ITV4’s popular Sports Life Stories documentary strand returns for a second series this autumn.
Featuring top names from Olympic gold medalists to Champions League winners, Sports Life Stories focuses on the lives of iconic sporting figures.
Each of the eight hour-long episodes in this returning series, presented by ITV Sport’s chief reporter Gabriel Clarke as well as sports journalists Adam Darke, Ned Boulting and Leon Mann, tells the tale of a sporting legend.
The series allows each individual to open up about their careers and personal lives, giing a vivid insight into how the impact of their achievements can reach into people’s lives.
Featuring in the second series of the rower James Cracknell, Paralympic athlete David Weir, boxer Nicola Adams, footballer Jermain Defoe, snooker player Jimmy White, darts champion Eric Bristow, boxer Chris Eubank and, finally, footballer Didier Drogba.
Contributions from friends and admirers feature strongly during each episode and throughout the series, including some of the biggest names in sport.
Sir Steve Redgrave, Harry Redknapp, Frank Lampard, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Phil Taylor, and Barry Hearn illuminate the lives and work of the subjects and provide a close view into what drives them to succeed in their careers.
Last year’s acclaimed debut series featured the likes of Barry McGuigan, Gareth Thomas, Dame Kelly Holmes, Ronnie O’Sullivan and Brian Lara, and was repeated on the main ITV network in early 2013.
The second series of Sports Life Stories begins on Tuesday, October 22, with a profile of two-time Olympic rowing gold medallist James Cracknell.
Scroll down below for full details and background on each episode in this latest series.
UPDATE: All eight episodes from series two of Sports Life Stories will be repeated on ITV starting in January 2014.
Olympic rower James Cracknell’s profile will be the first to be shown on Tuesday, January 14, at 10.35pm.
In a change to the original ITV4 running order, Chris Eubank’s life story will be the second episode on January 21, followed by Eric Bristow on January 28.
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Episode 1: JAMES CRACKNELL
Tuesday 22nd October – 10.00pm-11.00pm ITV4 Tuesday 14th January – 10.35pm-11.35pm ITV .Double Olympic gold medal-winning rower James Cracknell talks to Gabriel Clarke about his career as an oarsman and as an adventurer, as well as the cycling accident which caused life-changing brain damage.
With contributions from five-time Olympic champion Sir Steve Redgrave and James’s wife, TV presenter Beverley Turner, the programme reveals how he approached the challenges in front of him – from rowing to physiotherapy – and he talks candidly about how the brain damage has affected his personality, his relationship with his family, and his attitude to life.
When he wasn’t selected to represent Britain at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, James says he made up his mind to quit the sport in a fit of pique.
“Selectors sat me down and said, ‘You will never row for Britain again, we are going to take away all your funding.’ I went, ‘Well it’s a boring sport, I don’t want to do it,’ and went away. And that’s when it hit me that I had the talent to do that and I had wasted it.”
After having to sit out the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta when he contracted tonsillitis at the last minute, James was determined to find success in the cox-less fours in Sydney four years later.
So much so, says Sir Steve, that he became the driving force behind the gold-medal winning team, giving the other three rowers a hard time in training: “He would be sort of boiling under the collar, and this is almost every session, every day.
“He was our motivation, he was the one who was sort of pushing us.”
Beverley provides an insight into what happened after James went on to win gold again at Athens in 2004.
“There’s a sense with James that all of his achievements haven’t meant as much to him as they might for you or I.
“So he very quickly moved on. We had dinner when he won his medal and the next day he was thinking about what he was going to do next.
“He is relentless, and you know he always has been.”
James explains that after retiring, rowing the Atlantic ensured he never wanted to row again. He then took to skiing across Antarctica, and later ran seven marathons in six days.
“Sir Steve says he believes James may have taken on challenges like these because he felt unfulfilled as an athlete: “Maybe because he stopped slightly earlier than I think he should have done.”
After being hit by the wing mirror of a lorry while cycling across America as part of another challenge in June 2010, James suffered brain injuries which meant his personality changed.
He reveals that he now suffers from epilepsy and has lost feelings such as empathy and motivation: “After a brain injury you react differently to situations – my kids had one dad for six years and a different one for the last three.”
He and Beverley talk about a moment when the pair argued and he grabbed her by the neck.
She says: “James got very agitated one night, I was wound up, I was newly pregnant as well, tempers frayed and James kind of got me by the neck, and it was really scary.
“The most important part of that story for me is that my sister walked through the door and just took him in her arms and just said, ‘It’s not you James, it’s not you’.”
Despite the impact of his brain injury, Beverley says she is trying to stay positive: “I think the man that I married did disappear, yeah he did.
“But there are elements that I have grown to admire about who he is now that I probably wouldn’t have done if the accident hadn’t have happened.
“There was a lot about the old James that I wasn’t very keen on, to be honest.”
Now James plans to stand as a member of the European parliament in the next elections in May 2014, and he explains he is determined not to be defined by his Olympics medals.
He says: “There’s no doubt it is a huge gamble because as a sportsman you have a different level of good feeling from people which politicians especially over the last five years haven’t generally had.
