Jocky Wilson

Big Time

22 March 1950 – 24 March 2012

Guess where Jocky Wilson was from. Go on guess. Yes, the popular dart player was born in the Suffolk town of Newmarket. His home town and diminutive size led to an early but short-lived career mucking out stables and while he never actually made it onto a horse's back he got the name 'Jocky' from his preference for wearing a tartan bunnet and a diet consisting mainly of mars bar pasties and as many scrantchings as he could cadge for nothing down the chippy. He always had a sweet tooth and had lost all his teeth by the age of 28 - all the better for smoking tabs with, my dear. And boy did he like an oily rag, smoking up to fifty a day for most of his adult life, it caught up with him in the end but he loved the ciggies and took pride in his nicotine stained fingers - the same ones he threw his darts with. When he was playing particularly well Jocky would often describe it as "browning them in" - much to the bemusement of journalists and television presenters.

Wilson was discovered by his first manager 'Mental' Stanley ‘The Turk’ Tassle when he was touring with Billy Genickle's Circus; Jocky performed under the name the Amazing Arrow Pig and took on all-comers in games of 301 for pails of vegetable tops and tattie peelings. Tassle, a self-style entrepreneur and notorious wide-boy (literally, he stood at 5"4' and had a 60' chest, he was no stranger to the carnival circuit himself, spending two years as 'The Human Chode' in freak shows across the country) took the rough but talented Wilson under his wing and introduced him to burgeoning pub and club circuit. The lifestyle allowed Jocky to indulge in his simple but consuming interests, the unholy trinity of any 1970s alternative athlete: drink, darts and the Holy Gaspers.

Jocky turned professional just as darts was beginning to take off as a spectator sport, he joined the BDO in 1979 and by 1982 he had won the top pot, beating John Lowe 5-2 in the final of the World Championships. He was King of the Castle, just like that, and the fans loved him for it - the dumpy figure with the toothless grin, glint in his eye and perma-pint. The infamous saltire emblazoned across the back of his shirt, that and his name, led to many thinking that he was from heid-the-baw country but the truth was it was the only shirt he could find to fit him at the time; once he'd won a competition wearing it he considered it lucky and had to keep wearing it, by the time he finally changed to one with just his name on the back everyone assumed he was in the Sweaties. Jocky never seemed phased by the mix-up, some said he enjoyed the confusion surrounding his background and when he was questioned on it he would usually laugh it off by saying "Su'ffok" in his broad country burr.

1982 proved to be a significant year for Wilson in more ways than one. He celebrated his world title by paying £1,200 for a pair of dentures but never took to them, complaining that they inhibited his drinking and made him belch. He persevered with them for a few months, mainly for promotional engagements before selling them on a whim for £15 in the Daventry branch Cash Converters when he found himself on a Saturday afternoon with no readies and an empty packet of Embassy. Wilson was banned from competitive darts in the same year after he allegedly took a swing at a punter during a championship. It was 1982. Britain was gripped with Falklands Fever. Jocky was married to an Argentine called Malvina, no less. He made his living in drinking halls. Something had to give. It was his very own Goose Green.

You can't keep a good man down and it wasn't long before Jocky was back on the oche. He won the World Championship again in 1989 in a classic final, Wilson raced to a 5-0 lead against Eric Bristow (gawd bless 'im) only to be pegged back to 5-4 and 2-2 by old Mr Gor Blimey (Not Likely) himself. Jocky called on his reserves and somehow got himself ‘back in the brown’ to take the title, wallop, stovies all round. Bristow took the defeat with his usual grace by disappearing from the game without explanation - he returned the following year as the 'Crafty Cockney', pretending he was a brand new talent on the scene and pleading total ignorance of his old self. I dunno nothing about it guvnor, now gertcha.

 

The second world title proved to be the high water mark of Jocky’s career and while he still played at the highest level for another six years he never quite recaptured the form that took him to the very top. He was wearing glasses by the early 1990s and this hampered his natural throwing action – Jocky was a snatcher, you see, particularly on the third dart. It didn’t sit well with the purists but that was his style and he wasn’t the type of character to deconstruct and rebuild his throw, he was a natural and his throw was what it was, no mucking about. That third dart often led to a number of ‘Eric Morcambe’ moments, Jocky saw the funny side but it was a source of frustration and it was the beginning of the end. When the onset of diabetes meant he had to cut out the pints, he took this as a signal that his time was up and he announced his retirement without warning or ceremony in December 1995.

