Lighting a fire in the darkness

It was with great sadness to learn that JC has passed away, aged 70, after a long and brave battle with cancer.  John was one of the finest UK players of the last 30 years, and a man of tremendous eloquence and insouciant charm who enriched the lives of many.

Although the noble game of Bridge claimed him in his latter years, between circa 1995-2013 UK backgammon was quasi spear-headed by Clarky, with Jooles Fetterlein as the McCartney to his Lennon.  They both did much to keep us respectable on the world stage and John’s epic defeat of the legendary Jerry Grandell at the Nordic Open in ’96 was viewed as a shock and turned heads.  Maybe the UK could play after all?

John was acutely aware that British backgammon was not quite making the best of a lasting job with its lack of structure and governance for most of his career, and he was forever trying to light his own small fire in the darkness, to solve an inscrutable problem.  It wasn’t just our malaise:  the sharks and hustlers had done their best to kill off backgammon in the ’70s and ’80s and it was an awful long road back, one that is still being travelled.   He latched on to and heavily supported the Gammonitis tour which threatened to grow into something quite special, and its venues, often at aristocratic halls near Oxford, suited his style.

John then branched into TV presenting and commentating with Andy Bell’s WSOB, and satellite Poker channels with much pioneering work done to take backgammon to a wider audience.  A fine matchplayer, John’s main love though was the rough and tumble world of Chouette.  He led the Hampton Wick and then Battersea Backgammon Club, one of the toughest in the world, for over 15 years.  On just my third visit I found myself getting schooled by Paul Magriel.

A Wild and Crazy Night

I first met John there in August 2004, and a few days later, 32 of us decamped to Holborn on a sultry evening for the mother of all-night benders.  A £500 entry tournament, sponsored by Betfair, no clocks, start at 8pm finish at 6am.  Great Danes flew in.  I drew one and sent him packing, but then crashed.  The semi-final was pure backgammon rock and roll: John vs Murray Sharp, the Keith Richards lookalike with piercing sapphire glims, and a notorious bad boy of the scene.  Back and forth they traded trash-talk & wisecracks, both chaining it on the cigs, before a somewhat more straitlaced finalist called Barkwill demanded they be extinguished.  I was hooked.

The BBC – a whirlwind of emotion

John led Battersea with tremendous flair, and hundreds passed through its doors down the years.  He was a strict but kindly nurse and didn’t suffer fools gladly.  When a couple of young hotshots in the ’90s were thrown out for suspected collusion, some bad blood was spilled.  Some 25 years later I asked one of them about it in a bar.  “Oh, of course we were colluding.  But why wouldn’t you?  Doesn’t everyone?”  Errr, no.

The richness of Battersea was backgammon at its most barn-storming, and there was only so much John could do for the faint of heart or slender bankroll.  But he did all he could, and for a decade we had a player from the local “Care home for the needy”.  Inappropriate?  Not a bit of it.  I never really saw him go down for much, if anything, and often he’d just observe, his day immeasurably enriched.  There will have been some subtle behind the scenes string-pulling there by John, but I got no such favours, and my Coutts and Co checkbook was a fatal blunder from the off.  I swiftly switched banks!  When eventually I could take the emotional violence of Battersea no more I marched into the park and hurled my bespoke, custom-made, initialed doubling cube into the trees.  JC was appalled:  “what have you done?  That was a sacred artifact, and enriched so many lives!”

“Yeah, well now it can enrich a raccoon [it had met many], who I hope chokes on it.”

A ledg

The term legend is sprinkled about too easily, but that’s the word that has often cropped up in my recent correspondence.  Here are some notes from two of our most prominent players:

Another notes of his debut in Hampton Wick, and alluded to John’s ribald joshing:  “It was late into the night, I was about £1,000 down, in the box, and JC cubed, saying, ‘rip out his kidneys!’  I felt like bursting into tears!  But I was back the next week of course, and we became extremely close friends.”

At the heart of it, JC simply loved the game.  As he noted to an interviewer:  “The reason I like backgammon so much is it’s only the second thing I never got bored with.”  But he met his match in the banter stakes here with the interlocuter, a professional Glaswegian comedian, who shot back:

“And do you still cook?”

John Clark died on September 8^th, and is survived by his wife and two sons, aged 7 & 11.  Following a private funeral there will be a gathering at The Rising Sun in Richmond on October 14, from 6pm.  A Gofundme to remember John and to leave a legacy to his young sons may be found here