“But the one thing I’ve always lived by is that the Olympics were something I did, not who I am. And for me I want to test myself and show that there is more to me than a decent physiology for rowing, that I can be on top of a variety of complex issues, which is what you need to be as a European MP.”
Taking part in the World Duathlon championship in Holland, he admits that he is addicted to pushing his limits.
Yet he says the thing he most wants to achieve is to get his personality back: “Probably to hear Bev say, ‘You’re back’, it would be nice to hear that.”
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Episode 2: DAVID WEIR
Tuesday 29th October – 10.00pm-11.00pm“I couldn’t play football, I couldn’t ride a bike, I couldn’t run. This gave me the opportunity to be the best in something.” – Paralympic athlete David Weir
Six-time Paralympic wheelchair gold medallist David Weir talks to Adam Darke about the highs and lows of his sporting life, from fighting taunts in the playground to quadruple success in London last year.
With contributions from his coach Jenny Archer and his mother Jackie, the programme provides a vivid insight into how he overcame his spinal cord transection he was born with which left him unable to use his legs, to become a top-class athlete.
“I don’t even think I’m disabled, because I was brought up to feel like I’m not. My parents never wanted adaptions, they asked me if I wanted them and I said no, in the house.
“I didn’t want it to look like a disabled house – no lowered cupboards, stairlift. I went up and down stairs on my backside and that’s the way I wanted it.
“They taught me at an early age, this won’t stop you, you’ll have a normal life. In sport it was the same thing.”
He said his brothers refused to stand up for him, because they told him that he would have to learn to stand up for himself, in the face of playground taunts.
“They always said to me, ‘You have to fight your own battles if someone is nasty.’ The word I hate is cripple – I don’t think there should be a word. It really gets on my nerves, I used to get really angry when people said that. I used to retaliate.
“Fighting. I’d probably get beaten up but that’s what I did.”
He tells the story of how he got into wheelchair marathons, entering a competition for 12-year-olds when he was just eight: “I didn’t come anywhere but that was it, that was the bug then.”
In 1996, he made the Great Britain Paralympics squad for Atlanta, failing to win a medal in the 100m, 400m or 4x100m relay.
After the games he he walked away from sport because he became disillusioned by competing in an empty stadium, and he talks about his decision: “I just fell out of love with it.
“It was supposed to be the best thing in my life at that time, going to a Paralympics, but it was rubbish.
“We were expecting big crowds but you could count how many people were in the stands, and most of them were team members of other countries who were there.
“It was the worst feeling ever. At the time I didn’t really care. It was only when I got back and I just thought, ‘is there any success in Paralympic sport? Will it ever be good?’ I don’t think so’.
“That’s the way I felt, and then I thought, ‘let’s have a break for a little while.’”
But when he saw the Paralympics four years later in 2000, he regretted his decision: “Then I saw Sydney and seeing the crowds and everyone saying how brilliant the Paralympics is, and I couldn’t stop crying.
“I thought I’d let a lot of people down – my family, my country, everyone at UK athletics and seeing Tanni [Grey-Thompson] winning her medals.
“That was only four years after I thought it was a disaster. I said to myself, and everyone around me, ‘I will never let anyone down again.’”
At Athens in 2004 he won silver in the 100m and bronze in the 200m. Then in 2008, he contracted glandular fever shortly before he was due to compete.
But he explains what drove him to win gold in the 800 and 1,500m plus a silver and a bronze at the games: “The desire to get my first Paralympic gold medal.
“Watching the TV, in the athletics nobody was winning a gold medal. I felt a responsibility as a team member to win at least one gold for the team, even though the way I was feeling I shouldn’t even have medalled.”
His coach Jenny Archer reveals that the pair set even higher targets for London 2012: “We were asked to do a team photo of all the British athletes out there and Peter Eriksson who was the head coach at the time came over and said ‘I’d like to introduce you to the Paralympic Committee’.”
He says, ‘This is Jenny Archer, David Weir’s coach. We’re expecting four gold from David.’ I thought, ‘If that’s what you want, you’re gonna get it.’ So I said to Dave, ‘You fancy a challenge?’ He said ‘Yep.’”
Prior to the games, David says, he was determined to please the crowds by winning plenty of gold medals: “I wanted it to be the best Paralympics ever, in Britain, I think. I knew we could pull it off. I just wanted the Paralympics to be on par with the Olympics and I wanted London to be the first host city to do it.
“I still had little doubts, you still thought maybe ‘Is there going to be a packed crowd?’ But seeing 80,000 people there was an amazing feeling.”
He describes his inner thoughts before the start of the 5,000m final which he famously won: “I knew when I got on that start line – I had to win that race. Not just for myself but for all the people who had supported me over the years who knew and helped me.”
The fact he had become famous through his on-track exploits added to the pressure on him for the final race at the games – the marathon.
He had already won three gold medals and earned the nickname the ‘Weir-Wolf’: “I felt pressure – you know the ‘Weir-Wolf’ thing, everyone on the course had masks and was shouting, I felt like, ‘I have to do it now.’ I couldn’t go away with third or maybe a silver it doesn’t look good. Emotionally I was drained.”
