The Crafty Cockney, five-time world champion, and the showman who dragged darts into prime time
Darts In memoriam (2018)Eric Bristow was darts. Before the walk-on music, before the television gold rush, before Phil Taylor, there was the Crafty Cockney in a sequined shirt, pint in hand, pointing a finger at the board and daring it not to obey him.
Born in Hackney in 1957, Bristow won his first world championship in 1980 at the age of 22. Four more followed in 1981, 1984, 1985 and 1986, a period of dominance no darts player had managed before and few have matched since. He was the face of the BDO era, a swaggering east Londoner who turned a pub game into a primetime spectacle and whose rivalry with Jocky Wilson and Bobby George filled living rooms every January.
His career was not without shadow. Dartitis, the mental block that makes a player unable to release the dart, struck in the late 1980s and robbed him of his peak years. His answer was to mentor a young Stoke car mechanic named Phil Taylor, bankrolling his first tournaments. Taylor went on to win 16 world titles, and Bristow always said he was the proudest sponsor the sport had ever seen.
Bristow could be bluntly, brilliantly funny on stage, with a line in self-deprecation that softened even the hardest crowd. He was a regular at sporting dinners for decades, telling stories that only someone who had been at the centre of the darts boom could tell.
Eric Bristow died suddenly in April 2018 at the age of 60, collapsing at a Premier League Darts event in Liverpool. He is remembered at Steam Wine Bar as one of the most entertaining speakers to take the microphone in the City.
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