All sportsmen react differently to retirement: some spend their final competitive years carefully laying the foundations for a career in the media, some parlay their popularity into politics; several are happy to sit in a Sky Sports studio on a Saturday afternoon and recreate the magic of the dressing room banter by shouting at each other and assaulting the English language with a Stanley knife, others stay within their chosen sports in coaching and managerial roles. Jocky Wilson was his own man, he was never going to follow the pack - he disappeared into his own world and became a reclusive figure who struggled with ill health, lived on benefits and nixed interview requests. He was a normal person and there’s not enough of them about in the world of post-professional sports folk - Andy Townsend can fuck off for starters, and don’t get me started on Sebastian ‘I Am A Cunt’ Coe. Jocky was better than that, he was good at darts and when he couldn’t cut it on the oche he knew what to do, he knew people didn’t want to see him acting the goat on panel shows and couldn’t care less what he thought about the amazing deals on fresh beef at Morrisons . “Right that’s me done, thank you very much, good bye.”  That is class.

Jocky lived the retired life for 17 years before he died at home in March 2012, two days after his sixty-second birthday. Due to an unfortunate series of administrative errors he was buried in Kircaldy, Fife. "Su'ffok”, right?

Idi Amin

I had a boss eye in the film you know.

 

Idi Amin Dada (c. 1924 – 16 August 2003)

Idi Amin was a bad lad. He was a hot head up in juvie; he was Kenickie the pock-marked T-Bird joy rider, he was the corpse-bagsying Ace in Stand By Me, he was Johnny of the Cobra Kai. He swept the leg. He had no problem with that, sensei. He was the Gripper Stebson of east Africa - that's a lot of dinner money and Bullet Baxter's not going to save you in post-independence Uganda. Is he? No sir.

Amin trod a well worn path for ambitious poor boys when he joined the army, becoming an assistant cook in the King's African Rifles. He wasn't great in the kitchen (his diet at the time mainly consisted of maize porridge and Toffos) but he managed to thrive thanks to his force of personality and his ability to answer the question "what does this mean to you?" whenever an on-safari John Torode or Greg Wallace were passing through with a camera crew. Once he was in, Amin bullshitted and bullied his way through the ranks: pot-wash, private, lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, army commander, dark lord of the Sith, the King of Queens, the Fisher King and finally King Dong. Some of these positions only existed in his head – he never caught a fish in his life for starters and no-one knows whether he had a hefty dobber or not; some scholars argue that Amin was more of a Hedwig & the Angry Inch, that his temper and sadistic streak boiled down to self-loathing and penis envy. What is known is that he refused to eat sausages his entire adult life – even Wee Willie Winkies.

Amin seized control of Uganda from Prime Minister Milton Obote in a winner-takes-all game of raps in 1971. Amin was the victor in a gruelling four-hour battle when Obote drew a ten of spades to his Queen. Ten hard. Obote looked down at his mitts, now a morass of bone-in chopped liver, and conceded. Amin was ungracious in victory, chiding his former superior with a bizarre version of Barry Manilow’s future hit Copacabana, “His name was Milton, Milton O’Bottler!”.

As President of Uganda (self-appointed) Amin survived seven major assassination attempts between 1972 and 1979, the most reknowned of these came in 1976 when a 50p piece tied to a piece of string intended to lead Amin to his death by luring him over a cliff edge. The plan failed as, unbeknownst to the conspirators, Amin had employed an official coin flunky only weeks before. Nine underlings fell to their deaths before the plot was discovered, a further three members of Amin’s staff were killed as punishment for non-retrieval of the coin. The Bash Street Kids were later rounded up, tortured and executed. Wile E Coyote scarpered to Zaire.

