Darts maverick Jocky Wilson’s tough upbringing meant that he didn’t realise the talent he had, according to a former rival.
The double world champion is the subject of a new Sky documentary, Darts Kings, which also features episodes on Eric Bristow and Phil Taylor with ex-pros and friends painting a picture of Wilson – who was one of the sport’s biggest stars of the 1980s, enjoying a controversial and colourful career that once saw him banned for fighting with an official.
It charts his journey from growing up in a children’s home in Fife to becoming a double world champion, defeating golden boy of the time Eric Bristow in a sensational and nail biting 1989 final. However it also reveals how Wilson’s difficult childhood in care, and then in Fife where he worked as a miner, left him terrified of letting his country down down – and feeling ill at ease with life in the increasingly glitzy world of darts, at a time where the sport attracted millions of TV viewers and huge crowds.
Paying tribute on the Sky documentary, which launched this week, World Championship finalist Dave Whitcombe said: “Jocky, in the early days especially, didn’t have any money. Other players have got nice cars, they are turning up with suitcases and half a dozen shirts. Jocky was turning up with hardly anything and he’s got no money. Because of that insecurity I don’t believe that he knew how good he was.”
Pal Jimmy Skirving, who was the captain of Wilson’s first darts team, explained that his difficult childhood shaped the professional player he would become – including his arm jolt when under pressure. He said: “I think it (the arm jolt) was the fear of letting people down. You never saw John Lowe twisting his arm, that’s for sure. To a lot of sportsmen criticism is like water off a duck’s back, but Jocky used to take a lot to heart. He was vulnerable, very vulnerable. I think that he just wanted to be left alone. To come from nothing to be world champion doesn’t happen very often.”
Wilson’s rivalry with Bristow during the 80s was a clash of styles, with the tall silver-haired Englishman quoted as saying that his stocky Scottish opponent, famed for his gummy smile after losing all his teeth, didn’t give the game a good image. And when the two did battle for the 1989 World Championship there were plenty of fireworks – with Bristow fighting back from 5-0 down to only to eventually lose 6-4 in a nail-biting encounter.
That would be a final high in a glittering career for Wilson, whose story has a tragic end. He retired from the sport after being diagnosed with diabetes in 1995 and went on to suffer from arthritis in his hand and COPD before passing away at the age of just 62 in a small council flat in his hometown of Kirkcaldy in 2012.
Darts Kings is available to stream on Sky.