Eric Bristow (10 page)

Those twelve months between the 1978 and 1979
World
Championships were all about focus and preparing myself for a second pop at the world title. Twelve months on the tournament had moved to the Jollees Cabaret Club in Stoke (which was handy for me because a couple of years afterwards I moved up that way), and I was as ready as I ever would be for that championship. In my mind I was determined I was not going to let 1978 happen again and I won my first-round game quite easily against Australian Terry O’Dea by two sets to nil.

In the next round I was up against Alan Evans. There was a bit of history between us – I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me. The problem stemmed from Alan being one of the early faces of television darts and having some tournament success in the early to mid-seventies. He reached the final of the 1972
News of the World
Championship, which was the first televised darts event to be shown in the UK, and he also won the 1975 British Open, which was the first televised event on the BBC. He added the World Masters title to this a few months later to make it a double winning year. He also faced Mohammed Ali in an exhibition match at the Gypsy Hill Stadium in Crystal Palace. Under the handicap rules Evans would only score points for hitting trebles. Ali was able to hit the bullseye to win the game and he proclaimed himself Darts Champion of the World. Make no mistake, in the early to mid-seventies Alan Evans was a big name. He even made it
on
to the
Johnny Carson Show
in America, but ended up walking off, live on air, after being asked to throw darts from between his legs. Alan wasn’t doing it and before he stormed off he told them so. He was right. Darts isn’t a Mickey Mouse game. It’s a professional sport that should be respected. I loved him for doing that. This was a big, big show and he did darts proud by walking off the way he did. However, by the time I came on the scene his star was fading. He wanted to be seen as the young pretender, he was only eight years older than me, and resented me effectively stealing his limelight. It was this resentment that sometimes manifested itself in open hostility. To put it bluntly he was a fiery little bastard who would stick the nut on you at the slightest provocation. You had to keep an eye on him. He was great friends with Leighton who was his big Welsh buddy, so you can imagine how he felt when Leighton chose me over him to be best man at his wedding.

We first crossed swords at a tournament in 1974 when an interviewer asked him who he wanted to play. He said, ‘I’ll have the London Lip.’ This was before I became known as the Crafty Cockney. So we played the match and I absolutely killed him. I killed anybody who thought they were better than me back then. If anybody wanted to play me for money I’d get on a train and I’d be up there. For instance, a player called Brian Langworth from Sheffield wanted to play me for £500. I was up there like a shot, and soon back down to London again
with
the money. Alan Evans was another one who thought he was a better player. These sort of guys would galvanise me into playing much, much better and on that particular day I was lethal. I only had about twenty throws and won two games to nil. I was hitting one-eighty, one-eighty, one-forty, one-forty, one-eighty, one-forty, ton. It was relentless. I mullered him. He lost both games and still had over two hundred on the board both times. That memory didn’t help him through the years to come.

So this World Championship confrontation was something of a grudge match. I was the new kid on the block and he was the young player I had usurped – and for the second year running the script went right out of the window. I fluffed it again. He beat me and I couldn’t believe it.

To make matters worse I had to take part in an interview with him afterwards. He was on one chair and I was sitting on another as far away as possible. Before we did it I said to the producer, ‘Do I
have
to do an interview with that dickhead?’ But there was no option. We were contractually obliged to do it. So there we sat, both being as polite as we could because we were on telly, but both trying to avoid eye-contact with each other. I could tell he was elated, and I was sick, absolutely sick to the pit of my stomach, but I managed to keep a lid on things – until they asked me if I thought Evans had a chance to go all the way and win it. I could stand
it
no more and pointing at him said, ‘He’s got as much chance of winning the Embassy as you would have of finding a pork chop in a synagogue.’

Leaning forward in his chair he said, ‘Well, I’ve got more chance than you, haven’t I?’

I’ll give him his due, it was a good answer, but when the cameras stopped rolling they had to send two bouncers in to keep us from tearing each other apart.

He did play lovely darts against me when he knocked me out. There was no getting away from the fact that he was well up for it. I didn’t play as well, even though I was ready, and it hurt more than my exit twelve months earlier. I’d been brooding on that defeat for a year and this was my chance to put it right, and then I went and lost to somebody I didn’t like. That was a double whammy. So then it was a case of waiting another twelve months.

Alan Evans didn’t have much luck after that win. Leighton Rees beat him again, this time in the semi-finals, and that, effectively, was it for him and his career. He made five more appearances in the World Championship, losing to me twice in 1986 and 1987, twice to Jocky Wilson in 1982 and 1988 and to Lowey in 1983. With the exception of his 1987 semi-final loss all the others were early round exits. He died in 1999. Ironically enough we buried the hatchet in the end and became quite good friends.

The 1979 final ended up being a repeat of the one
twelve
months earlier, only this time it was Lowey who came out on top, beating Leighton easily by five sets to nil. I was left to wonder if I was ever going to win that tournament. I only wanted to win it once, and I was winning everything else, so why couldn’t I win the World Championship?

The good thing was there was no real time to think because the next big tournament after the World Championship was only a fortnight away and in between there were exhibitions and other matches to fit in. My diary was full. There was no time to brood. I knew my bottle didn’t go at these big events, I had prepared, I wasn’t drunk or anything like that. I put my failure at those first two World Championships down to one thing: it simply wasn’t meant to be. I had to look forward.

