Eric Bristow (9 page)

I really was lost for the next six to eight months. As a result my darts suffered and I was fast becoming the sort of person I associated with failure, namely these proper drinkers who can have a tankful and not look any different, the ones who have ten doubles and are normal, twenty normal, thirty normal, who you look in the eye and they look back and you think, this stuff isn’t working on you, pal. That was us. It wasn’t her fault. It was my problem. Nobody forced it down my throat. The worst thing was that my darts was dying a slow and undignified death and I couldn’t give a toss.

After eight months of drowning in drink I heard news that darts was going to have an official World Championship. This was like a clarion call. It really did jolt me back into life like some sort of awakening. Suddenly I was back to my old self and thinking: Right, I want to be the first World Champion. I decided the only way to get myself out of this mess was to get rid of my girlfriend and concentrate on the darts again. My
focus
came right back because I wanted to be the first ever official World Champion of darts.

I moved out and went back to Mum and Dad’s house; it was the only way of getting rid of temptation. The relationship had gone nowhere and was going nowhere. I hate to think what would have happened to me if I had stayed with her. It got to a stage near the end where I would look at myself in the bathroom mirror the morning after a heavy drinking session and see a blotchy face with red bloodshot eyes staring back at me. I started thinking this was silly for a bit of totty and I decided the next girl I dated had to be a non-drinker. It’d be a lot cheaper that way and it’d keep me on the straight and narrow. When I went home Mum and Dad welcomed me with open arms. They knew the darts was suffering. They also knew the fun had gone out of it for me because I was with a girl who wanted to do other things. I had practically given up practising while I was with her, and if I did go out and practise I invariably started downing large gins by the bucketful, as well as four or five pints of lager. Back at home I was desperate to get my game back on track.

The first World Professional Darts Championship was held in 1978 at the Heart of the Midlands nightclub in Nottingham. It was the BDO’s most important tournament in the darts calendar and its importance was further highlighted when only the elite players were invited to
compete
in it, namely the thirty-two best players in the world. It was well organised, with a big-name sponsor in Embassy cigarettes, and you could sense that darts was about to take a step into bigger and greater things.

Embassy were great sponsors. Every player got two hundred fags for competing, and every time we went on stage there were two packets of fags waiting for us on the table, one for each player. It was great when I played Lowey because he didn’t smoke so I could pick his up as well. It got better if you won the tournament. Embassy would reward the winner with six hundred fags a month for a year. The organiser Peter Dyke loved me because every time I went on telly I always called it the Embassy rather than the World Championship. When I didn’t win the title in 1982 and 1983 I said to him, ‘I suppose my fags go out of the window now, do they?’ But he kept on sending me them, every year, for the next seventeen years, which was a nice touch.

In the run-up to the inaugural Embassy World Championship I honestly believed I couldn’t lose. I looked at every invited player and knew I could beat them. It was there for the taking. The World Masters was tough because it was a best of five format so it was short and you had to be on top of your game 100 per cent of the time. The World Championship was going to be much longer. It was the best of eleven sets, five legs of 501 to a set, which suited the better players because you could afford to have an off-set or a couple
of
off-legs and you’d still be in there with a shout. The weaker players simply got worn down in longer games. They didn’t have the stamina.

I had another reason to feel confident. A couple of days before the tournament was due to begin my dad drove me up to Nottingham and I spent a few days practising with Welshman Leighton Rees, the number one player in Wales and number three seed in the tournament. We had some close matches and were both at the top of our game. Leighton was a good friend of mine. He was born in the village of Ynsybwl and went to school in nearby Pontypridd where a teacher declared on his report card that he would be ‘good only for reading the sports pages of the
South Wales Echo
’. After leaving school he found work in the store room of a motor spares company, a job he did for twenty years until becoming a professional darts player in 1976. That was when we met and instantly hit it off. At the time Leighton was due to play in a tournament in Cleveden, Ohio, with four other Welshmen, but three or four days before they were to fly out I got a call from him to say one of the players, Alan Evans, was withdrawing due to gout and would I be his replacement. I never turn down an opportunity to see the world, so I ended up sharing a room with Leighton and we hit it off instantly. We shared rooms after that for years. And when we played together in later years on the
Queen Mary
, which was berthed at Long Beach, California, we even shared
the
same bed. There was no funny business! They had very few twin rooms on the
Queen Mary
, because cruises were more of a couples thing, but the ones they had generally got booked. So Leighton and I had to share this massive double bed. I was saying to him, ‘You behave yourself Leighton. Don’t turn over in the middle of the night or I’ll stick one on you.’