As he became increasingly mentally unstable, Amin took more of a shine to Islam, but much to the dismay of his neighbour African states, he wasn’t very good at it and he became something of an embarrassment to the Ummah. His religious theme park ‘Mecca 2’ was a disaster; Mullah Mouse was not deemed an appropriate introduction to the prophet for children, the imposing centrepiece of the park, Allah Pally, was demolished and the gates were closed. Existing pieces of official merchandise now fetch a fortune on the collectors market – enthusiastic ‘Dislamist’ Gordon Honeycombe paid £73,000 for a pair of Muhammad Ears at Sotheby’s in 2006.

Amin's religious enthusiasm also led to disagreements with his wayward mother. Assa Aatte (1904–1970) was a table dancer at Club Bombo Bonko, performing under the stage name 'Ass-assin' during the height of Amin’s reign. It was in the town of Bombo that a teenage Amin first attended Islamic school in 1941 (after he’d clocked the bog-standard platformer Roman Catholicism on the PS2 and fancied a different challenge, he was always a chicken and goat man in anyways so the pork thing was nowts the matter). His conversion meant he could nag his mother about her lifestyle with religious justification, she eventually relented and changed her act - 'Big Burkha' met with limited success however and Aatte drew the curtains on her stage career, spending the rest of her days drinking Enguli, playing ARPANET bingo and cadging tab money off her son.

Amin's downfall came in 1979 when Tanzanian troops counter-invaded Uganda following the looting and destruction of villages along the Kagera river, hundreds of Ugandan exiles volunteered to join the Tanzanian forces. Amin made off, legging it to Tripoli for a while (Col. Gaddafi was an ally) before he had his Gazza on the road to Old Trafford moment when he got a better offer from the Saudis and moved to a villa in Jeddah on condition that he remained incommunicado and didn’t steal any team coaches just for the frisk of it. It was a mutually beneficial agreement; Amin avoided any repercussions from Uganda and got to live in some comfort, Saudi Arabia muzzled the Clown Prince of Islam. Amin lived out his remaining years drinking breast milk in a Jeddah Novotel and giving interviews to anyone who would listen to him - his appearance on the cover of the Melody Maker in July 2000 (‘“Amin – I like tits!”’) was the death knell of the music weekly.

Then, in 2003, he died. Kidney failure. He was responsible for the death of up to 500,000 people during his eight year reign from his Kampala “Command Post” – that’s a bad thing, obviously. What a waste. But think about it - that’s two Sunderlands, or 500,000 John Terrys. If only his flair for cruelty, persecution and the logistics of mass execution matched his sense of judgement and geography. What a waste eh? What a waste.

Postscript – he also invented Dadaism, but I can’t be arsed.

Review of 2011 - Part 2

Taking you back, back, back...

Frank Bender, clearly.

First things first (to please my core readership, both of them), let us remember Frank Bender (16.06.41 -28.07.11), American forensic artist and overt heemasex who died aged 70. Also; Alan Fudge (27.02.44-10.10.11), Fudge was an actor with a list of credits as long as a factory conveyor belt: Matlock, M*A*S*H, Wonder Woman, Cagney & Lacey, Baywatch, Beverley Hills 90210 (the unsuccessful version set in West Yorkshire, apparently the world wasn’t ready for the everyday angst of hickies, buying single tabs and the masculinity-challenging issues of teenage boys growing up in an town with a lasses name) and Falcon Crest. Anyway, he had a vaguely amusing name which lends itself to bumming euphemisms and that’s why we’ll all miss him. You especially.

Right, that’s buggered up me chronological formatting now hasn’t it? It has got all the puerile jokes out of the way at the beginning at least, let's get down to business.

Ronnie Gill!

Cuddly Dudley (22.05.24-15.07.11) was Britain’s first black rock n’ roller, “Bristol’s answer to the Big Bopper”. He was also a promotional cocker spaniel for the Chicago Tribune and it was in this guise that Dudley really hit paydirt. Taking the ‘fistee’ half of a puppet act with Roy Brown, the two became fixtures on the Ray Rayner & Friends morning show for years,  then the tensions that inevitably foment between any double act ultimately brought the curtains down on their gig. Brown was envious of playing second fiddle to a poochified prop and increasingly took his frustrations out on Dudley’s tradesmans. Such was the toxic state of their relationship by the end the pair actually cited “sphinctal differences” as the reason for their split. Brown continued to work as a solo artist, he put on weight, wore a flying helmet and made a fortune with a ‘minge and paki’ routine in the UK. Dudley ended up endorsing incontinence pants for dogs (Dog-Gone - For a Merrier Terrier!) and was eventually put down by his agent when the work dried up.

