BBC pundit and former Olympic hurdler Colin Jackson once threatened to burn down an office building following an explosive fallout with Team GB teammate Linford Christie.
From Friends to Business Partners
The two British athletes were previously close friends and helped to spur each other on to hit the heights of world athletics during the 1980s and 1990s as they trained and roomed together during competitions. However, everything changed shortly after they went from training partners to business partners, setting up sports agency Nuff Respect together in 1992.
In his 2003 autobiography, Jackson revealed that he felt the company "lost its direction early on" and claimed that Christie struggled to separate their friendship from business matters, taking professional disagreements to heart. Frustrated with their working relationship, the Welsh hurdler then decided to leave the company.
The Threat to Torch the Office
However, things nearly took a deadly turn when Jackson travelled to London to collect his belongings from the company's office. While he had agreed to meet Christie there, the former Olympic champion did not show up, with the snub leaving Jackson absolutely furious and pushing him over the edge.
"Despite agreeing with Linford that he'd be there, I travelled three hours from Cardiff to the offices in London to find no-one there and that made me really annoyed," he wrote. "There was no sane reason for it. I was exhausted and extremely fed up; so much so that I rang my sister Suzanne to tell her I was burning the place down."
"I just felt so angry that they were messing me about that I said I was going to put a match through the letter box and torch the place."
Aftermath and Fallout
Jackson added that his threat was not an empty one, and he was only prevented from going through with it due to "two women with babies in pushchairs chatting on the doorstep of the office."
"I waited but they weren't going to budge and eventually I calmed down," the now-59-year-old explained. "Looking back, I can't honestly say I wouldn't have done it if they hadn't been there."
In his autobiography, Jackson explained that while the pair had spoken since, their relationship "hasn't ever been the same". However, in 2011, Christie revealed he was no longer speaking to the Cardiff-born hurdler.
"I don't really talk to Colin," he told The Times. "I have never talked about this before, I felt that we were that close and then certain things happened between us. We were like brothers."
"You can fall out but you should never go public and say things. Colin was trying to sell a book, he went public and said things I didn't like and it made me realise that maybe he wasn't the friend I thought he was. But I have moved on."