He pulled a girl called Debbie while we were on the ship. She was lovely, a real stunner, but she had a mate with her as well. We were on this boat for a week and they had a room, we had a room. Leighton and Debbie wanted to sleep together, so obviously I had to go with this other girl, and not only that – I had to sleep in the same room as her for a week. Believe me, I had to do it or I would have messed up all Leighton’s lovemaking plans.

I concluded that I could put up with this for a week but no longer. Leighton, on the other hand, was away with the fairies. He was smitten and totally in love with his girl. I, however, was counting down the days with mine until it was all over: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and when Sunday came I said thank Christ for that, it was the last day with her. We had a farewell dinner with them on the Sunday night before Leighton and I were due to fly to ’Frisco the next day. As we were sat there I was rubbing my hands thinking: Great, I have a week in ’Frisco on my own, brilliant. But just as the meal was finishing Debbie hit me with the bombshell. She said,
‘Anyway
guys, we have some good news for you. We are both coming to ’Frisco.’

My jaw dropped. I was gutted. And after ’Frisco they came to the next one with us. I had to be with this girl for three weeks. But I performed my duty. It was all worth it in the long run because in 1980 Leighton ended up marrying Debbie and I was best man at his wedding. But when they said they were coming with us to ’Frisco my head was screaming no, no, no. I felt like the bloke in that Edvard Munch painting ‘The Scream’. That was how bad the feeling was. I spent the next fortnight getting pissed up, falling into my room and waking up the next morning and thinking: Not again!

On a more positive note she was a lot easier to share a room with than Leighton because he had some mad ways. I could never clean my teeth in the basin because as soon as we got to any hotel he’d fill it up with ice and put bottles of lager in to keep them cold. It was a joke! I used to run the bathtap and clean my teeth over the tub. He was another one who liked his drink. When we stayed at Santa Monica we had a hotel right on the beach, just a short walk from the Crafty Cockney Pub where we drank and practised our darts. In the afternoon I used to leave him in the pub and go home for some kip, but he was hardcore. He didn’t have kips, but instead just drank and drank and drank. I was eighteen, I could drink, but I couldn’t get silly with it because my
body
wasn’t used to it like it was with the older lot. Leighton and the boys would drink into the evening and then hit the shots. They played a game with a white spirit and a black spirit. You basically had to pour them both down your throat in one without touching the glass with your mouth. That was Leighton’s game of choice. I wouldn’t have got back to the hotel if I’d have played that – and the hotel was only a five-minute walk away. I can’t mix my drinks. I left that to the proper drinkers like Leighton.

In the days before the first World Championship, however, we were both very careful what we drank because we wanted to be in tip-top shape for the start of the tournament. I was also watching what I ate. I had a special diet that consisted mainly of pasta because it soaked up the alcohol. On the day of the tournament I felt good, I was throwing well and everything felt in place. Leighton had been the perfect practice partner because we were still very competitive when practising together and we brought out the best in each other.

I was playing an American called Conrad Daniels in the first round. He was a virtual unknown, a rank outsider, and on paper didn’t have a chance against a player of my calibre, but from the minute he stepped up to the oche I knew I was in big trouble. He was slow, really slow, and I suddenly realised I hadn’t played anyone as slow as this guy before. Mentally he got to me. I didn’t know if it was Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday
by
the time I came off the stage. One minute I was throwing quick darts, trying to speed him up, the next I was slowing them down trying to play him at his own game. What I wasn’t doing was concentrating on my own game. I was thinking the wrong things and all that was going through my mind was why doesn’t this guy hurry up? Consequently I lost the match by six sets to three.