Following his victory in the marathon, he explains his view on athletes who compete at the Paralympics: “You can’t moan about not getting recognition and then when you get it you can’t moan that people are hounding you.
“We’ve wanted it for years… You should love every minute of it.”
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Episode 3: JERMAIN DEFOE
Tuesday 5th November – 10.00pm-11.00pm“When I see the whites of the goalie’s eyes, I just think, ‘Goal’, that’s it – it’s in the back of the net, and I’m celebrating.” – Jermain Defoe
England striker Jermain Defoe talks to Leon Mann about the highs and lows of his career, from scoring for the national team at the World Cup to the deaths of his half-brother, father and cousin within a short space of time.
With contributions from England and Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard, Jermain’s former boss Harry Redknapp, as well as family members, this programme provides a close insight into a footballer who went from a council estate in Stratford to scoring at a World Cup and in the Champions League.
After starting at the well-known Senrab youth team in Wanstead, he controversially moved to West Ham from Charlton, aged 16. Jermain trained with his boyhood hero Ian Wright, who was by then at the East London club and Frank Lampard, who was at the club when he joined, explains ‘Wrighty’s influence.
“He was a young, confident, buzzy kid, he had a bit of the Ian Wrights about him. Ian Wright was at West Ham at the time and you could see Jermain’s eyes open up and follow him.”
But when West Ham were relegated in 2003, Jermain handed in a transfer request less than 24 hours after their demotion was confirmed. He expresses regret about his actions.
“To this day I can imagine West Ham fans look at me and think, ‘Who does he think he is? How can you do that? You’re a Judas.’ And It’s quite sad really because I can honestly say I still love that club.”
Jermain also speaks about moments when headlines about his goals on the back pages have been overshadowed by his love life in the front of newspapers.
“You’re young, you’re successful, you earn a lot of money, you attract girls. Your life changes. If someone says they don’t like the attention they’re lying. I’m only human.”
Jermain signed for Tottenham in 2004, but despite scoring prolifically for club and country, he was not selected for the World Cup in Germany two years later, with 16-year-old Theo Walcott preferred. He speaks about his pain at missing out.
“That was heartbreaking, because I thought I was going. I was the only player that travelled with the squad to Germany then had to leave.”
Having moved from Tottenham to Portsmouth in 2008, he hoped to reignite his scoring spark with former boss Harry Redknapp, and the team promptly won the FA Cup – but without his input as he was cup-tied.
Meanwhile, Spurs won the League Cup. Harry, who later re-signed him for Spurs, says: “I’m sure we would’ve won the cup easier if he had been available, that was for sure. I’ve made him a fortune over the years – I hope he appreciates it. He’s worth every penny.”
After a prolific league season Defoe finally got called up to the England squad for the 2010 World Cup – where he scored in a crucial match against Slovenia. He says his main concern was being selected by manager Fabio Capello.
“So I’m walking up and down in the kitchen, my phone rings, bang – I’ve picked it up. He said ‘Err, yeah, I’m afraid… That you won’t be going on holiday this year because you are coming with us to the World Cup.’ That’s the best thing in the world.”
Defoe has never won a major honour, and he says he hopes to win something before the end of his career, otherwise he will feel he has failed.
“At the end of your career you want to sit back and say, ‘I won this’ or, ‘I won that’ because that’s what it’s all about. You want to be the best.”
But he reveals that the loss of his brother Jade in 2009, followed by his father Jimmy in 2012 and his cousin Hannah later that year, made him reconsider his priorities.
“I’m sitting there thinking, am I dreaming? This can’t be happening, not again. Is there a jinx on the family? It doesn’t make any sense. It changes your mentality completely – the things you think are important are not, the things you make a big deal about you shouldn’t.
“You can only play football for so long, and I believe there’s more to me than that.”
He is seen launching the Jermain Defoe Foundation to support homeless, abused and abandoned children in St Lucia.
“I think I can help people. I don’t want to sit back and think, ‘Okay I’ll do my charity stuff, but that can wait.’ No, I want to do it now.”
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Episode 4: NICOLA ADAMS
Tuesday 12th November – 10.00pm-11.00pm“I almost feel like it was my destiny to go to the Olympics and win gold. Something was always telling me at the back of my mind that you need to stick at at boxing, this is going to be your way out, this is your way to having a better life. Boxing is your path.” – Nicola Adams
Olympic gold medal-winning boxer Nicola Adams talks to Adam Darke about her life in sport, from her tough upbringing in Leeds to achieving her dream at London 2012.
With contributions from trainer Alwyn Belcher, fellow boxer Kid Galahad and her mother Dee, this programme provides a vivid insight into a character who suffered from a lack of funding which nearly forced her to quit boxing, a back injury which set her back several months, yet returned to take Olympic victory over her great rival, Ren Cancan of China.
Nicola reveals that as a youngster she looked up to boxers Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard.
“It was always a big family thing, everyone would sit around and watch the big fights, we’d always have the re-runs on of Muhammad Ali boxing and Sugar Ray Leonard.
“It was really really exciting and watching the fights and seeing the crowd, and how everybody cheers, I was just amazed by it all, especially watching some of Muhammad Ali’s fights back, I just thought wow.
