Darts player

Born: April 25 1957;

Died: April 5 2018

ERIC Bristow, who has died aged 60, was the world’s greatest darts player during most of the 1980s, the period in which darts was transformed from a traditional pub game into a popular spectator sport.

It would be hard to overstate Bristow’s dominance of the game at the peak of his form. He was World Champion (and World Masters Champion) five times and four times winner of the World

Cup, and the runner-up as often as he won. In the course of his career he accumulated 22 World Darts Federation and British Darts Organisation titles.

His stature was summed up by the breathless commentary of Sid Waddell on one of his early victories. “When Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no more

worlds to conquer,” he declared. “Bristow is only 27.”

The coincidence of his rise to dominance of the game and the beginning of its popularity as a televised sport made him probably the first professional darts player to become well-known by the

general public. But he also contributed to the game by discovering and encouraging the early career of Phil “The Power” Taylor, the most successful player of all time.

In later life, Bristow was to capitalise on his fame with regular appearances on the quiz show Bullseye, as a contestant on I’m

a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and as a commentator for Sky Sports.

Eric John Bristow was born on April 25 1957 in Hackney, East London, and grew up in Stoke Newington. He passed his Eleven-plus and was educated at Hackney Grammar School, where he

got the cane on his third day. “That must have been some kind of record,” he later said.

Despite this promising start, Bristow’s early career was largely criminal. He joined a local gang called the Hoxton Boys, who specialised in burglary, shoplifting and stealing cars. “I’m not proud of it,” he later said, “but we didn’t hurt anyone and we didn’t trash people’s houses.” On one occasion, after breaking and entering a house, they made themselves a fry-up, but took the trouble to wash and dry the dishes afterwards.

Naturally, they spent a good deal of their time in pubs where, in between lager and fighting, Bristow discovered his preternatural talent at the oche. It was to prove his salvation.

He began playing competitively in 1976 and won his first major tournament (the WDF World Cup Pairs) the following year. He then lifted the British Open trophy in 1977.

In 1979 he won the Santa Monica Open in California, at an English-themed pub called the Crafty Cockney. In accordance with the then-emerging rituals of professional darts, which insisted on

nicknames and stage presence, he subsequently took the name (and a shirt which depicted a British Bobby and the Union Flag) as his own, and appeared on stage to the strains of Rabbit, by Chas and Dave.

Bristow won his first World Championship in 1980, defeating Bobby George, and successfully defended it the following year. He lost in the first round of the 1982 championship to Steve Brennan. After a shock defeat, to the then-unknown Keith Deller (allegedly the inspiration for Keith Talent in Martin Amis’s novel London Fields) in the 1983 final, he returned to form, and was unbeaten in the next three tournaments. From 1980 until 187, he was consistently ranked as the world’s number one.

In 1983, he defeated Jocky Wilson in the final of the World Cup Singles, in what was to be the first of four victories. The same year, he lifted the News of the World Darts Championship trophy and

took the British Open (for the third of four times) and the WDF Pairs (for the third of six wins).

He also discovered the young Phil Taylor, then working in a ceramics factory in Stoke-on-Trent for £53 a week. He lent him £10,000 on condition that he gave up his job and concentrated on the

game. Taylor rewarded his mentor by thrashing him 66-1 in the final of the 1990 World Championships, the first of his record-breaking 16 wins.

In the late 1980s, Bristow’s form deserted him, and he began to suffer acutely from “dartitis”, the arrows’ equivalent of the golfer’s “yips”. He had sporadic returns to form, even regaining his

number one ranking in the early 1990s, and was involved in setting up the Professional Darts Corporation, the breakaway body which now dominates the game.

His last great appearance was in a nail-biting semi-final against Taylor in 1997; in 2000, he retired from competition.

He was an effective and popular commentator from the early 1990s until 2016, when he was sacked from Sky Sports after he had suggested, in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal centred on

football coaching, that darts players would have been more likely to “sort out” the perpetrators than footballers. He apologised for the remarks, saying he had been “a bull in a china shop”.

Bristow, who lived in Staffordshire, was appointed MBE for services to sport in 1989. He was accused, in 2005, of having assaulted his wife Jane, with whom he had a son and a daughter, but

was subsequently cleared of the charges. In the latter part of his life his partner was Rebecca Gadd.

He appeared on I’m a Celebrity... in 2012, finishing fourth. He died at a Premier League Darts event in Liverpool after taking part in an exhibition match.

ANDREW MCKIE