[1][2] At school he was taught PE by Howard Wilkinson and ran in the same cross-country running team as Sebastian Coe.
[1] Realising he had a talent for boxing he focused his energies on the sport and represented England at amateur level four years later.
[1] After retiring from boxing, Anderson became a referee and went on to train as a probation officer and study at Huddersfield Polytechnic, qualifying in 1988.
He told reporter Alan Hubbard of UK newspaper The Independent, "The then chief inspector of prisons, Sir David Ramsbottom, seemed to like what we were doing.
"[2] Expanding on this theme, Anderson told Alan Hubbard of UK newspaper The Independent, "When I went to Doncaster as a probation officer, I always remember at one point there were six inmates that I used to knock around with.
"[1] Anderson's job as governor resulted in a reunion with his former sparring partner Naseem Hamed who spent part of his 15 months sentence for dangerous driving at the jail in 2006, of which he said: "We knew for a long time before it happened that there was a high possibility that Nas was going to end up here.
Inspections found issues with increased use of restraint and high incidence of strip-searching, and identified fights among inmates as an issue, but also praised progress in education and training, care and management of looked-after children, family support, control of substance abuse and the quality of accommodation.
[7][8] The Ministry of Justice announced in early 2013 that Ashfield would be decommissioned as a Youth Offending Institution and re-roled as an adult-only prison.