Streetwise
‘You play like a poof!’
These were, the words my dad George said to me when he first watched me play darts. I was eleven years old and he'd just bought me a board for my birthday. I was playing in my bedroom.
‘I can't take you down the pub if you play like that,' he said.
I’d never played darts before, but three weeks later I was getting regular three-dart scores of a hundred plus. The trouble was 1 had a unique style of throwing that in my dad's eyes looked suspect. It involved standing to the side and holding the dart lower down the barrel so my little finger rested on the tip of it. This hindered my throwing action. To overcome this I raised my little finger in the air so there was no contact with the point.
‘You look like a little posh boy holding a china teacup,’ he said.
‘Give it a rest, Dad,' I said to him. This is the way I play, and this is the way I'll always play.’
He didn’t like it, but it was a style that gave me five World Championships, five World Masters, two News of the World titles, four British Opens, three Butlins Grand Masters and numerous Open wins in Sweden, Denmark and North America, plus a host of other tides — and pretty soon everybody was copying my throwing style. As soon as I got good there were thousands of other players in pubs and clubs up and down the country all playing with raised pinkies. They thought they could be great darts players just by lifting up their little finger. What a bunch of wallies!
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