“He gets in there and absolutely destroys all his opponents then outside of the ring he was like totally different person.”
But she didn’t take up the sport until at the age of 13 she was taken to an after-school boxing class, which gave her the opportunity to forget about her parents’ split and her mother’s illness through meningitis.
“Boxing gave me a bit of stability there was other kids there, they might have had a break-up or some sort of problem going on, and it was nice because you go to that gym and you’d leave your problems outside the door.”
Her first bout was a landmark moment, she explains – despite being in unglamorous surroundings.
“I boxed at an old working men’s club. I remember getting warmed up and feeling so good and thinking, ‘I’m going to do that move like Prince Naseem does tonight,’ I’ve gone into the ring and the first round starts and I’m switch hitting, I’m throwing screw shots, I’m doing the Ali shuffle and I just absolutely loved it.”
As her boxing career progressed, she accrued a haul of medals at national, European and World Championship levels.
But Nicola struggled to find funding to continue boxing and had to find work where she could get it – renovating houses and working as a TV extra.
“I knew that it wasn’t an Olympic sport or whether I’d even get any funding from it, I just had this feeling inside that I was gonna make it as a boxer and I’d be able to give my family a good life.
“It was really hard, couldn’t get funding, couldn’t get sponsors, barely got any help from the government body, so it was tough, it was really tough.
“I was doing extra work for Coronation Street and Emmerdale, working behind the scenes, being one of the whisperers in the background.”
In 2009, at the same time as her sport was announced as a 2012 Olympic event, she fell down the stairs at her house and had to sit out boxing for several months.
Her mother explains how demoralised she became: “She wanted to give up when she hurt her back. I then had to say to her, ‘Nicci – you’ve got to get up and get on with it. It’s now in the Olympics, it’s an Olympic sport, and you just can’t throw it away, give it a go.”
Yet she fought back and lost to her main rival, Ren Cancan, in the final of the World Championships in 2010 and then in May 2012. She explains how this drove her on to Olympic gold in London.
“The ten weeks leading up to the games I was like… I really wanted to get the gold medal, I really wanted to beat Ren Cancan – I actually made that my sole goal. In training I wasn’t even thinking about any of my other opponents, I was just thinking about beating Cancan.
“And then there was the knockdown in the second round, I wasn’t expecting her to go down, I was shocked myself – I was like, ‘Bloody hell I’m doing really well here.’ I carried on boxing and I get back to the corner and they’re like, ‘Right, you’re two points up.’ I realised by the end of the fight they were telling me that to keep me focused so I didn’t switch off. I kept my wits about me, she didn’t steal any points back.”
Nicola talks through her emotions at the time: “It was almost like my life was like, the memories were just flashing through my mind of all the hard times the struggles and it was all for that moment. And it was like, ‘I’ve finally finally done it – I’ve finally achieved my dream.’”
But while her achievement resonated on a personal level, she believes the symbolic lift it gave women’s boxing will boost a sport which was only sanctioned by UK boxing authorities in 1997.
“This is time for women’s boxing to come out of the dark ages and into the light, basically, and I just wanted to show everyone what women’s boxing was about.”
Now she says she’s looking to the future: “There are a few little things which are bugging me a little bit, I haven’t had a gold medal in the world championships yet so I really want to get that, and there is a chance that I could get a first in the Commonwealths, so I’d really like to get the full set on that.
“And hopefully go to Rio and do something that no British boxer’s ever done and become a double Olympic champion. So with those goals in mind I’m going to be pretty busy in the next few years.”
After her Olympic gold and receiving an MBE, trainer Alwyn Belcher gives an insight into what drives her:
“She loves the big stage, the bigger the better, she’s a little show-off. Bubbly, bubbly even when she’s boxing you see her dancing, [doing the] Ali shuffle, showgirl.
“She loves the razzmatazz. She’s a pop star isn’t she, a pop star in boxing. Number one.”
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Episode 5: JIMMY WHITE
Tuesday 26th November – 10.00pm-11.00pm“My biggest thrill was just potting balls, you know, from the age of 12. My love for the game hasn’t changed. It’s gone up and down over the years but the love for the game is still there.” – Jimmy White
Snooker legend Jimmy White talks to Adam Darke about his life in sport, from discovering his love for snooker as a youngster to fighting back from testicular cancer and losing five consecutive world finals.
With contributions from five-time world snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan, along with Jimmy’s children Lauren, Breeze, Georgia and Tommy, the programme chronicles the progress of ‘the Whirlwind’ from discovering his natural talent for the sport as a youngster through his years of drinking and gambling to his current small hope of winning that elusive world title.
Jimmy says he discovered snooker after his dad took him to the Devonshire pub in Balham, where he learned to play pool.
After that, he joined a snooker club and realised his aptitude for the sport: “I remember my brother bought me a bike, he said, ‘Do you want a snooker cue or a bike?’
“I was about 13 or 14 and I didn’t know really what I wanted but all my friends had bikes and I [chose] a bike. And the very next day I went down the snooker hall and it got nicked from outside. That sort of made sure then that I was just going to play snooker.”
After progressing through the amateur ranks Jimmy turned professional, joining a sport which pulled in millions of viewers on television.
