In 1982, Wilson was temporarily banned from competing in darts tournaments after he allegedly threw a punch at an official during a championship. This was taken as a reaction to Jocky's being under intense pressure at the time of the Falklands War, as he was married to an Argentine woman named Malvina (the Argentine name for the Falkland Islands is "Islas Malvinas"). He was soon allowed back into professional competitions again.
Wilson was a constant sweet-eater and generally refused to brush his teeth ("My Gran told me the English poison the water"); he had lost his last tooth by the age of 28. Following his 1982 World title win, he paid £1,200 for dentures, but never took to them. They made him belch when drinking, he complained.[4]
Date: July 16th, 2022 8:06 AM Author: Ivory ratface idea he suggested
People called him a character and loved him for it, but that character was hard won. Because his mother could not cope with her many children, he spent 14 years in a children's home on the grey North Sea in Elie; his brother Tom was abused by the principal, though all Jocky had to say about it was that he had won the pole-vault there. A spell in the army was followed by drudging poverty: digging and delivering coal (he was black as a sweep when he first met his wife Malvina), chopping the fins off fish, Malvina picking potatoes when he had no work. Darts were a way to get shillings in pubs to buy a pint. But he practised until he was good enough to win £500 at the Butlin's holiday camp in Ayr, and found a job for life.
The winnings poured in as he toured round the country in his Volvo and his caravanette. Then they poured out again. He bought a £40,000 bungalow in a nice part of Kirkcaldy, but filled the garden with empties until the neighbours asked him to move. More than £1,000 of his world-champ earnings went on a pair of false teeth, but he never got on with them, and would take them out publicly to play. He bought a fishing boat in which he would escape, disguised in a bobble hat, out into the Firth of Forth, but had to sell it, and ran up tax bills he never expected. He played his last match, like his first, at Butlin's, and ended his days on benefit in a tiny council flat, much as he had started.
And yet when darts fans thought of Jocky, what they remembered was his smile: huge, toothless and ecstatic, with his pudgy arms raised in victory on either side. It was the smile of a man who has triumphed over considerable odds; and also the smile of a Scot who has just whumped an Englishman.