HE was the Crafty Cockney saved from a life of crime by the game of darts.
Five-time world champion Eric Bristow — who died at a Premier League darts event in Liverpool on Thursday, aged 60 — was a teenage thug who roamed East London streets with a claw hammer hidden in his trousers ready to attack his rivals.
But his natural talent at the oche turned him into a household name — bringing with it booze, women and bumper paydays.
He said: “Darts was my salvation. I’d probably have ended up in prison or drifted into big-time crime.”
Eric was brought up on the middle floor of a three-storey Victorian terrace in the East End by dad George, a plasterer, and mum Pamela, a City telephonist.
His widowed nan lived downstairs, with the top floor home to his Auntie Ethel.
He was a maths whizz at school and got into Hackney Downs Grammar.
But he had no interest in lessons, once sparking a bomb hoax to avoid a German exam.
Joyriding in stolen cars, getting into fights or breaking into houses with his Oxton Boys gang was how Eric got his kicks, “getting mixed up in mischief” on the same turf as Kray Twins’ rivals the Richardsons.
He recalled: “We were petty thieves but mere foot soldiers compared to the Richardsons.
“If you crossed them you left the country or you’d end up dead.
“That claw hammer became my best friend. It got me out of some sticky situations.”
While the notorious London gangs would rule with fear, the Oxton Boys took a different approach.
Eric said: “One thing our gang prided itself on was cleanliness.
“We used to break into people’s houses and we never damaged a thing.
“We were good thieves and we had respect for the houses we were robbing.”
On one raid they made a fry-up in the house they were burgling — then washed up.
Despite enjoying being an Oxton Boy, Eric was also quietly perfecting his darts skills.
Dad George, who played for the local Arundel Arms team, had bought his son a dartboard for his 11th birthday.
He would practise regularly, honing his unique crooked pinkie grip, which his dad told him made him “look like a posh boy holding a china teacup”.
By age 14 he was beating all-comers in the pub for sixpence a game.
When George won a horse-racing accumulator, he bought Eric his first set of tungsten darts.
He began winning amateur tournaments across the country.
In North Wales, a gang of travellers encouraged him to play for £500, which he won, only to learn they had pocketed £2,500 in a side bet.
After dropping out of school, Eric took a £12-a-week job in a suit factory, where every Friday he would wear baggy clothes so he could hide a new suit underneath.
Eric said: “I must have been the only 15-year-old in the country with 35 suits in his wardrobe.”
His big break in darts came in 1975, age 17, when he won a professional knockout tournament where the prize was the chance to play over three weeks in California.
Professional darts body, the British Darts Organisation, was set up two years earlier and Eric was making his mark on the game just as TV and sponsors were looking to turn it into a global sensation.
In tribute to his hero Muhammad Ali — aka the Louisville Lip — Eric called himself the London Lip.
But a bar called The Crafty Cockney in the US had red shirts for sale with “Crafty Cockney” across the back.
Eric bought five and Eric “the Crafty Cockney” Bristow soon attracted millions of TV viewers — and made the loudmouth Londoner an unlikely sex symbol.
That trip to the US changed his life in more ways than one.
He recalled: “By far the biggest eye-opener for me was the women.
“One group of about 50 women, most of whom were married to rich Americans, hopped from tournament to tournament having sex with as many British darts players as they could get their hands on.
'WITHOUT HIM I'D BE NOTHING'
By Phil 'The Power' Taylor
ERIC was like a brother to me. A brother from another mother. I loved him.
I’m obviously gutted more than words can describe.
I was in bed on Thursday night and I turned on the TV to hear the fans singing Walking In A Bristow Wonderland.
I thought Eric had turned up on stage. Then I was given the news.
Quite simply, I owe him everything.
I wouldn’t have achieved what I did without him being a mentor and sponsoring me in the early days.
I couldn’t afford to go to Rhyl, let alone Canada or Las Vegas to play darts.
His biggest influence on me was the winning mentality.
