Authors: Eric Bristow
My team won the Super League in 1975 and I had great averages in that and in my county games. All the averages of all the players were forwarded to the BDO, who, in April 1975, chose me to play for England as part of a fifteen-man team. I’d like to say I was jumping
for
joy and bouncing off the walls when I got the call-up, but I wasn’t. I expected it. It didn’t come as a shock to me because I was winning everything. It would have been more of a shock not to be picked. I just told my pals and we all went out to celebrate. Underneath I was proud as punch though because it’s great to get an England call-up, whatever the sport. If you play tiddlywinks and you enjoy it and you get a call to represent England at tiddlywinks you have made it. It’s a pinnacle.
And what a team we had! There were myself, John Lowe, Cliff Lazarenko, Bobby George, Dave Whitcombe and Tony Brown, to name but a few. We didn’t get beaten very often.
Playing for England was mad. I was with the proper boys now, hardcore boys who could drink. I’m a boozer, I like a drink, and I have drunk with the best, but when it came to an important darts tournament I’d say no. I wouldn’t get drunk in the week leading up to the tournament because I wanted to remain fresh – I’d save it until after, when I’d won and got the cheque. And I know when to stop. I know when enough is enough – but very occasionally I would get caught out, and the man who caught me out was Cliff Lazarenko. Big Cliff, as he is known, is a two times winner of the British Open and a four times World Championship semi-finalist, but perhaps his biggest claim to fame is his prodigious drinking ability, which still amazes me to this day. No one could compete with Big Cliff and anyone
who
tried to take him on, or even keep up with him, would end up a gibbering mess.
Cliff caught me on my way to the Canadian Open with him. It was twenty-four hours I’ll never forget but find hard to remember. The stewardess informed me just before I boarded the plane to Canada that I’d been upgraded to first class free of charge, but I said I wouldn’t go unless Cliff came with me. That was my first mistake. Suddenly we were both sitting in luxury for the twelve-hour flight, and the champagne came out. Cliff likes his champers, it’s one of his favourites and he can drink it like water – so you don’t give him free champagne, that’s just stupid. I’d already started to think I was going to be in a bit of trouble because we’d had four or five pints in the airport bar before we flew, but off we went and it was champagne, champagne, champagne. Then we got the meal and there was more champagne, champagne, champagne. Then they ran out. There was only me and Cliff drinking it and we’d gone through twelve bottles. The stewardess told Cliff there was no champagne left, but would he like something else? That was when he started clapping his hands together.
If you know Big Cliff, you know that when he starts clapping his hands together you’re in trouble. Basically you’ve had it, because that is a signal that he’s really beginning to enjoy himself and he wants you to join in the fun. So he starts ordering drink after drink after
drink
: ‘We’ll have a Cointreau,’ he said. Next it was Bailey’s on ice, then Southern Comfort. He didn’t bother asking me what I wanted, he just ordered for himself and then got me one – and he was ordering every ten minutes. We were heading for a place called St John which was a short fifteen-minute connecting flight from Toronto where we were landing. All I could think when the plane touched down was how the hell was I going to get through customs, because I was smashed. While Cliff put his smart jacket on and adjusted his tie, I was in the toilet splashing my face with cold water in a desperate bid to sober up. Cliff appeared as if he’d been drinking apple juice.
As we were leaving the plane we said goodbye to the stewardess who said, ‘In all the years I have done this job I have never seen anybody drink like you two, it has been an unbelievable experience. It has been a pleasure serving you two gentlemen.’
I knew as soon as she said it that I was in big, big trouble. I could feel the alcohol literally swimming around my brain. I was seeing double and when I said goodbye the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth properly. I just grinned at her like an idiot. It was the only thing I could think of doing.
Fortunately I managed to get through customs without any problems, we got on the connecting flight and a few minutes later we were in St John. As we reached the hotel in our taxi Cliff said to me, ‘Right, upstairs,
quick
wash and a change and I’ll see you in the bar, Brissy, in twenty-five minutes.’
‘Right,’ I slurred.
I had a quick shower, put my shirt on, put my darts in the top pocket and I was downstairs. The shower had sobered me up a bit but it was still only seven in the evening. We had a couple in the hotel bar, then we went for a throw in a nearby British Legion. We’d always look for these sorts of places because we knew they’d have a dart board in them.