After he had started gambling at the age of 14, he says he began to enjoy his life in the ‘circus’ of professional sport with the opportunities on offer: “I was getting a lot of attention, getting a lot of money, you know, and having a lot of fun. I would drink too much and I would be out too late. And obviously the gambling, you would be gambling when you’re drunk so you’re making terrible mistakes.
“But I sort of quietened down on the gambling and it went to the nightclubs and messing about, you know, seeing that side of life. There was just a lot of drinking going on.”
But the drinking and the gambling led to a chaotic home life for his then-wife Maureen and their children, he says: ”Me and my wife because of my behaviour, we had an up and down relationship, a love-hate relationship, all the time we would split up, I must have re-furnished 50 flats over the years. But, you know, she’s a wonderful woman, a wonderful mother.”
In the meantime, his snooker career went from strength to strength as his natural talent began to blossom. In 1984, he lost his first world snooker final to Steve Davis, who he describes as his toughest opponent.
He describes his emotions after losing the final: “I lost to Steve Davis 18-16. I wasn’t bothered at all. In my mind, I thought there was no problem at all. Because I just thought it was close enough – he won 18-16 and he fell over the line.”
But on reflection, he says his drinking and gambling may have prevented him from winning and dominating the sport: “No disrespect to the players that I beat but my preparation was bad.
“Obviously if I had my time again I would have prepared better and I would have won more tournaments but there was no balance at all. I was pretty selfish in the way that I thought that if I practiced I could still drink and party.”
Jimmy’s hero was Alex Higgins, a double world champion who helped bring the sport to its peak of popularity in the 1980s, and who Jimmy helped in his ailing later years.
Ronnie O’Sullivan describes how White and Higgins electrified the sport at the time: “He literally was like the first rock star snooker player, along with Alex Higgins, they were very different but in their charisma they were the same, because they were like the peoples’ champion, if you like. They played with their hearts on their sleeves. I think [Alex] looked to Jimmy as a younger brother and someone who would carry on the mantle from him.”
Jimmy went on to lose the world snooker final to Stephen Hendry in 1990, 1992, 1993 and 1994, and was defeated by John Parrott in 1991.
He describes the agony of losing to Hendry in 1994: “I got myself in a winning situation and then twitched. It was 17 each with him and I twitched on the black. I rushed the black. Even when I lost I would have grown men crying in my hotel rooms and that. I got as much excitement from playing the way I played as the people watching it. And as the years went by I think they started to feel sorry for me, keep getting beat.”
Jimmy developed testicular cancer in 1995, but managed to beat the disease. Yet six months later he lost his brother Martin to cancer, and four months after that, his mother died.
He says: “One minute you’re going along, everything’s wonderful, and then all of a sudden you walk into cancer and it just knocks you for six. I was very lucky, I didn’t have to go through much treatment, just an operation.”
Yet he found solace in going away to tournaments which meant he could drink and gamble, which took him away from his family.
Eldest daughter Lauren explains how she learned to cope with him: “I basically have to tell him off like he’s my child all the time, which is annoying, but that’s my character anyway. I’m sort of in charge and he has to sometimes say to me, ‘You’re not my mother!’ I don’t want to be his mother either, but because he does have these tendencies he’s quite easily bossed around.”
Now Jimmy says he’s off the alcohol, the cigarettes and the gambling and gets his thrills through playing snooker.
He also retains a small hope that one day the world title will one day be his: “You know, to get to six [world] finals of a game like snooker playing the style that I do is a feat in itself. If I didn’t think I could win I wouldn’t play. Realistically, you know my boat has sailed.”
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Episode 6: ERIC BRISTOW
Tuesday 3rd December – 10.00pm-11.00pm“Ever since I’ve been 16, 15, that’s all I’ve been doing, playing darts. Getting in cars, getting on trains, getting on planes, playing in venues, different venues. About the most I go without playing darts is about a week. Even when I go on holiday I have a practice. It’s in my blood.” – Eric Bristow
Darts legend Eric Bristow talks to Gabriel Clarke about his life in sport, from winning three successive darts world titles to losing his nerve through dartitis and last year’s appearance in the celebrity jungle.
With contributions from his protege, 16 times world champion Phil Taylor, darts commentator Wayne Mardle and Keith Deller, who shocked Bristow by beating him for the world title in 1983, the programme chronicles the progress of the ‘Crafty Cockney’ from hustling darts games for money as a teenager to the pinnacle of his sport.
Eric says he used to challenge men to games of darts in pubs in his area of North London, which he would then go on to win.
This sometimes annoyed the older men, he reveals: “I didn’t give a monkey’s then, I was a young fit lad, mate. I didn’t worry I didn’t worry about who I went up against, I never ran. You start running, you run the rest of your life. I mean, I used to walk about with a claw hammer, he was my best friend, the claw hammer. He got me home loads of times.
“I knew I didn’t want to be stuck in Stoke Newington for the rest of my life, hanging about with idiots. That wasn’t for me. I wanted to go out and have a look around.”
e developed a style of throwing the dart with his ‘pinkie’ finger lifted, which he became famous for.