Cactus Pryor (b. 07.01.23) is dead. The broadcaster passed away in August aged 88. Cactus wasn’t his real name of course, it was Richard, but who wants a comedy name like that holding them back? Cactus it was, and thus he had a prosperous career in the American south and even landed parts in a couple of John ‘Marion’ Wayne films. Pryor’s dad was called Skinny, they were all at it weren’t they? Ha’peths.

Dead! Cees de Wolf (17.12.45 - 22.07.11) was a footballer who played for Ajax Amsterdam but will always be most remembered for inventing the ‘rap name’. He was born Willem Hurben Skurben but changed his name to fit his image when his predilection for Kangol, gold jewellery and campaigning for a Europe-wide cull of wild dogs became his defining characteristics. Canny player though but.

Speaking of rap names - Heavy D (d. 08.11.11) found love, but didn’t know what to do with it. Not at first anyway, then he found a super Valentine Warner recipe. Rah!

William ‘Stetson’ Kennedy (05.10.16-27.08.11) was an American author and civil right activist who infiltrated the KKK and exposed their secrets to a wider audience. He was the first to let on about the absolute truth of the Marlboro packet design, for example, and their strict “no socks” rule. The nickname ‘Stetson’ came about because he could never get the shape of his hood quite right, bit of banter from the chapter dressing room there. Classic. 

Got a quick couple of Dirty Ronalds for you here before we move on, they tried dying quietly but they don’t get away that easily: Ronald Searle (03.03.20 - 30.12.11) was the man behind St Trinian’s and Ronald Wolfe (08.08.22 - 18.12.11) gave us On The Buses. Wooargh! Awright darlin’? Cor! Phwoar! Dolly birds. Strumpet. Knockers. Skirt.

Look Reg - milkers!

It's RIP to Geertruida Draaisma (25.02.02 – 12.08.2011) who, despite being born in Makkum and thus suffered an inability to pronounce her vowels properly, lived to be the oldest person in the Netherlands and was just shy of her 110th birthday when she died it in a tragic key-losing accident.

Steve Jobs (24.02.55 – 05.10.11). Yeah, remember when Steve Jobs died and people queued for days to attend his funer…no, let’s not go down that route. Right, Steve Jobs, erm - the man who invented apples. Yes, the man who brought the Pink Lady into the world. The man responsible for Rizzo in Grease. The man who changed the way we live our lives. The man who gave us all a little red cox.

Whatumoana Paki died in September. The Maori elder, consort to Maori Queen Te Atainrangikaahu and father of King Tuheitia Paki was also the 2011 winner of the Name That Guarantees A Mention In A Divvy’s Blog award (runners up this year include Conrad Schnitzler (d. 04.08.11), Royal Copeland (d.08.08.11) and Christopher Mega (d. 30.10.11). Hard lines lads, better luck next time, if you’re Buddhists). Royal consort, imagine that, “aye, spunked a new king up the Queen last night me like,” you’d have to be chuffed with yourself there, bragging rights or what? That's unless the Queen was a whinging munter. Yeah, what if she was a bit of a brute and sometimes you couldn’t bring yourself to climb aboard, not even grimacing your way through a little joyless one for crown and country? Can you turn a Queen down if she fancies a bit of the other? I don’t know much about the rumpy-pumpy protocol of the aristocracy but I reckon you’d have to bow to ‘Her Royal Fadgesty’ whenever her footman tells you she’s frisking for it.

Klugman

Jimmy Savile (31.10.26-29.10.11) was found dead in his Leeds flat aged 84. I wrote to Jim’ll once to ask if he could fix it for me to spend a night in a hospital morgue. I didn’t get a reply. That’s the BBC for you, Noel Edmonds is allowed to kill as many people as he likes but I’m not allowed some ‘quiet time’ with a packed lunch and my Quincy annual.

Talaat Sadat (1954 - 20.11.11), the nephew of Anwar Sadat was an Egyptian politician, lawyer and political prisoner but was always most famous for having five A’s in his name and being cited as a formative influence on the similarly-vowelled Bananarama. They even had a number three hit in 1983 with a song they wrote about him - Robert De Niro’s Waiting. Only joshing, it was 1988’s Nathan Jones really.

