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| 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?