He says: “Most people hold them like a pen, that just didn’t feel right for me, so that [little finger] stuck out. And so that’s why my dad didn’t want to take me down the pub because he didn’t want his son looking like a whatever.
“What was funny about it was as I started becoming popular on TV, when I used to go around the pubs and clubs people have got their fingers sticking out. They are thinking maybe it helps them play better, and that used to tickle me.”
As Bristow’s profile grew as a darts player, the sport began to gain in popularity as it featured on ITV’s Indoor League.
Wayne Mardle says he came along at just the right time: “Who did I want to win back then? It was always Eric. He was the Kevin Keegan of the time, he was the man.”
Bristow’s innate confidence, which showed at the oche and in interviews, meant he wasn’t always the most popular player with supporters and other players, however.
But he says all he cared about was winning – starting with the 1980 world championship against Bobby George.
“I was never going to be like a Jimmy White, who would choke every time. I was going to win it. I was too good not to win it.”
But Keith Deller reveals Eric’s arrogance was designed to get into the other players’ heads: “He didn’t care, it was all about winning to Eric. I would come to the venues and say, ‘See that trophy, lads? That’s going in my car tonight.’ We hated it. We were all saying, ‘You’ve got to get him, you’ve got to take him out.’ End of the night, he took the trophy home.”
As the sport exploded in popularity thanks to the TV coverage, Eric defended his title in 1981 against John Lowe. In 1983, he came up against Keith Deller, who hadn’t been on television before, in the final.
The resulting victory for Deller with a memorable 138 final checkout was the biggest upset in darts championship history. While Eric hated the defeat at the time, now he plays with Deller in exhibition matches and says the pair maintain a friendly rivalry – particularly when it comes to signing autographs.
“He winds me up, he still does, he winds me up. He signs, ‘Keith Deller’ and he signs, ‘138.’ So I put, ‘Eric Bristow,’ and I put ‘MBE.’”
After three more world championship wins between 1984 and 1986, he suddenly lost the ability to release the dart at the point where he needed to to hit the board – a psychological condition known as dartitis. That meant he never won the world title again, and had to rethink his life.
“If the game you love doing all of a sudden you can’t do any more, then you have to think, ‘Hang on a minute, I might not be able to do exhibitions here.’ So what do you do at the age of 30 or whatever? Become a postman?”
While other darts players struggled with alcohol, such as Jocky Wilson, Eric says he had no trouble staying off the drink when not playing darts.
However, he says he also had the ability to spend the vast sums he was earning: “By the time I was 25 or 26 I would have earned a million but if you looked in the bank account it’s not there because I’ve spent it. Oh yeah, that’s what it’s there for. I don’t want to be the richest bloke in the graveyard. Look at Elvis.”
In 1988, he discovered a darts player called Phil Taylor in a club in Stoke-on-Trent, and took him under his wing as a mentor. Now a 16-time world champion and the sport’s best-known player, Taylor says Eric changed his mindset: “Winning, that’s what he taught me. How to win. I could play well, but I wasn’t a winner.”
Then in 1993, furious at the amounts they were being paid Eric and other top darts players broke away from the sport’s governing body, the British Darts Organisation (BDO), and set up their own, which became the current Professional Darts Corporation (PDC).
The BDO chairman at the time has since said the players weren’t ‘owed a living’. But Eric says: “I feel brilliant that we have split away and opened the door for this lot. We were getting peanuts. They all said we did wrong doing it but look at it now, I mean the money involved. And it’s just starting now because it’s going to go worldwide.”
Away from the oche, Eric was accused of assaulting his wife in 2005, of which he was later cleared. He says: ”It all comes after the darts goes and everything else, and then your marriage goes. I got done for assault which I didn’t do. It was thrown out, it was a load of nonsense, you know what I mean? I lost my house, so I didn’t win anyway, did I?”
Eric appeared on the ITV entertainment show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! in 2012, which meant he found a new set of fans. He says: “I’m known as the jungle man now, not as a darts player. I’m signing autographs for 14 and 15-year-olds who have never even seen me play darts. Crackers.”
He now hopes that he has given something back to the sports he loves: “Hopefully I’ve given something back to darts, which has been brilliant to me. Hopefully I made it a bit popular when I first started, I was part of the breakaway, and I also created a monster, so I think I’ve done a little bit. And if you don’t like it, up yours.”
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Episode 7: DIDIER DROGBA
Tuesday 10th December – 11.15pm-12.15am“I think finals are there to be won, you know the feeling of losing a final is really bad. I prefer to lose a semi-final, quarter-final because I know I will forget… But the feeling of losing a final stays here forever. Even if you win two, three, four, five it stays. You know, I’m too scared to lose, so I give everything to win.” – Didier Drogba
Footballer Didier Drogba talks to Ned Boulting about his sporting life – from his beginnings in football in France having moved from the Ivory Coast as a child, to signing for Chelsea for a then-record £24 million, winning the Champions League and his efforts to bring peace to his war-torn home country, Ivory Coast.
Featuring contributions from colleagues, friends and family, including his former manager Jose Mourinho and captain John Terry, this programme provides a close view into what drives Didier to succeed.
