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John Lowe (Old Stoneface or Gentleman John)

John Lowe was born in the village of New Tupton, near Chesterfield, on July the 21st 1945. He is married to a lady called Karen and has two children from a previous marriage, a boy and a girl who are both now grown up. He calls himself  a family man even though his darts takes him all over the country and sometimes even the world, resulting in many overnight stays away from home. "I have been to Russia five times and actually stepped inside The Kremlin when the Cold War was on!" One of the real gentlemen of British sport, Lowe has won just about everything there is to win. He is celebrating an incredible 30 years as a Darts professional and has also just passed another notable milestone – his 60th birthday.

Unlike a good number a professional darters who began their careers in the 1970s, John, is still competing at the top level, still playing against – and often beating – the very best. He has appeared in world championship finals every year since 1978. He is still the only man to win the World Championship in three different decades. His partnership with Unicorn has spanned an amazing 33 years and is almost certainly the longest running sponsorship deal in any sport, anywhere in the world. It is only three years ago that Lowe came close to beating Team Unicorn favourite Phil Taylor in the semi-finals of the World Matchplay at Blackpool.

John promotes darts the world over as part of Team Unicorn and as part of his activities he is hosting a darts festival in Barbados later in the year.

 

The year before last (2005), John Lowe and Eric Bristow were given the honour of being the first two stars to be named in the PDC Darts Hall of Fame.

In 1984 he set a new milestone in darts when he was playing on  television in the MFI World Matchplay Championship. During the  competition he hit a 9 dart 501 game which was the first in such a recorded televised competition. His scores for that game were 180, 180 and 141( Treble17, Treble 18 and Double18.) He pocketed a cool £102,000 for that one game. Nowadays, that would equate to a staggering £350,000.

Since then John Lowe has won most of the major titles around the  country with a tally of several hundred competitions including  The World Masters, The World Matchplay and The World Championship. He has played for and indeed has Captained England many times in  his career. As an added string to his bow he wrote a column in the Daily Star for many years.

Last October, there was another milestone for the great man, with the publication of his autobiography, ‘Old Stoneface – The Autobiography of John Lowe." The book is being billed as explosive and revealing. “It took a year to write and a week for the libel lawyers to proof read,” Lowe revealed. Although in the pipeline for a long time, it was not until the summer of 2004 that John was able to schedule the time to write this, his fourth book. John says, “The first two books were basically ‘how to play’ and consisted of passing on my skills and knowledge to my readers. The third book ‘The John Lowe Story – Inside Pro Darts with the World Champion’ was my first stab at autobiography and took my story up to 1987.”

John’s autobiography ‘Old Stoneface – The Autobiography of Britain’s Greatest Darts Player’ – in hardback priced at £17.99 - will be published by John Blake in October and orders can be placed by contacting John Blake Publishing, 3 Bramber Court, 2 Bramber Road, London, W14 9PB (0207 381 0666) (website http://www.blake.co.uk/.)  Alternatively, copies signed by John will be available shortly via his web site http://www.john-lowe.net/

I did meet John Lowe many years ago when I was in my early twenties at Lea Hall club. It was an exhibition match and I managed to get my name pushed foreword to play against him.  The game was 1001 instead of the usual 301 and this was supposed to separate the men from the boys. Coming down I matched him score for score but when we got to about 200 I got nervous and threw some crap letting him win. After the game he said to me that if I learnt to lose and did not get so worked up about it I might make a decent darts player one day. Since then I have had a lot of experience (Of losing!) but I still can't play.