I was still pissed. Those couple of beers in the hotel had topped me right up again. I was wrecked. I ordered a pint and stood at the oche. After a few throws I said, ‘I don’t feel like playing, Cliff.’
‘Nor do I,’ he replied. Fuck it.’
This was my second mistake. I should have kept on practising. We went back to the bar and Cliff was off ordering drinks for us again.
‘Any heavy rock round here?’ he said to the barman after a few more jars. Cliff loves his heavy rock. We were told to go to a rock bar just down the road and it was all boom, boom, boom, boom and crashing guitars. I really didn’t need it, it was giving me a headache, so I started playing some guys at pool for three dollars a pop, and beating them. Every time I won I passed the money down to Cliff and he bought the drinks. I got in a rhythm after a bit, I had my second wind, and was downing beers and spirits one after the other – and all
the
while beating these blokes at pool. They must have been pretty poor players to lose to me, the state I was in. At the end of the night the band’s singer announced, ‘We’d like to thank Eric and Cliff for the drinks,’ and the whole place cheered, clapped and slapped us both on the back. Cliff, with all the money I was winning, was using it to buy the band free drinks, and anyone else who happened to want one. I looked at him and said, ‘You cheeky sod,’ but he just shrugged.
We left and went into a couple more late-night bars and had a few more drinks, by which time I was having trouble standing up. I’d completely lost it: I didn’t know what day it was, I didn’t know where we were, what country we were in, or anything. We finally arrived in a bar which had eighteen optics lined up, all different spirits.
‘Right, Eric,’ Cliff said, ‘let’s finish off here. We’ll go through these optics starting from the left and then we’ll call it a day.’
So we had vodka and something, brandy and something else, whisky, gin, rum, Bacardi … and on and on it went until we had done the lot: eighteen rounds of eighteen different drinks, all big measures compared to what you’re served back in England.
Then Cliff discovered there was an Indian open nearby. I don’t remember anything about this at all, but I do remember waking up the next morning to go to the toilet and seeing this half-eaten curry on a chair. I
don’t
remember buying it or eating it, and I can’t believe I managed to get back to my room, but it was there on the chair.
And it stayed there for another day and a half because for the next thirty-six hours I couldn’t get out of bed. Cliff knocked on my door at eight in the morning, asking if I was going down for breakfast. He was fine, but I couldn’t move. I had alcohol poisoning and was shaking like a dog having a dump. Looking back I should’ve gone to hospital, but I dealt with it in my room – it was just water, water, water, water, water, water, one glass after the other. I did the same in Las Vegas a few years later. I had caught the gambling bug and was at the tables for twenty-eight hours drinking White Russians one after the other – but I won twelve thousand dollars so it didn’t matter. When I’d finished I went to bed and passed out – another day and a half gone.
Cliff never gets hangovers. You didn’t mess with Cliff when it came to drink. To watch was to enjoy. He got me again, years later, in a Tenants Pilsner TV tournament at a big Crest Hotel up in Scotland. I should’ve beaten Lowey in the semi-final and Cliff should have won his semi, but we both missed our darts for the double and victory and were knocked out. We were gutted and immediately hit the bar where he started ordering large Southern Comforts for us both, one after the other, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I don’t really do spirits; I never really have done. At the end of it I
don’t
remember going to bed. The next day the shaking dog was back and I couldn’t move, save for lurching to the bathroom to drink water out of the tap. I never tried to match him drink for drink again after that. It took me days to recover from those benders, and even when I thought I was over the hangover and the poisoning I didn’t feel right for a good seventy-two hours afterwards. It spoiled the darts really, because it was only when I flew home that I started to feel normal again. I wonder sometimes how my liver didn’t pack in. I could’ve died in bed and they’d have done the autopsy, opened me up and thought: This geezer deserved to die. When a stewardess who has been in the job for a long time tells you she’s never seen drinking like it in her life then you should reckon that you’ve won the game. But I, being an idiot, had carried on drinking for another twelve hours. It meant nothing to Cliff. He’s an animal when he gets going. Drinks to him are like what a box of Pringles is to you and me. He knocks them back like we’d eat one Pringle after another after another. In a tournament in Jersey he once got forty bottles of cheap wine, put the plug in the bath, poured in the bottles, got a glass and just drank out of the bath.