After moving from Ivory Coast to France as a youngster he was inspired by the progress of his uncle Michel, a professional footballer in the French league: “He was the one who gave me the [passion] for football. Being with him going to the training session, watching the joy of them scoring goals I don’t know and running everywhere, it just gave me the passion for it.”
After turning professional at Le Mans, the striker moved on to Guingamp and then to Marseille, helping the club to the 2004 UEFA Cup Final.
When Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea came in to sign him, he says was so settled at the French club he didn’t actually want to leave: “I’m not ready to move, I don’t want to move. It’s not just because it was Chelsea, if any other team came, I would have had the same reaction, I was very emotional, and It was like I started something with Marseille and I didn’t even finish it.
“I wanted to win the league with Marseille, I wanted to score a lot of goals, I wanted to break records, really wanted to make history with the club. So for me it was like it was stopping me in my progress. So it was a bit frustrating. It was more frustration because I had to leave, and also both clubs agreed, when I was like, ‘No I don’t want to go.’ That is football.”
Initially Didier admits he had a difficult time adjusting and wasn’t popular with fans or the media, but he says he made a resolution to fight on.
Chelsea promptly won the Premier League twice in a row, in 2004-05 and 2005-06, dominating other teams with their expensively-assembled team of stars including Hernan Crespo.
Arjen Robben, Damien Duff, Frank Lampard and Michael Essien. Didier says his favourite season was the second time they won the title: “All of us were really friends, but friends in competition for the best of the club, and I think it was the best season of, let’s say, the Jose Mourinho era.
“The first time is always the best, but I think we enjoyed, we really enjoyed the second one, and also the year with Carlo in 2010, but really the 2005-2006 one was the best.”
Meanwhile, as Didier’s fame grew, his national team Ivory Coast qualified for the 2006 World Cup.
With his team-mates, he made a plea to both parties in the country’s civil war, asking them to lay down their arms, which was answered with a cease fire.
He says: “All these people who are fighting when they watch the national team’s games they are sitting together and cheering together
“So, we were thinking we want peace in our country, we really want peace because what we are seeing like curfews and everything and this is not the way we are used to know our country, so we said if we qualify we are going to send this message because we are tired of this, we really want to have our country back so that is where it came from.”
In 2008, Chelsea reached the final of the Champions League against Manchester United in Moscow. Drogba scored twice as the Blues beat Liverpool in the semi-final but was sent off during extra time in the final after slapping Nemanja Vidic
That meant he watched John Terry miss the final penalty which handed the trophy to United, from the tunnel at the other end of the pitch.
Didier says when Carlo Ancelotti came in as manager, he was inspired to his biggest haul of goals in a season – with 37 in 44 appearances in all competitions – on the way to Chelsea winning the league title again.
He says: “He helped us to play a different football, a bit more attractive than what we were doing previously and also for a personal point I was like, he put two players behind me, to feed me, like he said to feed me with balls. So it was an incredible year for me and I think I was at my best on that time.”
Two years later, Chelsea reached the Champions League final against Bayern Munich in the German team’s stadium.
Didier, who scored the equaliser which took the game into extra time, recalls how he felt about the match: “I don’t know how to explain even now why I was so relaxed and confident about this game, even when they were attacking and shooting from everywhere, the fact that they didn’t score in the first half even 20 minutes after the first half, I knew we were going to have a special night.”
In his final act as a Chelsea player, he then scored the winning penalty in the 4–3 penalty-shootout that followed, firing the ball into the bottom left corner.
When Didier returns to Ivory Coast to work with his foundation, which builds hospitals and clinics and helps orphanages. he says he is treated like a celebrity.
But that’s not how he sees himself: “First of all I don’t see myself as a superstar, I see myself as a normal guy, one of these guys who had more chances, who was lucky to have his parents behind him to give him the chance to have a good chance in life.
“So when I go there I don’t know, I always feel that I was lucky to have met that journey because a lot of them some people are better than me, some of the guys there that are playing are much better than me but they didn’t have the chance I had so I do not see myself as a superstar.”
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Episode 8: CHRIS EUBANK
Tuesday 17th December – 10.00pm-11.00pm“My job isn’t just to fight. A fight is a show. That’s entertainment. The world is a stage and we are all actors. Here I am.” – Chris Eubank
Boxer Chris Eubank talks to Gabriel Clarke about his life in sport – from growing up on the streets of Peckham to defending his world title eighteen times, taking in iconic and in one case tragic fights against Michael Watson and Nigel Benn.
With contributions from friends and family including promoter Barry Hearn, son Chris Eubank Jr and boxing correspondent Colin Hart, this programme provides a close insight into what drove Chris to be a world champion boxer, an outspoken character who was at one time said to be the most hated man in his sport.
As a youngster, Chris says he idolised his mother, who left London to live in New York when he was eight, and says she provided him with the tough mindset he needed growing up.
At 14, he found himself living on the streets of Peckham, sleeping rough in cars: “I was never a bad boy, I was a rude boy. My mum used to call it a ‘fly by night’ – a wannabe. A Bengal Lancer. A chancer. I was born to love, only the environment was mean-spirited and it was unkind. You have to toughen up, you have to get some teeth, and if you don’t you get moved to the side and behind.”
