Eric Bristow (8 page)

Funnily enough Cliff knew when to stop. You never
saw
him drunk and you never saw him make a fool of himself. He was a great ambassador for darts. As was another of my England team mates John Lowe. He was a lot quieter than Cliff, but no less deadly when it came to drinking and darts. His record is fantastic. He won the World Championship in 1979, 1987 and 1993 – three different decades; he won the World Masters twice; two British Open titles and two British Matchplay championships; two World Cup Singles and three European Cup singles titles. He also played for England over a hundred times and captained them for seven years, a period when England were unbeaten.

It could have been a whole lot better for him without me on the scene. His record against me in majors was three wins and six defeats. If I wasn’t around, he would have been the undisputed king of darts throughout the seventies and eighties, and that is one of the reasons why we didn’t get on well initially. He saw me as this gobby young upstart out to steal his glory. The irony was that although we didn’t really get on we used to play fantastic darts together in the England side, so much so that the England manager Ollie Croft paired us for the World Cups which were played every two years and which we won four times.

John and I were chalk and cheese. He was the quiet gentleman, a money man who looked after his dough, and I was a mad man who just liked to spend it. However, we were both after the same thing: we were both chasing
glory
. He was the only one who could stand in my way, and vice versa, and it was this that caused some resentment between us – but the good thing was it was a resentment born of rivalry. It kept us both at the top of our game. You don’t want the top two in the world to be all pally, it wouldn’t have looked right to the public. Even so, John was savvy enough to ask if I wanted to split our winnings during these years, and I agreed, because even though we didn’t like each other we knew that if one of us went out in a big tournament, the other one would probably win it.

So we split for seven years and at the end of it John worked it out that there was about £800 difference between us, which was nothing. Then, after we stopped splitting in 1984, he played Keith Deller in the World Matchplay tournament where he managed a nine-dart finish. This was the first time it had ever been done on telly. Not only was I gutted that John was the first to do this, because I wanted to be the one, but I was doubly gutted when he won
£
102,000. Even at the World Championships we had been splitting the money, and now as soon as we stopped sharing the pot he went and did that. That wasn’t a good moment for me.

He was a steady player; he’d go ton, ton, one-forty, ton. He had one gear and if you weren’t on the top of your game he would just wear you down and put you to bed. This was how he won most games, and this is how he still wins them today. Although you could never
really
describe him as a one-eighty man, he never seemed to have an off day like the rest of us occasionally did.

Like Cliff he was good for the game. You could take the pair of them anywhere in the world and they would have a drink, be sociable, be nice and always looked presentable. They are professionals in every way. I was completely different. I’d see John at all these different venues, play with him, chat to him, but once it came to night-time and we were ready to hit the town he wasn’t in my school. He had his own little group. Mine was the mad school, the disco school. Wherever we were, a group of us would hire limos or fancy cars to take us to the best disco in town where we’d have a bit of fun and check out the women. John and Cliff would go out for a meal and sink a few bottles of wine before going back to the hotel. If we were abroad and it was our last night my school wouldn’t bother going to bed. We’d just hit a disco, get back to the hotel at about six in the morning, pack our bags and go home. Cliff and John would be all suited and booted and my lot would look in a right state.

The other main England player was Tony Brown. He really did suffer from being around at a time when there were too many good darts players on the scene, losing four times in the semi-final of the World Championship, twice to me and twice to Lowey. If it wasn’t for me and John he might have had a couple of titles under his belt. He did achieve some success, however. He won the British Open in 1979 and Yorkshire Television’s Indoor
League
in 1979. Tony was in my King’s Cross Super League team – he would come up from Dover every Monday night to play, which was a fair trek – but he just couldn’t win the big tournaments on a regular basis. Eventually, in the early 1990s, he gave up darts and lives down Torquay way today. He made me laugh, though, back then because in every tournament we played he’d go on stage carrying a large bag. Out of this he’d pull a gin bottle, then a glass which he’d wipe with a cloth, then a box of chopped lemons, and finally half a dozen tonics. He’d then pour himself a G&T. It saved him a fortune in bar bills. I got on quite well with Tony because we played in the same Super League team for years. His only bad habit was that when he threw his last dart he’d move a little. I don’t think this did him any favours in the long run.

