, it's just New York street talk. But in the damp chill of central London it sounds ugly.

The lucky few are chosen. A white guy peels off his top to demonstrate his love for Mike in the shape of a back tattoo of the fighter's face. He is ushered in. A seven-year-old girl, Nyomi, is taken in to meet Tyson. She emerges maybe a half hour later, all smiles and wearing kid gloves signed by the boxer. She is prompted to pose for about two dozen snappers. Afterwards, the press people ask the girl about her visit. "He cuddled me," she responds.

More questions. What did he say? Did you box with him? Pens are poised and the child smiles nervously back and turns to her mother for reassurance.

Tyson's genuine affection for children has been documented before and although he relates naturally to them, these visits are part of the plan to rebuild the public image. For now, the English press seem content to ride with the happy story.

Nobody is inclined to ask the girl's parents if they were in any way ambivalent about letting her meet a convicted rapist. It would have been too uncomfortable and, perhaps, unfair.

For the purposes of next Saturday night's fight against Julius Francis - who has been depicted as little more than a doomed prop in this whole charade - Tyson is attempting to marry humility and introspection with the silent malevolence of old.

His descent into notoriety throughout the 1990s became a global fixation and as his boxing prowess waned, he seemed determined to out-do the media demonisation of him as a misogynist, as convicted rapist, as the savage who ripped off an ear, as the uncontrollable spendthrift, as a dark parable, a freakshow. Still a pariah in America, Tyson has not attempted to shirk the impact of his sins nor avoided what he represents in middle, tax-paying America.

"Why do I have to come over here to be respected. It's bad enough I'm a nigger. Why do I have to go home and be treated like a nigger?" he says at a press conference on Wednesday.

Later, he declares his interest in adopting London as his home and it is half understandable. Everyone here is well versed in the low points of his nihilistic past, but he is still their darling. A Justice for Women group offered the lone voice of dissent, but at Grosvenor House there is nothing but adulation. When Tyson finishes training, hotel security men bolt the gates and the black limo used to chauffeur the fighter is polished and buffed. There is brief chaos in the struggle for vantage points at the gate. Inside in the lobby, there is just as much anxiety amongst the press.

The fight's promoter, Frank Warren, is scurrying about, half bothered and half thrilled by the unashamed hunger for his man. A tight list is drawn up; no one else will get an audience with Tyson.

"Use your initiative to get him, like I did," he smiles at the group who are frozen out. A female journalist protests that the invited list is comprised solely of men and though Warren promises to make a plea for her, he warns her to expect nothing. What Tyson's team says goes. Period.

You have to admire Warren's temerity in dreaming up this promotion. A boxer who has shocked and been held in revulsion across most of the world, a flawed fighter, against a nobody. And it has turned into an event. It is hot.

Already, they are talking about Lennox Lewis-Tyson as a must. "It's predestined," says Tyson. It will be box office dynamite, a stadium brawl. Like the old days.

Who can blame Warren, then, as he walks down towards the crowd and the exploding flashbulbs and the cheering? Who could blame him for smiling a survivor's smile as he waves and pats Tyson on the back?

As for the boxer, the image is still there. Even in the flesh, there is something of the comic strip super-power about Mike Tyson. He walks down slowly; black coat, black polo neck, black leather trousers. He is small in height, yet has an impossibly engulfing stature. The legendary Tyson frame (he was weighed at 20 stone last summer) is recognisable beneath the garments; broad and on-coming, fearsome. But mostly, it's in the face - the new, tight-cropped dreads, the arched, almost pretty eyebrows, planed cheekbones shaping light brown skin and that flickering gold-toothed smile.

This is the apparition that is strolling for the gates and frantically they lean towards him, fast against the iron. A black woman shouts: "Mike, they wouldn't let me spar with ya cos I'm a woman." A white man with bleached hair and a Hilfiger top brandishes a photo of his hero through the gates. "Mike, I've waited two days for this," he screams and his voiced is high pitched, like Ian from Eastenders.

"You're the greatest fighter ever, Mike. I have every video. Please sign this, it means everything. I would do anything in the world to see you fight, Mike. You are the greatest, man."

The fighter is watching all this with a dreamy calm and, softly murmuring thanks, he shakes hands. He signs notepads and books, anything they thrust at him and when the teenage kids shout "respect, Mike", he gives them the look, singles them out for a special instant and glides on.