Gammon?

Joe Frazier (12.01.44 - 07.11.11) famously yarked Muhammad Ali and spoilt his unbeaten record in 1971’s Fight of the Century. Smokin’ Joe had specially designed gloves so he could have a sneaky gasper when he was on the defence. When in-fight smoking was banned by the WBA and WBC in 1971 Frazier took to using snuff disguised as smelling salts between rounds. A true champion.

Speaking of heavyweights I should also mention the demise of boiler-suit devotee and inventor of the hamburger, Kim Jong-il (16.02.41 - 17.12.11) and the man with the golden gun, the man with the violated bum - Muammar Gaddafi (d. 20.10.11). The mad dog and the eat dog. The dear leader and the rear bleeder. Enough has been written about them elsewhere, let's not feed the trolls. They only do it for attention.

Socrates, another enthusiastic smoker also died in 2011 aged 57. The Brazillian midfielder, intellectual and doctor of medicine might've liked a drink but that didn't stop him from co-founding the Corinthians Democracy movement to run against the military government. His death was mourned and his life was celebrated. See, it's not always better to be a baddie. Something for you to think on there. Roll credits.

The Hapiru

Lower Egypt Peter Sutcliffe Lookalike Competition (Dressage)

c.1800 BC - 1100 BC (Before the Co-Op)

Depending on the sources in which you find them referred to, the Hapiru (Mesopotamia), Habiru (Sumerian), Apiru (Egypt) or Hackypoo (Letterbocks) was the collective name given to rag-taggle band of nomads, rebels, outlaws, mercenaries, slaves, migrant labourers and general heed-the-baals who knocked about in the Fertile Crescent before it became a track on Bad Religion's 1992 album Generator.

'Fertile Crescent' – f’nar, knnrk, pfff. Like a wonky fadge, man.

So they were radgies, basically; lawless, socially inferior big kids. People on the fringes of settled society. Throcktonians. They'd tarmac your kibbutz (badly) if the price was right, chin people (and everyone they kna) over the slightest transgression - real or imagined, twoc a camel train just to get a chase off the sand bizzies and claim ancient lands from the people of Wa’al-botl.

Scholars are divided on many aspects of the Hapiru but they all agree that they depinitely, depinitely existed. Ancient texts discovered in the Witchy’s Wood area document tales of ritual fires, drinking rites and violence against existing tribal boundaries. The nearby ‘Devil’s Rock’ hints at a darker (and larger) underbelly: regretful teenage hairstyles, temple vandalism and bizarre love triangles*.

Of course all this was all a long time ago and the Hapiru in their original form are long gone, but closer inspection reveals traces of them wherever you look, providing you look in the right places. They’re not so peripatetic these days, preferring to stay in permanent camps around the flats and in the Briar Badlands. The ancient shrine to their god, ‘the Centurion’ was destroyed in a withering battle with their bitter enemies the Coouncil, but its essential tenets live on in the community’s commitment to being chorers, drink-munchers, starters and pagga-havers. 

Ya gan, like?

They walk among us: lock up your dogs, leave a light on and divvint say nowt to nee-one -  else ye be biblically ladged.

2011 - Part 1

I know what your favourite bit of 2011 was - all of it. Know why? Because it's a passage of time and that's what you like, isn't it? Passages. 

Yes, that's my introduction. Don't blame me if you choose to read on.

January

Sexy Cora (23) was a German porn actress and Big Brother contestant who died of a heart attack during breast implant operation. She was hospitalised in 2009 after attempting to set a new world record for the number of noshes performed in one day. Her target was 200 pork lollipops but she was taken to A&E after only 75 when she began suffering from 'der sperma uberglucken'. What a puff. The record still stands at 187 and is held by Wrinkled Whore of the bus stop, Walbottle, Newcastle upon Tyne.