It was quite simple why I lost: I was thinking negative thoughts instead of positive. Mentally I should have realised that I could murder this guy. That loss devastated me because I desperately wanted to be the first World Champion. Conrad Daniels couldn’t believe it. He appeared in the next two World Championships and got beaten first round, then after that he wasn’t good enough even to qualify. His only win came against me, the favourite, in 1978. I’d lost to an idiot, and it wouldn’t be the last time that happened!

The tournament went on for another eight days after that. Was I miserable? Not in the least. For the remainder of the tournament I stayed in Nottingham, where in those days the gender ratio in the city was four women to every bloke. It was brilliant. I ended up pulling this lingerie model for the week and she was stunning. While I was with her I pulled a couple more in between. One night I sent this model down to the bar, telling her I had to do an interview with a local newspaper reporter. When she went down I had another girl come up to
the
room. I did her then went down to the bar where the model was being looked after by my dad.

‘How did the interview go?’ she asked.

‘It went all right. It was no problem,’ I replied, smiling.

I stayed the whole week in that hotel because I had paid for it upfront, I was that confident of reaching the final and winning it. When I wasn’t pulling women I was watching the darts. My pal Leighton easily disposed of Australian Barry Atkinson six sets to nil in the first round to set up a clash with his close friend and Welsh team-mate Alan Evans in the second round. This was when the championship came to life. It was a classic game with both players averaging over ninety, something which was almost unheard of in those days. Evans took an early lead with a couple of one-eighties before Leighton hit the championship’s first ten-dart finish, which was also the first one ever televised, and ran out the eventual winner by six sets to three. It was a great advert for darts because it was such a good match and darts’ reputation as a TV sport was cemented after this.

Leighton’s semi-final was a classic as well. He struggled and battled, but eventually pipped his opponent Nicky Virachkul to an eight sets to seven win which set up a final with Lowey. In my mind Lowey was always going to nick it, but I was gunning for Leighton because he was my pal. He didn’t disappoint, averaging over ninety again with Lowey not far behind, to win by eleven sets to seven. It was a proud moment for Leighton. For
me
it was a case of going back to Stoke Newington with my dad to lick my wounds.

Back home I found all the slowest players in the league and went round to their pubs and played them all. I was determined I was never going to get caught out by a slow player again. Some of them I played for hours. I had to get the demon that was Conrad Daniels out of my mind – but looking back it was good to see me go out. I had just won the World Masters so for me to go out first round was a shock and made headline news. In a way it put darts on the map and that rooted the tournament in people’s minds. If the favourite wins all the time the sport can become boring and predictable. This first ever World Championship proved that darts was anything but. I had twelve months to dwell on my failure, but I did everything in my power to put it right.

Another girl came on the scene called Lynne. I moved in with her and she drove me to all the tournaments I played in – but it didn’t last. I didn’t want someone with me all the time twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It was doing my head in. This was the problem I faced. It was a real catch-22 situation: any girl I liked had to be my driver or they would never see me because of all the darts I played and the relationship would therefore be doomed – but when they did drive me around that didn’t work either because to be at the top of my game I found I had to be on my own. Girlfriends just
didn’t
help my darts. I needed privacy and sometimes I’d crave solitude to get my head right.

This was most in evidence when I played in a three-day tournament up in Newcastle and stayed at the house of a lovely couple. The trouble was when it got to night-time I was knackered and wanted to go to bed but they wanted a few drinks with me, and because it was their house and their hospitality I felt obliged to stay up with them. I didn’t like that. I hadn’t liked that aspect of America when I went there for the first time. I’d play in a tournament that ended at two in the morning, get back to Malcolm and Mary-Ann’s house and they would want to stay up until about four and have a drink with me. I’d be thinking: Why do I have to do this? I wanted to go to bed, get some kip and wake up fresh the next morning to have a couple of hours by the pool. That put me off staying at people’s houses. I don’t do it now. It’s very nice to have someone invite you into their home to stay, but I don’t like to feel obligated to them. It was little things like this – the girlfriends, the staying at other people’s houses and the slow players – that I was determined to get right before the 1979 championship came around. And I did get them right. Years later, another slow player came on the scene called Dennis Priestley and I had no problem playing against him. The only thing was that there was a big difference between him and Daniels in that Dennis was good.