I’ve hit the bullseye with lots of women ... but my real love was darts
and sandwiches. Maureen and I had travelled the world together. We had a great time. Then she fell out of love with darts. She wanted a life away from all the travelling and upheaval. When I split with Maureen in 1988 it was party time again, but a few months later I met Jane. I was at a tournament in Middlesbrough and had gone clubbing with players, Alan Warriner and Chris Johns and my driver Trevor. They were my new party gang. We went to a club called The Mall. Jane was with her pregnant mate. I asked her for a date. We hit it off straight away and within weeks she had moved to Stoke to live with me.
Then, a few months after we’d met, I proposed to her in Canada. We were in the back of a mate’s car. I’d been thinking about kids, and how nice it’d be to have a couple, and Jane seemed the right person to have them.
NIGHTMARE
I didn’t want to wait until I was in my 40s or later to have children because it’s not fair on them. They can’t play football with their dad if he’s stumbling about with a Zimmer frame. We married in September 1989.
If the split from Maureen was amicable, the one from Jane was anything but. It became a living nightmare. It began a few months after mum died when Jane went with her friend to Gracelands, the home of Elvis Presley. When they came home we just started rowing and it all seemed to go downhill from there.
We became distant, she began to resent me doing the darts exhibitions and said she deserved a life as well.
The rows came thick and fast. It culminated in me facing an assault charge after being accused of hitting Jane at home. We’d had a row upstairs and it ended with me storming down and putting the telly on.
Minutes later a police car pulled up. They said they had reason to believe I’d assaulted my wife. I felt like laughing at them. It was ludicrous.
My lawyer told me to put in a plea bargain, but the plea would have to be guilty. I said: “I am not going to plead guilty to something I didn’t do. I’d rather go down than do that. I didn’t do it. If I plead guilty I might as well go and hang myself because if my kids believe I’m a wife beater then what’s the point in carrying on living?”
In court she gave evidence from behind a screen. Christ almighty. We had been married for 15 years and the end result was her testifying against me from behind a screen. I was acquitted.
That divorce is my one big regret in life because I could see us growing old together. But she was bored. I should’ve seen that. I will never settle down again. I don’t want to. The divorce hurt me, and I vowed never to get hurt like that again.
Now I don’t miss waking up next to somebody every morning. I like doing my own thing. I know how to use a washing machine, a dryer, I can iron and I’m a brilliant cook.
My father taught me how to cook from a young age. He drummed it into me that the best thing to be in life is independent, which is right. ■■Extracted by Nicola Small from Eric Bristow: The Crafty Cockney, Copyrights © Eric Bristow 2008, Published by Century, an imprint of The Random House Group Limited.