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match finished he said to me: ‘I’m going for a kip.’
    So off he went for a sleep and I played all day until I got down to the last eight. The last eight played on-stage, rather than off-stage where the knockout boards were lined up. Off-stage you play almost shoulder to shoulder with other competitors. There’s more room on stage, which I liked. There was a table where you could put your beer and fags and it was much more civilised. I breezed through to the final, playing sublime darts, and halfway through the final I heard a loud voice shout, ‘Go on, my son!’ It was Bobby, who after seven hours had woken up and was now feeling as fresh as a daisy. I won it and in those days you got paid in cash. I had £500 and of course I had to give Bobby half of this. He was rubbing his hands together and going, ‘Lovely jubbly.’
    I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. As we drove off from the venue I said to him, ‘That has got to be the easiest £250 you have ever earned in your life. You drove me here, lost your game and drove me back.’
    Bobby just started laughing and said, ‘Don’t worry about it, son. Next time I’ll pull you through,’ and that was the way he was and always has been, a favour for a favour. There is nothing crooked about Bobby.
    We did a charity event shortly after that for a bloke’s widow. Her husband had been decapitated in a horrific car accident. He wasn’t insured and had left her with one or two debts, so a few darts players got together and held a charity bash to help her out. After the event Bobby said to the organiser, ‘How much did we raise?’
    ‘Over £500,’ this guy replied.
    ‘Great,’ said Bobby, and he was really chuffed.
    A few weeks later he bumped into the widow and she thanked him for what he’d done. ‘Those two hundred pounds will come in really handy,’ she said.
    ‘Two hundred pounds,’ Bobby replied.
    ‘Yes, two hundred, thank you very much and thank all the players when you see them.’
    With that they said goodbye – only Bobby didn’t go home, he went straight to this organiser’s house.
    He knocked on the door and the organiser’s wife answered. She said he was out and didn’t know when he’d be back. ‘That’s OK,’ said Bobby, ‘I’ll wait for him inside.’ And he went in her house, parked himself on her sofa and waited for six hours until this bloke came home.
    Suffice to say he got the extra £300 and went round to this woman’s house to give it to her, apologising profusely for what had happened. The poor old girl was overwhelmed.
    That’s Bobby. He doesn’t like dishonesty; you have to be straight with him.
    Seventeen was when it all started to happen for me. When I wasn’t playing at exhibitions and Opens I was playing Super League darts for a pub called the General Picton at King’s Cross and aiming to get enough wins, and points, to get me into the county side; that was the next step up the BDO ladder towards my dream of becoming World Champion. My life was darts, darts, darts. It was a total 100 per cent commitment. Super League was on a Monday, but you didn’t have to play Super League every week. For sixteen weeks I’d play in a tournament at Hersham Social Club where the weekly winner would pick up a prize. Dad and I would get the train from Waterloo to Weybridge and walk the half mile to the club. After it had finished we’d get the last train back to Waterloo and walk the remaining eight miles home, often with a prize like a bread bin or a Teasmade that I’d won. We got pulled up by the cops one night.
    They said: ‘Where did you get that from, and why are you walking round with it under your arm at midnight?’
    I told them, ‘I won it playing darts.’
    ‘Yeah, right,’ they said. But they didn’t nick us for some reason. Nine times out of ten they probably would have, though.
    Although I was earning money from darts it wasn’t enough for Dad and me to get a cab home, so we used to