Dorian Yates - The Night I Tried to Get Him Drunk
Dorian Yates - The Night I Tried to Get Him Drunk!
PART ONE: AN ‘UNFORGETTABLE’ NEW YEAR
In 1992 I relocated to the United States and have lived here ever since. However in those 24 years I have regularly returned to my native UK to visit relative and friends, both of them. For the 1995 festive season my wife, Anne, and I flew back to our Nottingham home and had arranged to celebrate New Year’s Eve with Dorian Yates and stay at his home in Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham, some forty miles away. In the weeks before the visit I had told my host that this was one occasion he could let his hair down and enjoy a few curls in the style of sinking a few beers and maybe a couple of Scotches with my own bad self. I believed he seemed somewhat amenable to the idea, but then again I used to believe in Santa Claus, having attached an expectant sock to the fireplace every Christmas Eve until I was 37.
So New Year’s Eve arrives and a group of us went to Dorian’s favorite Birmingham dinner club to bid 1995 a fond farewell. Well I know The Shadow is a fan of negative reps but the then four-time Mr. Olympia adroitly sidestepped all my "Come on, it's nine months from the Olympia, get some amber nectar down your neck" suggestions. He quietly caressed a solitary glass of white wine as gently as you would stroke an infant’s forehead – until, of course, the infant’s mother called the police.
Come midnight, we all clasped hands to sing Auld Lang Syne at which point Dorian had drunk a hardly breathalyzer challenging one-quarter of that glass of wine. Once the traditional song had been sung, Dorian, quicker than you can say “Two more reps Leroy” ordered, "Okay, everybody, let's go home and have a drink." Now you’re talking, thought my “foaming at the mouth for the foamy liquid” self. I thought, “Oh, so the big man wants to go home and sink a few – that’ll do for me. Don’t want to drink too much here in town with the roads being navigated tonight by so many drunks -- lucky blighters.”
Once home I was scanning for the whereabouts of the Yates liquor cabinet when the master of the house walked into the kitchen and asked everybody, “Right what do you want to drink?” Before you I could say Scotch and dry ginger, he continued, “The choice is milk or tea.” Suddenly I knew what prohibition back in the ‘20s felt like. Ten minutes later our New Year celebrations were over as Anne and I were tucked up in bed. (Which reminds me of the old joke of the hotel guest saying to the chambermaid, “If you don’t tuck the sheets in properly you and I are going to fall out”). But we digress, you see dear reader for Dorian Yates, January 1st, 1996, wasn’t the dawn of a new year, it was, “Leg day: Gotta be at the gym at 11.00am sharp.” Nine months later he took his fifth Sandow.
PART TWO: DORIAN TURNS THE TABLE
When he was competing Dorian Yates lived the life of a monk. Everything was focused on the next Olympia and he didn’t cheat on diet, and as far as alcohol was concerned it was like Kryptonite to Superman. He retired in 1998 and two years or so later the former 100% monk approach had been slowly replaced by some new habits that turned him from gym animal to something of a party animal, although training and healthy diet still came first, as it does to this day.
Strange thing is that although after his retirement we saw each other regularly at the big contests, because of conflicting schedules we never went out drinking, or as we say in the UK, “Let’s go and get rat-arsed!”
All that changed on the night of December 11, 2011, a day after the Pro Masters World staged in Miami. It was a Sunday evening about 8.00pm and Anne and I were in the contest hotel bar when in walked Dorian accompanied by his close English friend Andy Coulson, mastermind of the Protein Bites company. Anyway after a pleasant hour of shooting the breeze Dorian said he and Andy were heading off to Mango’s Tropical Café, one of the hottest spots in town, and asked us to join them. We resisted saying 9.00pm is closer to our turning in time than our going out time. Dorian, remembering our 1995 New Year’s Eve experience, goaded me by saying, “C’mon man you were the one always ribbing me for not drinking.” Suitably compromised we set off for Mango’s. Looking back its conjures up a foolhardiness akin to accepting a sparring session challenge from Mike Tyson at his devastating best.
Once there we discovered Mango’s was livelier than a hobo’s vest; its Argentinean themed atmosphere throbbing to a fast paced non-stop tango rhythm with wild dancing by the emporium’s scantily clad dancers taking place on the bar. Furthermore Dorian was a VIP and we were ushered to a front and center table.
Dorian instructed that we only drank magnums of champagne with shots and led by the six-time Mr. Olympia we whooped it up, the champers and shots flowing as our speech went in the opposite direction. Watching our ringleader in celebratory action I couldn’t help but think the metamorphosis from the 1995 shunner of alcohol to the living-it-up dude in view at Mango’s was like witnessing Mary Poppins changing into Miley Cyrus.
After a couple of hours we were all in the party spirit, in every sense of that phrase, as you can judge by the accompanying photo of Dorian, Anne and me fully Mangoed. Yes, Dorian had his revenge, proving that he could be just as heavy duty in a bar as behind a bar.
There is a certain symmetry to those two December nights, the dry run of 1995 being bookended by the hooch fest of 2011, leaving me, in a reversal of roles, a shadow of my earlier evening self. Yes, it was a wild, wild night at Mango’s. How wild I’d like to tell you but I just can’t bloody remember.