SOMETIMES A COCKNEY CAN GET too crafty. The atmosphere was tense in a Potteries cabaret club on that extraordinary night almost 40 years ago. It may not have been the occasion when Sid Waddell, the voice of darts, told viewers that “they’re showing Othello on BBC One but if you want real drama tonight, get down here to Jollees, Stoke-on-Trent”, but the same sentiment applied. “The Crafty Cockney”, his generation’s greatest flinger of an arrow, was about to lose to the Milky Bar Kid.
In the deciding set of the final of the , , winner of five world titles between 1980 and 1986, trailed by two legs to one. The cherubic qualifier, just 23, was one leg away from defeating the maestro but Bristow had a chance to draw level. One hundred and twenty-one needed.