I also had to look over my shoulder because, despite being favourite for the first two championships, and barring any disasters I would be top seed again for the 1980 World Championship, there were other players coming through the ranks. The one I was wary of more than any other was John Thomas Wilson, better known as Jocky Wilson. The former coal delivery man and miner made his debut at the 1979 World Championship. A spell on the dole had proved the catalyst for his darts career: it was while claiming benefit that he entered a Butlins darts competition in 1979, which he went on to win, getting £500 prize money. His success at this tournament convinced him to turn professional and go for
the
big money tournaments on TV. He qualified easily for the 1979 World Championship, but was knocked out by Lowey in the quarter-final. But all the time he was getting better and better. There were only two players in darts at that time who should have been winning all the tournaments and they were Lowey and me, but we both knew that pretty soon we’d be joined by Jocky and there’d be three of us at the top, fighting it out for every title. We had some monumental battles through the next decade, matches that would go down in the history of darts as all-time classics.

There was another darts player about to make a dramatic impact on my life, a woman player called Maureen Flowers. Most female darts players around this era looked like butch lesbians: they were big girls who you wouldn’t want to fight, never mind have sex with, and they all had tattoos. Maureen was different. She was slim, attractive, and had lovely long blonde hair. Every red-blooded male dart player fancied her. I was no exception. I used to see her at all these tournaments we were playing in and I could feel the testosterone inside me start to surge. So I made a point of always chatting to her and we got on well. As soon as she split up from her husband all the darts players were trying to get into her. I waited for the best moment to ask her out and she said yes. To be honest I didn’t think I’d get a look in, but there you go, life is full of surprises.

She was different from all the other women I’d dated
in
that she could play darts and she could play well. She was the world number one women’s darts player and I was the best in the men’s division so I suppose it was bound to happen in the end. An added bonus was that she didn’t drink alcohol; she drank tea instead. After my experience on the gin I welcomed a teetotaller with open arms. She made me laugh when I went to watch her in exhibitions and she drank tea on stage. It looked odd. She played one exhibition game with a Manchester player called Billy Leonard. He was a big name in the 1960s and early 1970s and ran a trophy business in Heywood. When I was dating Maureen I’d regularly go to watch her play exhibitions and she vice versa; effectively this was the only way we could court. When she played with Billy, instead of pints of lager and packets of fags on stage they took up a pot of tea for them. This tickled me. Billy wasn’t bothered in the slightest. He’d drink whatever they brought up there be it beer, wine, water, whisky or tea.

I really didn’t want a relationship with my hectic lifestyle and being constantly on the road, but with Maureen it was different. She had the same sort of existence as I did, so that made us compatible in a way. The only people who didn’t really approve of me dating Maureen were my parents. They didn’t like the fact that she was an older woman by six years and she had three children. However, she was a good influence on me at that time because, instead of going out chasing skirt
when
I was away at tournaments, I’d go back to the hotel with Maureen and more often than not have a pot of tea and some sandwiches. Maureen was also good for my darts, there’s no doubt about that, because I practised with her every day and it allowed me to practise with someone good. We’d go to the pub and have proper games that were close. I’d have a couple of beers and she would have a pot of tea. Life was changing. Whenever we were away there was no late stuff any more. We’d go for a meal, I’d have a glass of wine or two or some beers, and then it was early to bed. I was turning into John Lowe!

When we started dating, however, something big was also happening in darts. The BDO, in a bid to turn itself into a world organisation, was bringing other tournaments in from all over the world to be included in the world ranking system – tournaments in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Canada and Japan, and there were more springing up all the time. This meant one thing: we were about to see the world. I couldn’t wait.

SIX

Jet-setters

AS THE SEVENTIES
moved into the eighties darts players led the sort of life today’s overpaid footballers can only dream of. When you’re a footballer earning £60,000 plus a week your life is knackered. David Beckham is a prime example. He has to have security guards follow his kids everywhere to make sure they don’t get kidnapped. That’s not the way to be. I’ve had the ideal life from start to finish. I’ve always had a pocketful of money, and I’ve been able to go where I want, drink where I want, eat where I want and stay where I want. It’s a lifestyle that has suited me down to the ground and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Nowadays, if you’re a sportsman and you earn too much money, you become a target. Take Malaysia for example – there are nutters over there who specifically target the children of rich sportsmen and hold them to ransom. The players are being punished for doing well and that is wrong. Footballers over here are also tied to the soccer season.
They
can only see the world during a ten-week block from June to August.

Back in 1979 Maureen and I were going all over the place, and it was brilliant. This was in spite of the fact that almost every time I did go abroad things would happen. Our plane would nearly crash, or I’d almost get killed, or I’d save someone from a near-death experience. I got into some bizarre situations abroad. My favourite trips by far were the American beanos. They were crazy, every single one of them.

There was one 1980 tournament I went on at a huge Las Vegas hotel. When I arrived there were 2,500 darts players in this big conference room called the Space Room. They all seemed to arrive at two in the afternoon for some strange reason. The tournament didn’t start until four hours later, but it was a brilliant sight to see: this hotel, this massive place, had been taken over by darts players, all in their brightly coloured shirts and all doing what every darts player does best and that’s drink. Because it was a bit of a party atmosphere the beer really was flowing, so much so that at half-past ten that night the hotel ran out of beer. We’d drunk the place dry, and this wasn’t your ordinary hotel, this hotel was enormous, it was some achievement.

It was also like somebody switching off the lights at a party and telling everybody to go home. Some darts players can’t function without a beer inside them and pretty soon the mood was starting to turn sour, so the
hotel
staff called the police. They didn’t know what to do; it had never been known in Vegas for a hotel to run dry. When the cops came they couldn’t believe it; they were walking past us and saying to each other, ‘These goddam motherfuckers sure like to drink!’ So everybody and I mean
everybody
in that place hit the phones – the staff, the police, the hotel security guards, the tournament organisers. They were all ordering beer from every place you could imagine, local shops, other hotels, you name it, if it had beer that beer came to our hotel. We heard one cop screaming down the phone, ‘Listen buddy, if you don’t get that beer down here in one hour we’re gonna have a scene on our hands, and I’ll hold you responsible.’