Darts referee Russ Bray recalls previous ‘gruesome’ job as a traffic cop: “You’ve got to be a different animal to be able to do it”

Darts referee Russ Bray recently appeared on JaackMaate’s Happy Hour podcast and as part of it, he spoke about his pre darting life.

Before becoming ‘The Voice’, Bray was a traffic cop for more than a decade and said the gruesome part of the job in reality gave him his positive outcome on life.

“The main thing you were dealing with was accidents. I was in there for 12 years as a traffic cop. In my time there, I dealt with about five fatals a year. That’s about 60 fatals,” he said on JaackMaate’s Happy Hour podcast.

“I’m talking about the most gruesome things ever here,” he said. “But it’s part of your job. I don’t dwell on it, I don’t dwell on anything.

“If something happens, it happens. If it’s grief, you grieve it. You’ve got to push on. I’ve still got to live my life, I’ve still got to be happy. I had kids at home who didn’t want to see me moping around.

“In today’s world, everyone gets counselling. We didn’t. It was ‘hi mate, did you do that report?’.”

“You don’t forget it, but you do, if that makes sense. If you ask me the question, I can recall it but it’s not something I think about every day. It makes you realise life.

“You’ve got to be a different animal to be able to do it [a traffic policeman]. It’s not because I’ve got no compassion, because I have. It’s horrible [the things he’s seen] but you have to go on. You’re doing the job and you expect that type of thing in the job you’re doing.”