“Daley Thompson beat me in the weightlifting but I came first overall and he came third. I beat him in all the other events. We swam against each other, we lifted weights against each other. We did arm dips and squat thrusts against each other. That was a memorable time because he was a phenomenal athlete.”
Up against the two-time Olympic decathlon gold medalist, Brian Jacks showed who was boss in the TV show that made him a household name in the late 1970s and early 1980s. If you ask people of a certain generation to name the person they associate with arm dips and squat thrusts, there is a very high chance they will name Brian Jacks. The Londoner set world records in those exercises, with 118 arm dips in one minute, and 101 squat thrusts.
Jacks had been a very successful judo athlete, winning gold at two European Championships, bronze at the World Championships and, perhaps most memorably, bronze at the 1972 Olympic Games.
But it was the TV series Superstars that earned him celebrity throughout Great Britain. Up against established stars like Thompson, Kevin Keegan and Lyn Davies, it was Jacks who came up trumps by winning the competition that pitted athletes against each other in 10 different events.
Jacks’ single-minded approach to the event drove him to victory in 1979 and 1980, coming out on top against some much more famous rivals. When he was given the opportunity to appear on the show, Jacks was not just in it to take part.
“I got together with my dad and said, let’s write a proper programme. There were 10 sports in The Superstars, so I bought myself a bicycle and a canoe. I trained like mad for four months, only because I didn’t want to look like the other two judo players who had been on the programme.
“I didn’t want to come fourth, fifth or sixth, so I went to all the best people. I spoke to Ron Keeble, who had been an Olympic medalist in cycling. I went to Precious McKenzie to learn how to do weightlifting properly. I also went to the best canoeists.
“When I trained for the Superstars, I would ride my bike for 10-15 miles one morning, as fast as I could. The next morning I would run for 5-6 miles. I would do 400 arm dips every day. I would do 400-500 squat thrusts every day.”
But the opportunity to become a genuine superstar may have passed him by. The first time he was invited, he turned it down. When he was asked a second time, he was forced to make a risky decision. Having qualified as a P.E. instructor, Jacks was just setting out in his post-judo career when the BBC came calling.
“I applied for a job at Woolwich College. The principal noted that I had been a competitor at the Olympics so how could he know that I would dedicate my time to the college and the students and that I wouldn’t go off and start training and asking for time off. I said that I could assure him that I had finished doing judo. I assured him that I would not ever ask him for time off.
“He gave me the job and some nine months later, I got a phone call from the BBC, asking me to go into the Superstars the week after next. I said there was no way I was going to do that. I told them that if they wanted me to do it, they had to give me at least three months' notice. They said ok and thank you, and asked Neil Adams and David Strarbrook - two other judo athletes - to do it instead.
“They got back to me and asked if I would like to be in the next series. Neil and Dave didn’t do very well, or as well as I expected and I think they expected, because they went into it very quickly and didn’t do any preparation.
“I went to the head of department at the college and told him I had been invited to be on The Superstars and that I would like to do it. He said I couldn’t have the time off, so I handed in my notice.”
While Jacks managed to find the best coaches for some of the 10 required disciplines, he was forced to take a different approach to the two gym exercises that earned him so much fame.
“I needed to learn how to do the arm dips properly. First of all, where do you go to get an arm dip machine? There are none around. So I went to the local park, put two park benches back-to-back, and I did the arm dips with my knees bent. I improvised.
“What I realised was that if l leaned forward a bit - instead of taking all of my weight by pushing up and down vertically, I could push at an angle of about 45 degrees. Because you’re at an angle, you can flick your legs, which will help push you back up again.
“With a squat thrust, all you have to do is bring your feet over one line and then over the other line. Each time you take your feet over the two lines, you get a score of one. So you’re in a press-up position and you move your feet backwards and forwards. I looked at it mechanically. Mechanically speaking, if you’re in a press-up position and you come up on your fingertips, you are four or five inches higher. And if you are higher, your legs will come through quicker and more easily than if you’re flat on your hands.
“Also if you jump from one place to another, it’s not as effective as if you slide your feet over the line. The rule was to go over the two lines, it didn’t specify how you did it. So I came up on my fingertips and slid my feet over the lines. To make it easier, I put a special material onto the shoe that allowed it to slide over any surface.
While Jacks is most famous for his excellence in the gym, he was also unbeatable on the water.
“I never lost a canoe race because I went to the best canoeists and asked them to teach me how to do it. When I first went out onto the lake, my trainer watched and told me that I had the power, but not the stride. So he taught me the stride - how to reach out into the water going forward. The further you reached forward, the more water you could bring backwards.
