Obituary: Eric Bristow, the ‘Crafty Cockney’, five-time darts world champion

Bristow transformed darts from a pub corner curiosity into a sport, writes Colm Greaves

The sport of darts lost one of its greatest craftsmen and most emblematic characters recently when Eric Bristow, MBE, died from a massive heart attack. He lost his life while attending a darts event in Liverpool and was only 60 years of age. Here is a summary of those six decades.

Born in North London in 1957, Bristow was the only child of a telephonist mother and a plasterer Dad called George, who bought his son his first dartboard when the boy was just 11 years old.