He was very strict. He didn’t want to talk unless I’d won.
I would ring him to say I’d made the semi-final or lost the final and he’d shout at me, “Only ring me when you’ve won”, then slam the phone down.
That gave me the drive and hunger to succeed. And that mentality is his legacy.
The standard will continue to go up because of him.
He never praised me to my face, not once.
But other people told me that when I wasn’t around he was so complimentary.
He was the first superstar of darts.
He started the success it is today.
There were other big names of the time, like Alan Evans, Leighton Rees, Jocky Wilson and John Lowe, but Eric put darts on the back pages of every tabloid newspaper.
Everybody knew who Eric was.
He lived life on his own terms and good on him.
I’d always tell him to cut down on the fags and booze but he’d tell me to p*** off.
The last time I spent time with him was the other week on a train.
Someone said to him, “Can I ask you a question?”. He said, “Of course”.
The passenger then went to ask another and Eric told him to shut up because he only had one question.
It was all fun, the entire train was laughing.
One of the last things he said to me was, “Why are you f***ing retiring?”
Typical Eric, pulling no punches.
It hasn’t sunk in that he’s gone. I’m still in a bit of shock.
I will miss him so much.
“It didn’t take me long to get into them.
“I’d be shagging a woman one night and drinking with her husband the next. Everybody was at it.”
During a tournament in Nottingham, it was not just at the oche where he was skilled at getting three in a bed.
He had sex with three women who were staying in separate rooms in his hotel, telling them he had press interviews as a way of escaping one to hook up with the next.
Eric was drinking heavily, especially lager and gin.
Playing darts on the QE2 in the early Eighties, he ran up a bar bill of £4,000 over the fortnight he was on board — around £16,000 today.
Before winning his first world title against Bobby George in 1980, Eric downed five pints of lager and ate pasta to soak it up.
He smoked his usual 40 a day.
By 1986 he had won five world crowns and five Masters titles.
Much-loved darts commentator Sid Waddell told TV viewers after Eric’s world title win in 1984: “When Alexander of Macedonia was 33 he cried salt tears because there were no worlds left to conquer. Bristow’s only 27.”
But at the 1986 Swedish Open, Eric’s game dramatically fell apart.
He was suffering from dartitis, a psychological condition that meant he couldn’t throw.
His leg froze even in practice and his game became worse than a pub player.
He said: “I was on the verge of packing in darts. Dartitis wiped me out mentally. I was ready to end it all.”
By then he was living with female darts pro Maureen Flowers and they ran a pub — The Crafty Cockney, naturally — in Stoke-on-Trent.
There, a talented young player called Phil Taylor walked in and Eric trained with him morning and night.
Eric loaned Phil £10,000 but only on the condition he quit his £52-a-week job making toilet roll handles.
Phil “The Power” Taylor became the greatest player the game has seen, winning 16 world titles.
Eric said: “When I first started sponsoring him and he kept getting beat, they were all laughing at me. They don’t laugh at me any more.”
Eric handed over the keys of The Crafty Cockney to Maureen when they split up in 1987.
His next relationship ended in acrimony when he was accused of hitting wife Jane, the mother of their son and daughter, but he was cleared of assault.
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Eric came fourth on I’m A Celebrity in 2012 and worked as a Sky Sports pundit.
But his views cost him his job in 2016 when he described victims of pervert football coach Barry Bennell as “wimps” and “not proper men”.
He later apologised for acting like a “bull in a china shop”.
By the end, Eric had mainly cats for company.
As many as 11 shared his home with partner Rebecca Gadd, who rehouses strays.
Eric said: “You can trust an animal. An animal doesn’t stab you in the back.”
SECRET OF THAT DINKY PINKIE...
ERIC adopted his pinkie grip to avoid his finger making contact with the point of the dart.
It caught on, too, as Eric recalled: “As I got good, thousands of players in pubs and clubs played with raised pinkies.
“They thought they’d be great players just by lifting their little fingers. What a bunch of wallies!”
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