"Nobody believes me until they see me without my socks on" - Bobby George preserves amputated toe in bottle of vodka

Legendary darting entertainer Bobby George has revealed a remarkable secret: one of his amputated toes has been preserved for years in a bottle of vodka, behind the bar of his self-built 18-bedroom villa, called George Hall, in Essex.

The eccentric George (79), known for his flamboyant performances and gold jewelry, lost a total of four toes - two on each foot - after multiple surgeries due to a painful genetic defect. Three of the toes removed had to be destroyed, but he was allowed to keep the first one - amputated in 1999.

In his autobiography Still Here! The King of Bling George recounts, “Nobody believes me, or at least they don’t, until they see me without my socks on. Or if they come to my bar in George Hall and see the evidence for themselves."

George suffers from a condition in which his toes dislocate and cross over each other. “It got so bad that I couldn’t get my shoes on. I couldn’t walk without checking my balance each step.

“It was so painful on some days that if I’d had a sharp enough knife I would have chopped them off myself."

The first toe was removed in 1999, much to George's relief. “I knew the surgeon, a bloke called Phil, and he talked me through the procedure — something called a tulip operation."

“Phil presented it to me in a little jar but said that he couldn’t give me the proper stuff — formaldehyde, maybe? — as it was poisonous. But if I used vodka instead, that would preserve it beautifully. So I took it home and popped it in some vodka and now it has a permanent home behind the bar in George Hall.

“Whenever anyone comes to the house for a drink, I whip it out and ask them if they want a cocktail or a cocktoe? It’s also meant that, over the years, if I’ve been away from home for any length of time and my wife, Marie, is missing me, she can always suck my toe!"

After the first amputation, three more surgeries followed, but the other hospitals did not allow him to take the removed toes with him. Removing one tootsie wasn’t enough, though, and eventually the procedure had to be repeated another three times, so I’m missing two toes on each foot."

"Unfortunately, none of the other surgeons have been as obliging as Phil and they wouldn’t let me take the sawn-off digits away with me."

George, who reached the finals of the BDO World Darts Championship in 1980 and 1994 but lost both, still struggles with health problems. “I was fortunate not to have been paralysed but I still required immediate surgery, which my £16,000 runners-up cheque helped to finance."

During his quarterfinal win against Kevin Kenny, he jumped into the air cheering and immediately felt a stabbing pain. He played the rest of the match under excruciating pain, live on television. The doctor then said: “You shouldn’t even be able to walk. You’ve broken your back, Mr George.”

Yet a few days later he faced John Part in the final, who beat him 6-0. "I was lucky not to be paralyzed, but I had to have surgery right away. The £16,000 I earned as runner-up helped make that surgery possible."

“Eight titanium screws, each around two inches long, were inserted into the base of my spine to help me on the long road to recovery.”