There is nobody in the world who can beat Cliff for drinking. Many have tried but all have failed. We were playing an England game in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, a mining town that was as rough as they came, and there was myself, Big Cliff, John Lowe, Tony Brown and Paul
Gosling
from Cornwall in a local bar. I was the smallest bloke there at six foot two inches, boozing with four hardcore drinkers. We’d order five pints then ten minutes later another five pints, ten minutes after that another five pints. This Welsh bloke, who was sitting at the other end of the bar, was watching us and he suddenly piped up, ‘So you boys think you can drink do you? You boys think you can handle your beer,’ and all that sort of nonsense.
I turned to Cliff and said, ‘Look, Cliff, you sort him out. I can’t be arsed. I ain’t in the mood for this twat.’
So Cliff, being as nice as nice can be, smiled and went up to this prat and said, ‘Right, what are you drinking, boyo?’
The Welshman asked for a large brandy and lemon, so Cliff got two large ones, picked his up and downed it in one. Then he banged his glass on the table hard and asked the barman to line them up again. This Welsh bloke had been giving it plenty of verbals, so he didn’t want to back down and tried to match Cliff brandy for brandy. Cliff would knock one back, bang the glass on the table, and go ‘Your round.’ The bloke – I may as well call him the victim – would buy the next one and the same thing happened again. Then Cliff bought a round and it went on and on for another thirty minutes at a rate of a drink every minute and a half. The rest of us just let them get on with it and talked among ourselves. I knew Cliff would sort him out. After about
forty
minutes we saw this guy trying to walk out of the pub, but he fell down the steps. Cliff watched him fall, turned to us, and said, ‘Right, are you up for more lagers, boys?’
We then hit a disco across the road and some other bloke tried to take him on. Cliff had twelve doubles with this idiot and in the end the stupid sod didn’t know what day it was.
Cliff was the daddy of drinkers, but I soon learned when to leave it alone. I’ve seen too many darts players hit the top shelf and they don’t play any more. Initially they’d have a large brandy, just to steady their nerves before they went on stage, then six months later it would be two or three large brandies, then half a bottle of brandy, then a bottle. Where do you stop? And spirits are too easy to drink. With pints you can only drink so many – unless you’re Andy Fordham who used to drink fifty-two bottles of Pils in a session. Now he can’t drink any more because he has been ill. Basically he is knackered. If you’re doing fifty-two bottles of Pils a night and you’re on a ten-night tour, it’s not going to do your body much good, is it?
The killers were the American tournaments which started at ten in the morning and finished at two the next morning. At two o’clock you’d have a few beers, be in bed for about three or four, and then up and ready for the next day’s play which started at ten and off you went again, playing darts round the clock until two the
next
morning. If you were good you’d hardly be off the board and it would be a straight sixteen-hour shift; no food, just drinking, drinking, drinking, bed and up at eight to have breakfast. You’d start breakfast with a Bailey’s in your coffee just to steady the shakes from the beer the night before. Then you’d have a couple of drinks before you got ready for the morning session at ten just to steady the nerves. This is something I don’t miss at all. I don’t think my stomach could do it any more. I don’t want to drink four or five Bailey’s before the start of a tournament. The adrenaline rush used to pull me through, but as soon as the last dart was thrown on a Sunday night to signal the end of the tournament it was like, Urgh! Thank Christ for that, it’s over.
But then there were other Opens in Denmark and Sweden that were potentially worse. You’d go over there and the beer was stronger. Back home it was all Skol, Skona and Watney’s at 3 per cent volume, but some of those beers in the Scandinavian countries were 7, 8 or 9 per cent proof, and they were cloudy. You had to be careful not to get caught by them. Six of our pints were only about three of theirs. It was vicious. If the strong beer didn’t get you then Cliff might. I learned to keep away from him, or I’d go and have a drink with him for a couple of hours and that was that – but a couple of hours with Cliff could easily see you downing a dozen pints.