I made my debut for England at the Tottenham Royal – the last time I’d been there people were being thrown from the balcony. When I got there on the day I discovered that the England team had a uniform. We all had to wear these white trousers, drainpipe trousers. I had these big boots on, with platform soles, and when I put the trousers on I looked like Coco the Clown.

I said to the team manager Ollie Croft, ‘I’m not wearing these, pal.’

His reply was simple and to the point: ‘You either wear these trousers or you don’t play.’

That was the end of the conversation. There was no compromise, nothing. If I didn’t wear them I was out. That was how Ollie ran the England team. If you didn’t fit in with his way of thinking you were a goner. No matter how good your averages were, you simply wouldn’t get picked. He was almost from the Brian Clough school of management in that there was only one way and that was his way. There was one guy who was good enough to play for England who never got picked because he insisted on always wearing a red sock and a yellow sock. That was the only reason why the England management team didn’t select him, but would he wear normal socks? Would he hell! So he didn’t play for England. Everybody is different, and I accept that, but if you are going on TV and representing your sport you don’t go on with odd socks, looking like a wally. He was an idiot.

Darts was Ollie’s game, and that was it. It was a case of my bat, my ball, nobody else’s, and if you didn’t do as he said you didn’t play. That didn’t mean we listened to everything he said. When we went to places like Australia and New Zealand he’d say to the players, ‘I want you all in bed by twelve. No drinking after twelve.’

This used to wind us up and I’d say to him, ‘Piss off, Ollie, don’t talk to me like a bleeding headmaster.’

Then we’d hit the bar and Lowey and Tony Brown would be rolling with laughter.

Although Ollie was our team manager we couldn’t be
managed
because we were renegades. We’d have arguments with him. We were grown men who would be saying things to him like, ‘We don’t want to go to bed. It’s too early for bed.’ And he’d be adamant: ‘I want you in bed by twelve. No later than twelve.’ So off we’d trot to the pub until three in the morning, and four hours later we’d all be up having breakfast as nice as you like with not the merest hint of a hangover. We were professionals in darts and in drink.

On my debut I wore the clown outfit and we won. This was a great moment for me. I had longed for this – the chance to represent my country – and most of the games were in front of the TV cameras which I loved even more. I never got frightened or nervous when the telly lads turned up, and I could never understand players who did. I’d see them in the back room and in the hall before they were due to go on: first of all they’d go very quiet and then they’d go white. The only time I was ever nervous was in my youth, and it was never about darts or being on TV. It was when I used to wonder how I was going to get home in one piece, or when I had a rival gang after me. That was the hard part; that was where life was really tough. Playing for England was easy. This was what I had strived for and I wanted to be up there soaking up the adulation. Even when we played away in places like Scotland and the whole crowd was booing me and jeering and shouting obscenities at me I couldn’t care less. In fact I actually
liked
it. We were England, they hated us, and only if we’d fallen off a chair and broken our necks would they have given us a big cheer. In their eyes the England shirt we wore meant we were worse than the devil. I used to love hitting 180s in Scotland. I’d turn round to them and they’d all be booing and I’d raise my hand, cup it to my ear and go ‘What?’

The Scots were easily the most vocal, followed by the Welsh. It was and still is a win at all costs mentality with the Scots and they tried everything to put me off my game. One supporter shook my hand. When I pulled my hand away it was bleeding, and so was his. He’d put broken glass in his palm. Luckily I could still play darts. He wasn’t so lucky; some of the bouncers took him outside and kicked the living daylights out of him. On another occasion a supporter patted me on the back of my head, which I thought was a little odd. Then I discovered he’d put itching powder down my collar so the game was postponed while I took my shirt off and washed it.

The supporters were out to get me because they knew I was good – everybody knew I was good – but to prove to myself just how good I was I had to win a big one. I set my sights on the Winmau World Masters. If I could win that I could say with justification that I was the best player in the world. This really was the tournament of tournaments. Not only did you have the best sixteen players in the world competing, you also had the best
county
players who had come through a knockout stage to qualify plus invited players from every nation across the globe. It was global darts on a massive scale, a real melting pot of talent.

