‘Come on, I’ll play you again.’
So I played him again and won eight legs to five. Now, instead of $800 dollars, we had $1,200, and we’d hardly started the three-week trip. Dad kept hold of the money. There was no point me having it because I could hardly buy anything there. I couldn’t order drinks for a start because you had to be twenty-one and over to do that. So I got drinks sneaked to me: cokes with vodka in, that sort of thing.
I won the singles in Los Angeles and was runner-up in the four-man team which included Leighton Rees. Then we all packed our bags and headed for ’Frisco where we weren’t put up by anyone but had to get hotels. This didn’t bother Dad and me because by then we were loaded, and we got more loaded as the fortnight progressed because I won the singles in ’Frisco and was only beaten in the final in Vallejo.
It was great, one of the best three weeks of my life, but by far the biggest eye-opener for me was the American women. They were nuts, especially one group of about forty or fifty women, most of whom were married to rich Americans, but who used to spend the three weeks hopping from tournament to tournament and having sex with as many British darts players as they could get their hands on. They’d all meet up and mark their conquests out of ten. The Brits always got marked down. Most of them got one out of ten. We could hear them in the tournament bar talking about how good or bad a shag we were.
It didn’t take me long to get into them. I’d be shagging this woman one night and the next night drinking with her husband. It was so free and easy it felt weird compared to the stuffiness and sexual backwardness of seventies England. I’d get women coming on to me and I’d be thinking: Hold on a minute, love, you’re married; I just played your husband and beat him earlier on. The next minute I’d be shagging her and the following night I’d be going out for a meal with her and her old man, but I was seventeen and it was simply a case of ‘Whatever.’ At that age you get it where you can. I don’t know if I got one out of ten, but then again, I didn’t give a monkey’s.
Everybody was at it, including players like Bobby George, who got caught out one night. It was in an LA hotel on a Friday night. We were all on a board, practising, and I could see this blonde woman eyeing up Bobby, and he was eyeing her up too. After a while the boys and I noticed he had disappeared. He was due to play and everybody was looking for him. Suddenly he appeared and he was soaking, absolutely dripping wet. Five minutes later the blonde appeared and she was sodden as well. Bobby sidled up to a group of us and whispered, ‘You won’t believe this, lads: I was out there giving her one on the hotel lawn and the sprinklers came on. We got soaked. They were everywhere these things, we couldn’t escape them.’
The rest of us were in stiches, trying to picture Bobby desperately trying to pull his pants up as the water hit him. But this woman’s husband wasn’t laughing. He had obviously twigged what had happened and was giving Bobby the eyeballs from across the room. I made it worse by shouting, ‘Bob, do you want a drink? Nah, you look like you’ve had one already, mate.’
From that first American trip I came home with a very special memento. There was a bar in Santa Monica owned by an English bloke called Les. He was a millionaire who lived on Hollywood Boulevard and he had three all-you-can-eat delis to go with this pub – the darts boys loved these delis and boy could they eat. Les loved having us Brits over and would organise a party at his house for us all. In his bar he had all these shirts lined up that you could buy. They had pictures on the back and different names. I was attracted to a bright red shirt that had a picture of a policeman on it and a Union Flag. Emblazoned across it were the words Crafty Cockney. It just seemed appropriate to what I represented. The Cockney equated
So I played him again and won eight legs to five. Now, instead of $800 dollars, we had $1,200, and we’d hardly started the three-week trip. Dad kept hold of the money. There was no point me having it because I could hardly buy anything there. I couldn’t order drinks for a start because you had to be twenty-one and over to do that. So I got drinks sneaked to me: cokes with vodka in, that sort of thing.
I won the singles in Los Angeles and was runner-up in the four-man team which included Leighton Rees. Then we all packed our bags and headed for ’Frisco where we weren’t put up by anyone but had to get hotels. This didn’t bother Dad and me because by then we were loaded, and we got more loaded as the fortnight progressed because I won the singles in ’Frisco and was only beaten in the final in Vallejo.
It was great, one of the best three weeks of my life, but by far the biggest eye-opener for me was the American women. They were nuts, especially one group of about forty or fifty women, most of whom were married to rich Americans, but who used to spend the three weeks hopping from tournament to tournament and having sex with as many British darts players as they could get their hands on. They’d all meet up and mark their conquests out of ten. The Brits always got marked down. Most of them got one out of ten. We could hear them in the tournament bar talking about how good or bad a shag we were.
It didn’t take me long to get into them. I’d be shagging this woman one night and the next night drinking with her husband. It was so free and easy it felt weird compared to the stuffiness and sexual backwardness of seventies England. I’d get women coming on to me and I’d be thinking: Hold on a minute, love, you’re married; I just played your husband and beat him earlier on. The next minute I’d be shagging her and the following night I’d be going out for a meal with her and her old man, but I was seventeen and it was simply a case of ‘Whatever.’ At that age you get it where you can. I don’t know if I got one out of ten, but then again, I didn’t give a monkey’s.
Everybody was at it, including players like Bobby George, who got caught out one night. It was in an LA hotel on a Friday night. We were all on a board, practising, and I could see this blonde woman eyeing up Bobby, and he was eyeing her up too. After a while the boys and I noticed he had disappeared. He was due to play and everybody was looking for him. Suddenly he appeared and he was soaking, absolutely dripping wet. Five minutes later the blonde appeared and she was sodden as well. Bobby sidled up to a group of us and whispered, ‘You won’t believe this, lads: I was out there giving her one on the hotel lawn and the sprinklers came on. We got soaked. They were everywhere these things, we couldn’t escape them.’
The rest of us were in stiches, trying to picture Bobby desperately trying to pull his pants up as the water hit him. But this woman’s husband wasn’t laughing. He had obviously twigged what had happened and was giving Bobby the eyeballs from across the room. I made it worse by shouting, ‘Bob, do you want a drink? Nah, you look like you’ve had one already, mate.’
From that first American trip I came home with a very special memento. There was a bar in Santa Monica owned by an English bloke called Les. He was a millionaire who lived on Hollywood Boulevard and he had three all-you-can-eat delis to go with this pub – the darts boys loved these delis and boy could they eat. Les loved having us Brits over and would organise a party at his house for us all. In his bar he had all these shirts lined up that you could buy. They had pictures on the back and different names. I was attracted to a bright red shirt that had a picture of a policeman on it and a Union Flag. Emblazoned across it were the words Crafty Cockney. It just seemed appropriate to what I represented. The Cockney equated
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