He used to collect cars he couldn’t drive and buy £60,000 watches – but those days are over. As he sends an aid convoy to Lesbos and offers refugees a place to stay, he explains why he’s changed

“50 Cent’s got one, The Game’s got one and I’ve got one,” said Amir Khan, showing off one of his Jacob & Co custom-made watches as he lounges on his bed in Bolton. He picks up a pair of white basketball trainers fresh from the box. “Shaquille O’Neal, [Michael] Jordan. None of ’em have got these. Only me.”

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Outside, he demonstrates the retractable roof on his AC Schnitzer 6 Series BMW convertible with the A1 8OXER numberplate, one of many flash cars with deafening stereo systems crowding the forecourt of his family’s gated compound. “The thing about this car is: the fuel costs so much, you know what I mean!” he says from the front seat. “You put a tenner in. A tenner’s nuffin. A tenner, the needle doesn’t even move.” For a while after he bought it, he couldn’t get insured on it, he admits. “My dad wouldn’t let me drive it. It was just parked up.”

That was the old Amir Khan, filmed more than six years ago for the ITV4 show, Cribs. Then, the boxer was in his early 20s, his career on an upward trajectory after wining a silver medal at the Athens Olympics, aged just 17.

Now 28, married with a daughter, Khan would like you to believe he’s a changed man.

“Some watches I bought, I think now: why the hell did I pay that much for a watch?” he says on Thursday, from the boardroom of his office above his gym in Bolton. Like how much? He ponders. “Sixty grand?” Sixty grand! You could buy a three-bedroom house in Bolton for that, I say. He looks a little sheepish. “I know. But I was young then. I used to have Lamborghinis, Ferraris parked up outside the house – just parked there with no one driving them! Now I’m much wiser and I only have one car that I drive. What’s the point of having three cars just parked up when you don’t need them?”

This new parsimony has been brought about by three things: his 2013 marriage to New Yorker Faryal Makhdoom (always “the wife” or “the missus”); becoming a father to Lamaisah in May 2014; his ever-expanding realm of charity work, which on Friday saw him fly to Greece to meet a convoy of trucks carrying supplies he had collected in Bolton and beyond for Syrian refugees.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Khan helping staff and volunteers from the Amir Khan Foundation load the convoy bound for Lesbos that departed Bolton earlier this week. Photograph: Manchester Evening News

The trip is just the latest example of Khan’s hands-on approach to humanitarianism via the Amir Khan Foundation, which he launched last year. Christmas saw him make the treacherous journey to Peshawar in north-west Pakistan, where the Taliban had attacked an army-run school, killing 141 people, including 132 children.

Such is Khan’s global fame, following his two world titles, that he can go places others can’t or won’t. The Peshawar trip was organised against the advice of the British foreign office. His parents didn’t think he should go either, but he was determined. He was all set when he got a call from the Pakistan army offering him a helicopter escort – Raheel Sharif, chief of the army, is one of Khan’s personal friends, along with Hillary Clinton, who managed to stop US border control questioning him at length on every visit, and most of the Bolton Wanderers squad, past and present.

Once on the ground, he prayed for the dead, placed flowers where the children had died and went to visit their families. What was it like? “It was sad, man.”

He went to a hospital. “I remember one kid was in his hospital bed, you could see he was obviously in pain. He’d been shot in the arm or something and he gets up and says, ‘Amir Khan! Amir Khan!’ shouting my name. I wanted to give the kids confidence and say, ‘Don’t worry, the security is going to be different, I want you guys to go to school and work hard and study hard.’”

Khan decided to intervene in the Syrian refugee crisis just a week ago, having seen the picture of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose body was washed up on a beach in Turkey last month. He put out a message on social media, where he has millions of followers, asking for donations: bedding, clothing, long-life food. Within three days, he had received more than enough to fill seven big vans, with so much left over that the surplus will go to homeless people in the north-west.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Khan after winning the WBC Silver welterweight title against Luis Collazo last year. Photograph: Gene Blevins/PA

The original plan was for Khan to travel in the convoy of seven vans, all the way to Lesbos. That was shelved when he realised he might be more of a hindrance than a help. “People are going to think: why isn’t he going himself? But I didn’t want to be in a position where I was slowing a team down, when people are asking for pictures and stuff.” So he caught an early flight out to Athens on Friday to join the group for the ferry journey to the island.

He says he would be happy to offer one or two of his UK properties to Syrian families. “I’ve got a good little portfolio of properties, I’ve got 20 or 30, all over the country and a little bit abroad, as well. Definitely I have places, and I would love to show them some support.”

Most of the Khans live together in a collection of houses behind gates in Lostock, Bolton’s leafiest suburb. His mum and dad, who were born in Pakistan, have the main bungalow. He has moved into what was once the pool house: the ultimate bachelor pad, complete with pool, gym, steam room, sauna and a cavernous games room. “When I moved there, first it was more of a boys’ pad. I wasn’t even married then. My mates used to come and we’d play PlayStation. Then as soon as I got married it was like a family place. You can see the wife has taken a lot of the boys’ stuff out, like the PlayStation,” he says happily.