February

February is the most difficult month to die in so congratulations are due to Gary Moore who succesfully struck the devil's chord on the 6th at the age of 58. You know, Gary Moore - Skid Row, Thin Lizzy, Travelling Wilburys? No? Err, Ferry Aid? Gary Moore, man! Gary Moore, the guitarist - Parisienne Walkways, Corridors of Power? The one with the face that looks like a cauliflower. Yes, him. He died in February in Spain, he saw the the beginnings of the Arab Spring on the telly and thought the muzzers we're going to get him, even though he was a Moore himself. Geography, spelling and onomatology weren't on the curriculum when he was at Fretboard University.

No Moore: Micky Flanagan Snr

March

March saw a bumper crop of notable deaths. Haulage wizard Eddie Stobart deserves a quick mention for making his drivers wear a shirt and tie, he also named each of his rigs like in Thomas the Tank Engine but drew the line at giving them plasticine faces and having Ringo Starr narrate each trip. Ringo wanted too much.

Knut died aged only 4 at Berlin's Museum of Natural History; equally loveable and controversial, he proved that polar bears are ultimately bottlers in the game of life. It's no wonder glacier mints aren't the force they once were.

Nate Dogg was only 41 when his heart failed to regulate. His prediliction for fried egg sandwiches finally caught up with him, Dr Dre warned him he be illin' with that shit. 

Mount up!

In London, Smiley Culture died from a 'self-inflicted stab wound' during a police raid on his house. Internet rumours that he was interrupted whilst making a cheese toastie were never substantiated.

April

John Sullivan's death was significant in that it also heralded the end of Nicholas Lyndhurst's career, surely? Geordie stereotype Neil Tennant once claimed that the Electronic song Getting Away With It was inspired by Rodders' career. There's always a chance of something like Goodnight (Again), Sweetheart I suppose. Fingers crossed eh, 'Dave'?

The Welsh poet Elerydd (William John Gruffydd) also passed in April, he died of shame after suddenly learning of his nationality. His most celebrated work is copied in full below by way of a tribute:

Saucepan Of My Fathers

Leeks and sheep,

A daffodil.

Dragons and cawl,

Rhyll.

May

This was the month sport took a pasting: Whispering Ted Lowe potted the eternal black. Henry Cooper dropped his last H. Seve Ballesteros shanked himself into the celestial rough. Randy Savage became one of the few American wrestlers not found dead in a hotel room, he did go by heart attack though so he still got the traditional WWE funeral ceremony; his cremation was sponsored by Doritos, available exclusively on PPV and featured a run-in from the Gobbledy Gooker.

All of these were outshadowed, however, by the undisputed Own Goal of the Month: Osama bin Laden, the rogue midfield general of the September XI, was finally tackled by a pod of American seals in Abbotabad, Pakistan. After succesfully evading capture for some 10 years he let his guard slip when he bought a rare Lego Jihad Training Camp set on eBay using his own name and address. It wasn't even in mint condition. Schoolboy that Osama son, schoolboy.

Downfall

June

This month features accompanying music by Alan "Mr Fabulous" Rubin and Clarence Clemons in the horn section.

Ryan Dunn ploughed his motor into a tree for the lulz. He always seemed the most likeable of the Jackass lot, well, least hateful anyway. Steve-O snuck into the coffin the night before the funeral, planning on a brilliant "I'm not dead!" stunt, but he slept throughout the ceremony and those in on the jape thought it was funnier to bury him alive rather than interrupt proceedings. 

Happier Times

There's just one more thing about June, Peter Falk - pneumonia.

July

Bad month for the arts this, Cy Twombly (scribbles) and Lucian Freud (dirty bits) carked it for starters. Shares in Pentel dropped to a three year low.

Amy Winehouse fans reacted to the news of her death by instigating the unusual tribute of tab-leaving, it's a better offering than an empty bottle of booze though. Still, she liked her ciggies and drink and it never did her any harm did it?

Don't be soft - have a tab.

And finally (after a quick nod to Carmella's dad from the Sopranos) we remember Wurzel, the former army corporal supported Lemmy's warts on guitar for over ten year whilst boffing Aunt Sally on the sly whenever Motorhead played near Scatterbrook farm. Here he is wearing dungarees and a hard hat with "Die You Bastard" written on it:

Very Metal

That's it for part one, check back later this year to find out what Colonel Gadaffi, Gary Speed and Heavy D have got in common. You'll never guess.