“In the Superstars, there were 10 different events, so I had to do 10 different types of training. But I enjoyed it a lot.”
However, while the show may have been enjoyable, Jacks’ sudden rise to fame was challenging. From being a sports teacher at a college, he was being watched by millions on primetime TV. His celebrity would eventually lead to an appearance on This is Your Life - a show that had featured Muhammad Ali a few years beforehand.
“In the evening Superstars was first shown with me in it, I was coming back from teaching judo at a little course that I did. On the way back, I stopped for a burger at McDonald’s at about 8:30 or 9 o’clock in the evening.
“I knew it was on the TV but I didn’t realise how big it was. And I got mobbed in McDonald’s by people who had just seen me on the telly. Life just changed from that moment onwards. I went home that night after signing autographs in McDonald’s.
“When I got up the next morning, there were six or seven photographers outside my home. I had to go out through my back fence because I didn’t want to talk to them. Life changed very quickly and to adapt to that was very difficult because people wanted your time.
“About nine years after Superstars finished, I’d had enough of being nice to people. It was getting me down a bit because people wanted your time all the time. That’s when I decided I would come to live in Thailand, which was 26 years ago, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Jacks’ journey to this point had started back in the 1950s, with his dad triggering an interest in the Japanese martial art.
“My father started judo because he was a taxi driver and he wanted to keep fit and learn to defend himself. He introduced me to it when I was eight or nine years old. I got into judo when he took me to a competition he was competing in - the London taxi drivers versus the Metropolitan Police.
“At that competition, he lined up against the policeman and at that time, in the mid-1950s, policemen had to be a minimum of six feet tall. When the taxi drivers lined up against the police, they all looked much smaller. When you’re a young child, you see your dad fighting someone who’s much bigger and beating him, it motivated me to do judo.
The focus and discipline that brought Jacks success in Superstars was evident from an early age, and he soon headed east to learn judo from the country of its origin.
“My dad decided that, because it was an up and coming sport, maybe I would like to go to Japan and learn more about the real martial art instead of what people had brought to the UK. And I ended up going to Tokyo on my 15th birthday alone. I stayed there for just under two years, then went back home and got into the British Olympic team at the age of 17. I went back to Tokyo to take part in the 1964 Olympics and came 8th.”
Life in Japan, just 16 years after the end of World War II was not always easy, but it was embraced by Jacks despite his youth.
“It was very daunting. I arrived there in 1961 and people would look at me with my blond hair and come and touch my hair. At that particular time, I felt very out of place. I learned very quickly to speak the language. I lay in bed and I had these big sheets of paper that I stuck to the ceiling with Japanese writing. If I didn’t learn this, I wouldn’t have been able to get from one train station to another.
“Going to the judo hall, there were at least 80-200 people on the judo mat who were all over the age of 18. They were university students of around 19-21 years old. Getting beaten up and thrown around was very hard but it was also how I learned.”
Being a successful judo athlete was not a money-spinning career, so Jacks realised that he had to work to make ends meet.
“In 1965, a friend of mine worked in a nightclub in London. I was asked to work in a club called Birdland. After I finished training around 9:30 in the evening, I would go straight to the club. I worked on the door, just opening the door and greeting people. And I would train the next day again. The owner came in one day and asked if I would like to be the assistant manager. And I went from that to becoming manager at Birdland and then at Samantha’s - a place on New Burlington Street in the West End. I worked there for about two-and-a-half years.
“Then I went to my second Olympics in 1968. When I came home, I decided that I would train full-time for the 1972 Olympics. I gave up the job, and my dad took care of me.”
But when the time came to give up competitive judo and get a “proper job”, Jacks chose teaching and encountered the father of one of the most famous people on the planet.
“I decided that I needed a proper job because I realised that judo wasn’t going to pay my way in life, so I went to Avery Hill College in Eltham to do a three-year teacher training course. The head of department there was Joe Jagger - Mick Jagger’s father.”
After a very colourful sporting career, Jacks has made Pattaya in Thailand his home for the past 26 years. Approaching 80 years old, he maintains the discipline that brought him so much success.
“I train every day now. I’m 78 and I train every morning for two hours. Never miss it. I ride a bicycle and then do exercises at home and do a little bit of swimming. I go to bed early and don’t have any late nights apart from the occasional special event. I eat good food and I take vitamin tablets. I am the same weight now as I was when I was 22-23 years old. It’s about discipline.”
You can read more about Brian’s life and career in his autobiography – Mindset of a Champion https://www.amazon.com/BRIAN-JACKS-MINDSET-CHAMPION-GINGELL/dp/9811140790