Khan’s 24-year-old wife, the daughter of a prominent New York businessman, is stupendously glamorous. More than 83,000 people subscribe to her YouTube channel, where she holds makeup tutorials and posts videos such as “Get ready with me for Eid!”. It’s hard to imagine her shopping at Bolton market, or eating a kebab under striplights: interviewed by the Observer Food Monthly in 2006 for a feature, in which celebrities rave about their favourite restaurant, Khan choose a takeaway joint in Bolton called Moods. “I love takeaways, I have at least one or two every day. Burgers, chips, curries, doner kebabs, all sorts,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Khan’s wife Faryal Makhdoom has more than 83,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel

He looks sad when I ask if he’s taken the wife to Moods. “It’s closed down now. I can’t take her there, but I take her to local fish-and-chip shops. She’s very chilled, man.” Faryal recently gave YouTubers an introduction to her new home town: “I live in a small town in the UK called Bolton. It’s very similar to Staten Island, but Staten Island doesn’t have sheep and cows.”

He insists he eats “clean” nowadays, but has a weakness for piri piri chicken. He loves a Bolton mini-chain called Mash’s, as well as Nando’s: “It’s good and a cheap date, so the wife’s happy.”

When we meet, he shows no sign of ostentation, sporting £60 trainers and a T-shirt costing a tenner. Last year he auctioned off the £30,000 gold-threaded shorts he wore during his victory over Devon Alexander, with the proceeds going to rebuild the Peshawar school.

All the charity work has made him think harder about his ostentatious displays of wealth, he says: “I still like the watches, but it’s about balancing it as well, and I think I do. If I have to buy something, I do three times as much charity work.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Khan, aged 19, at his family home in Bolton with his parents, sisters and brother. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Like carbon offsetting? “Kinda yeah, you could say that. I know so many high-profile people who buy 20 times more things than me and they don’t do half the charity stuff I do.”

He still likes a bit of bling, but that is as much about his public image as anything else: “It’s what expected, but it’s part of my image. People see me as a cool, young fighter and you have to live up to the fashion and the bling and stuff.”

He continues. “God has blessed me by putting me in this position, so I never want to be silly with spending. If I spend silly, it’s going to look bad in a way because I do all this charity work as well ... It’s uncomfortable for me now. I’m not like I used to be. Them days I’ve put behind me. I know I could go and buy anything I wanted, but I would rather do charity work now.”

Another reason for the charity work is that he has a lot of time on his hands. There’s no season in boxing, no regular fixture list. He hasn’t fought since May, when he beat Chris Algieri in New York. He hates all the hanging around. “It annoys me, big time,” he says, citing as a particular frustration the refusal of the unbeaten American, Floyd Mayweather, to fight him.

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“I’ve been waiting for that fight for a very long time, and he’s just not taking that fight. I’ve tried everything to make him take that fight. First he said: ‘Fight somebody in the 147lb [welterweight] category who’s decent, in the top 10.’ I fought three guys and beat them all. I looked really good against them and thought, ‘I’m going to get the fight.’ Then he said: ‘I’m going to do a poll.’ That was between me and a guy called Marcos Maidana. Maidana is a guy I’ve already beaten. I won the poll and still he fights the other guy.”

Maybe you should try some reverse-psychology, I say, and suggest you don’t want to fight him anyway. Then maybe he will. “Nah,” says Khan. “If I say that, he’ll be happy, he’ll be like, ‘Thank God he’s off my case.’ You know, I think he’s called it a day now. I don’t think he wants to fight again. I think he will retire before he even fights me.”

Despite insisting his career has a few years yet to run, Khan admits he is thinking about his legacy. The foundation is the big thing, he says. Its first project was building an orphanage in the Gambia, and he hopes to soon do the same in Pakistan.

He loves Pakistan, but Bolton, where he was born and raised, will always be home. “The people are so lovely. They know you, they will say hi to you, smile at you, but leave you to it. I can wander around.” He doesn’t mind being asked for selfies. “Kids come up for autographs or pictures and stuff, but I’m not mobbed. If I go to Manchester it can get a bit crazy. In Bolton it’s not too bad. It’s perfect. They all know me. I think I’ve taken a picture with every Boltonian. It never gets tiresome. I’m happy with it. I know other fighters or famous people sometimes have security around them, but I never want to be in that position where I scare people from coming to approach me.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Khan on ITV4’s Cribs

After our interview and other meetings, he plans to go for a run around town. (At 11.5 stone, a stone above his fighting weight, he’s looking well.) “I always get people waving and beeping. It’s a bit of fun. Sometimes you have to run a bit faster. I enjoy living here. The people are great. I’ve lived here all my life, I’ve had a lot of love from Bolton.”

His attachment to the place is endearing. Despite his globetrotting – in the past six weeks he has been to Pakistan, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Malaysia, Turkey and Germany – he has chosen Bolton for his biggest business venture to date: the construction of an enormous banqueting hall that can accommodate even the biggest Asian weddings (4,000 attended his own: he reckons he recognised maybe 500 of the guests).

“It’s going to be something good for Bolton. People were saying to me: ‘The money you’re spending there’ – it’s going to be 6m quid – ‘why not take it into Manchester?’ And I said no, I want to keep it in Bolton, because in this moment in time I think Bolton needs it more, needs the jobs it will bring in. A place like that could give 100-plus jobs. It’s good for Bolton. Give a little bit, shine a bit of a light into Bolton, that’s what it needs. If I were to go over to Manchester as a Boltonian myself, well, that wouldn’t do. Plus, I wouldn’t want to have to travel all that way.”

Amir! It’s only half an hour, I say. “Still, half an hour there, half an hour back. That’s seven hours a week, man! Forget that. I’ll do something else in those seven hours.” These days, he’s a busy man.