His father told him he needed to go and live with his mother in the tough South Bronx area of New York to get away from bad influences in the capital: “My father said, ‘You go and live with your mother, otherwise you’re going to end up in prison in this country.’ That’s the best thing that happened for me because I was able to get away from influence and started boxing and forging my way through the hazardous life of a fighter.”
He joined the Jerome Boxing Club in the Bronx, winning early prizes before turning professional. It was his relationship with his three older brothers which he says drove him to succeed: “It is what defined me, you know, I was fighting for respect. It wasn’t money I was fighting for. I wanted them to respect me.”
Boxing correspondent Colin Hart says the young Eubank came across as a driven individual: “I was at the Albert Hall covering a night’s boxing and this young man came up to me and said, ‘My name is Chris Eubank, when are you going to start writing about me?’ And I said, ‘Well Chris, when you’ve done something worth writing about, I will write about you.’ I didn’t realise I was going to spend 20 years not stopping writing about him.”
When he beat the world-ranked Anthony Logan, he came to the attention of boxing promoter Barry Hearn, who says: “His opening words to me were, ‘Mr Hearn I’m a fighter, I know my value.’ We clicked on day one. All I saw was ‘X’ factor, stardust, his swagger, his self-confidence. I didn’t even know if he could fight. It didn’t really seem to matter.”
Chris set his sights on fighting Nigel Benn, another rising star in boxing. When he described boxing as a ‘mug’s game’ due to the dominance of promoters and television executives he became very unpopular with fighters and fans.
He says now: “I’m doing the work, taking and absorbing copious amounts of pressure and pain, so when you say, ‘Bite the hand that feeds you,’ I’m the person doing the work. Without the fighter, there is no game.”
When he got his dream fight against Benn in Birmingham in November 1990. Chris portrayed himself as aloof and arrogant, in one television appearance refusing to face his opponent by turning away his chair.
Benn admitted that he ‘hated’ Chris, which Eubank believes won him the psychological battle prior to the fight. “What won me that particular battle was that when he would have walked out of the studio, he would have felt a little bit uncomfortable with the fact that he has stated a personal feeling.
“Now if Nigel had won those psychological fights it would have given him the benefit of being able to persist that little bit longer, and it’s that little bit longer that makes you champion.”
Benn was stopped on his feet towards the end of round nine, and Eubank took his WBO world title. He says: “And at that moment? Exoneration. I had won. I had won. I had won what I wanted from my brothers. You can’t deny me that now.”
Thanks to his public image – including vaulting into the ring to Tina Turner’s ‘Simply The Best’ – when it came to defending his title against Michael Watson at Earls Court in June 1991, Chris had alienated many in the sport and by his own admittance was seen as a villain: “People say I was arrogant. Nothing arrogant about standing strong and being proud. I’m a warrior. I’m not a chameleon.”
Chris won narrowly on points, though many thought Watson should have taken his title. In September that year, a rematch was organised at White Hart Lane.
Eubank was behind in the fight, and was knocked to the floor by Watson in the 11th round. But when he got up, he threw a devastating uppercut, knocking Watson backwards into the ropes.
Watson collapsed in his corner after the fight and spent 40 days in a coma with brain injuries, before undertaking a long road to recovery.
Chris recalls: “Once my knee touched the canvas it was like I was okay. The concussion had gone. I got up, I got up and I spat and I remember the audience hovering. It was my peripheral vision and my perception. They were hovering for my demise. I went forward… And I threw a shot. You know the truth was in me. I defy any person to find five or six other fights like it in the history of boxing.”
Following the fight, Barry Hearn says Chris lost his instinct to finish other boxers off and preferred to win on points.
Yet the fighter wanted to carry on – as he said he needed the money. A second fight with Benn, nicknamed ‘Judgement Day’ was organised at Old Trafford for October 1993, with a massive worldwide audience.
The pair fought out a draw, but Chris says Benn was much better than in their first fight: “Five hundred million people watched that fight. You could say that there was still a psychological game going on. I had him where I wanted him. That’s what I thought.”
In the meantime, Chris’s outrageous public persona was taking off, fuelled by the purchase of a massive American truck, and a magazine photoshoot in which he dressed as an English country gentleman: “Jodhpurs, it’s just fashion. The monocle, that affectation is just the icing on the cake and it’s confused, because I’m doing something which looks caucasian or old English and yes I am a person of this particular colour but that’s why it was so much fun. I am at this point trailblazing so I’m really in unknown territory. I’m really leading the way. I’m really the beacon.”
After losing to Steve Collins in 1995, Chris retired, only to return to the ring the next year before being defeated by Joe Calzaghe and Carl Thompson in his final fights. Suddenly he found the public had affection for him, and he speaks of his surprise: “This was in ‘98. In ‘91 didn’t I show this heart? But you only recognised it when I lost. Strange, but wonderful.”
Despite this, he says he is thankful for everything that boxing has given him and says he gets a great deal of happiness through recognition now: “I realise that every day, when people they hold you and shake you. That’s my honour. That’s why half a billion people watched the second fight I had with Nigel Benn. I was being a warrior. Even when they were against me, I was entertaining them.”
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