Tyson Fury spoke to the camera when he told me what was going to happen for telling the truth about his views on homosexuality. He looked over his shoulder at a man called ‘Big Shane’ and said he would break my jaw with one straight right hand. ‘Oliver,’ he said, ‘take a good look at him because that’s the face you’re going to see before you hit the deck.’

Then he indicated a man standing on the other side of the room and said that would be the face I saw when he was jumping on my head. ‘What are you going to do to him?’ Fury asked on the video. ‘I’m going to **** him up,’ the man said. Fury smiled.

So let’s not mince our words, either. The man who became the eighth Englishman to hold the heavyweight championship of the world when he beat Wladimir Klitschko in Dusseldorf last weekend is a bully and a bigot. He reacts to uncomfortable revelations about his twisted religious beliefs with threats and intimidation.

Tyson Fury holds the world heavyweight title belts he won from Wladimir Klitschko in Dusseldorf last week

Having beaten Klitschko on points, Fury hit out at Sportsmail's Oliver Holt for reporting his bigoted views

Fury spoke candidly with chief sports writer Holt in a recorded one-on-one interview in Bolton last month

He is a man who equated homosexuality and abortion with paedophilia when I interviewed him in Bolton last month and then resorted to threats of violence and denials when I reported what he said. He did not even have the courage of his convictions.

He said again and again that he had been misquoted and that his remarks had been taken out of context, so last week The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline took the decision to publish the entire transcript of the interview to call his bluff. I had taped our conversation on two recorders. He had not been misquoted. He had not been taken out of context.

Some of his more impressionable fans and a few nauseating sycophants are still outraged at the treatment that Fury has received since he spoke to me a fortnight before his title fight and observed that ‘there are only three things that need to be accomplished before the Devil comes home: one of them is homosexuality being legal in countries, one of them is abortion and the other one’s paedophilia’.

I’m sorry, but if you think those comments should be allowed to go unchallenged, if you think we should look the other way because he is English, if you think his achievement in Dusseldorf buys him indemnity, if you think he should be flattered and indulged, then you need to take a long, hard look at yourself.

Fury can make as many threats as he wants but it is important that his disturbing views on homosexuality should not be allowed to go unchallenged. It is up to others if they want to pretend he never said it but for a man who is now the heavyweight champion of the world to conflate homosexuality and paedophilia is a dangerous, dangerous message that carries echoes of the years of persecution, victimisation and humiliation gay men and women suffered.

No excuses can be made for that, especially when no apology and no retraction has been forthcoming. This is not the time to indulge Fury again. It is the time to say ‘enough’. It is time to call him to account because the potential repercussions for the gay community in his comments are obvious and grave.

THE STORY THAT INFURIATED FURY Tyson Fury is sitting on a sofa in his hotel room. His bed is unmade. A pillow lies on the floor. An empty water bottle sits on the table. Apart from that, the room is bare. The conversation has just started and Fury is talking in a stream of consciousness, fast and freely. Things turn dark very, very quickly. ‘We live in an evil world,’ he says. ‘The devil is very strong at the minute, very strong, and I believe the end is near. The bible tells me the end is near. The world tells me the end is near. Just a short few years, I reckon, away from being finished. ‘Abusing the planet, the wars in the Middle East, the famines, the earthquakes, the natural disasters, all these things are talked about 2000 years ago before they even happened. Prophesised. So now it’s all coming true…’ CLICK HERE FOR OLIVER HOLT'S FULL MAIL ON SUNDAY FEATURE Advertisement

HOW WE GOT HIM TAPED... Read word for word what Tyson Fury said in The Mail on Sunday’s interview last month... ‘There are only three things that need to be accomplished before the Devil comes home. One of them is homosexuality being legal in countries, one of them is abortion and the other is paedophilia. So who would have thought in the Fifties and early Sixties that those first two would be legalised. ‘This is a free world we live in and an evil world. For me, people can say, “Oh, you’re against abortions and you’re against paedophilia, you’re against homosexuality, you’re against whatever”, but my faith and my culture is all based on the Bible. The Bible was written a long time ago, wasn’t it, from the beginning of time until now, so if I follow that and that tells me it’s wrong, then it’s wrong for me.’ CLICK HERE for full transcript and audio Advertisement

They lead us back towards a darker world, a primeval existence, a time before tolerance and enlightenment. To say merely that what Fury says is justified because he is parroting religious teachings is absurd. Religion should not be a cloak for malice.

Fury is not a cartoon villain. He is a complex, fragile man who admits he has turned to religion as a coping mechanism. He is not the first to have sought some comfort there but he has been unable to filter the good from the bad in the scriptures that he has devoured.

Boxing’s history is full of men who are heroes for what they achieved in the ring but who were harder to admire outside the ropes. Floyd Mayweather Jnr mixed genius with domestic abuse. Mike Tyson was thrillingly destructive in the ring and a convicted rapist out of it.

But again, moral equivalence should not be used to excuse Fury, as some have tried to do. Tyson went to jail for his crime, Mayweather was rightly castigated for his attitude towards women. Now Fury must face up to the damage he has caused with his remarks.

‘I’m not celebrating Tyson Fury’s win,’ shadow cabinet minister Chris Bryant wrote on Twitter. ‘His aggressive style of foul homophobia is precisely the kind that leads to young gay suicides.’

Fury with his wife Paris attended cousin Hughie Fury's fight on Saturday night at Westcroft Leisure Centre

The newly crowed world heavyweight champion was ringside for Lenny Daws vs Ruben Nieto in Carshalton

Tyson was in the ring as fellow heavyweight Hughie was introduced for his bout against Larry Olubamiwo

Fury was on his best behaviour as he addressed the crowd on Saturday night in the south of London

Great fame can invade a man and Fury is learning the hard way that when you are a champion, your words no longer disappear into the void. He has said much of this before and it has been dismissed as the rambling of an eccentric and indulged by those who feed off him.

Say it as a contender, though, say it as world champion, and you suddenly find that more than 50,000 people have signed a petition protesting against your inclusion on the shortlist for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. I understand their motivation but Fury’s sporting achievement in Dusseldorf demands his inclusion. There is still a simple solution: if you don’t like him and his views, don’t vote for him.

Some of Fury’s fans say I should have protected him from himself, that I should not have used the more controversial quotes, that I should have edited them out, that I should never have mentioned them. I don’t agree with that point of view. Journalists are not censors.

Fury (right) beat Wladimir Klitschko on a unanimous points decision last Saturday night in Germany

His status as not just an eccentric hopeful has transformed now and his words can no longer be dismissed

Fury (right) was restrained by his father John ahead of the fight as the contender played up to the cameras

Fury wore tape over his mouth at a press conference in protest of a £15,000 fine by the British Boxing Board of Control for a foul-mouthed rant at journalists and Dereck Chisora before the two fought last year

There are too many people who seek to be censors already — agents, managers, public relations companies. Reporters report. It would not have been an honest representation of the interview to ignore Fury’s comments. And anyway, he has made similar assertions before and since.

I hope that at some time in the future, we can speak again. Fury is a fragile, intelligent, compelling man who is not without redeeming features. He is an articulate speaker, too. I hope he comes to terms with his new responsibilities. I hope he comes to realise that his views have caused a lot of people distress and that he turns away from them.

No one expects Fury to be a saint but nor should he expect to be allowed to spread insidious messages that many find highly offensive without being called to account for them. He deserves our admiration for what he achieved in Dusseldorf and he deserves our disdain for his bullying and his bigotry. Simply looking the other way should never be an option.