In 1976 I had narrowly missed out on claiming a top-sixteen spot so had to go through the county qualifying rounds. I got beaten in the London play-off to a player I should have walloped. I played well, but he played at a level he has probably never bettered. As penance I went down to the West Centre Hotel in Fulham where the event was being staged and helped set the dart boards up. When I saw Ollie Croft I said to him, ‘I’ll help you set the gear up, but I’ll never do this again because next year I’ll be playing and I’m going to win it.’

He just smiled, but he didn’t know how much I was hurting. Not qualifying killed me because I knew, despite not being ranked in the top sixteen, that I could beat 95 per cent of the players there. It was the biggest tournament in the world, it was effectively the world title, and I’d have to wait another twelve months before I could have a shot at it. I watched as John Lowe beat Welshman Phil Obbard in the final.

I may not have beaten John, but I knew I could have killed the Welshman, so I threw myself into my darts for the next twelve months and ensured I won enough tournaments to get me into the top sixteen and automatic qualification for the next World Masters which, because of its increasing popularity, had been moved
to
the Wembley Conference Centre. This was a buzz. I remember walking into the centre for the first time and gazing in awe at this huge room in which thirty-two dart boards had been put up with the one on the main stage reserved for the big matches and the later rounds. You could hear the whirr of the television cameras and every nationality of player was there. It was great to see players from Denmark, America, Finland, Australia and the rest, all ready for the tournament of tournaments.

Although Lowey was favourite to win it, the clever money was on me because I had been winning Opens everywhere; in Lincolnshire, Staffordshire, you name it, I won it. I won more than I lost and unofficially I knew, and the rest of the darting world knew, that I was the number one player in the world, but winning the World Masters was tough.

It was the best of five legs of 501 all the way through, but when Lowey got knocked out this opened it up for me and I got through to the final where I was up against a Yorkshireman called Paul Reynolds.

He won the first leg, which left me with a bit of a mountain to climb. In the second leg, I still wasn’t at the top of my game and needed 152 to claw it back to 1–1. It was a desperate situation because he had three darts at a double, and I knew that was all he needed to what would have been an unassailable two–nil lead. But I threw sixty, sixty and double sixteen to snatch it. He was devastated; he couldn’t believe it. His head went
down
and he never recovered from that. I won the last two legs to take the match and the title.

It was an unbelievable feeling. I had wanted to win that title so badly that I broke down in tears with relief when they gave me the trophy. I finally had a world title in the bag at a time when I was winning all the Opens but people were saying I wasn’t good enough to win a biggie. Now I’d won and there were no players in front of me. I had sent a signal to all the players that I was the best in the world. When I lifted that trophy I felt as if I was standing at the top of the mountain. I had achieved everything I had ever wanted to achieve in life. What could possibly go wrong?

FIVE

The World Championship

THE WORLD MASTERS
was the turning point for me because I had always wanted to be World Champion, and at the age of twenty I’d effectively done it. I was the top player who everyone wanted to beat. To achieve everything you set out to achieve by the age of twenty is a bit of a head mash. I didn’t know where to go from there or what to aim for next. For the first and possibly only time in my life I was lost.

I moved into a mate’s house shortly after the World Masters and lived there with a girl who was in the process of getting divorced and, to put it diplomatically, liked a drink or two. More specifically she liked gin, and the house soon became awash with green bottles because after a few weeks of living with her I developed a taste for it as well. I had been taken in by her beauty and now I was hitting the bottle with her in a big way. We are talking a bottle or bottle and a half a day between us. I was earning the dosh in little tournaments all over
the
capital and every night I would bring home two or three bottles. I’d earn about fifty pounds a week and gin only cost about two pounds a bottle so we were never short of the stuff. It was all drink, drink, drink. The darts, for the only time in my life, took second place, because after winning the World Masters I didn’t think there was anything else in the game that I could do.