The British Home Championship (also known as the Home International Championship, the Home Internationals and the British Championship) was an annual football competition contested between the United Kingdom's four national teams, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (Ireland before its partition) from the 1883–84 season until the 1983–84 season.

By the early 1880s, the development of football in the United Kingdom was gathering pace and the four national football teams of the UK were playing regular friendlies against each other, with nearly every team playing all the others annually. At the time, the football associations of each Home Nation (The Football Association (England), the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales and the Irish Football Association) had slightly different rules for football, and when matches were played the rules of whoever was the home team were used. While this solution was workable, it was hardly ideal. To remedy this, the four associations met in Manchester on 6 December 1882 and agreed on one uniform set of worldwide rules. They also established the International Football Association Board (IFAB) to approve changes to the rules (a task that it still performs to this day).

John Thomas "Jocky" Wilson (22 March 1950 – 24 March 2012) was a professional darts player from Fife, Scotland. After turning pro in 1979 he quickly rose to the top of the game, winning the World Professional Darts Championship in 1982, then again in 1989. A contemporary and rival of Eric Bristow, Bob Anderson and John Lowe, Wilson won many titles in his career including the British Professional Championship a record four times between 1981 and 1988, as well as the prestigious British Open and Matchplay titles. He retired from the game in 1995, withdrew from public life, and was rarely seen in public or gave interviews before his death in 2012.

As a child, Wilson's parents were deemed unfit to raise him and Wilson spent much of his childhood in an orphanage. Wilson served in the British Army from 1966 to 1968.

He had been a coal delivery man and also a miner at Kirkcaldy's Seafield Colliery. However, it was a spell of unemployment which was to prove the catalyst to Jocky achieving darting greatness. During this period of unemployment, Jocky entered a darts competition at Butlins, Ayrshire in 1979, which he went on to win, claiming the top prize of £500. His success at this tournament convinced him that he should turn professional as darts was beginning to become popular on television and the World Championship was in its infancy.

Eric Bristow MBE ("The Crafty Cockney") (born 25 April 1957) is a British darts player, whose skill at the game in the 1980s helped turn it into a worldwide spectator sport.

Bristow won his first world championship in 1980, defeating fellow Londoner Bobby George, and so began a decade's worth of domination, in which he would retain his title in 1981 and win it again in 1984, 1985 and 1986. Like his snooker contemporary Steve Davis, however, he had to cope also with a shock defeat during this period, when young unknown Keith Deller beat him in the 1983 final, not to mention Steve Brennan in the previous year's 1st Round. He finished as runner-up on four other occasions up to 1991.

The nickname of the Crafty Cockney was given to Bristow when he visited an English pub of that name in 1976 during a visit to Santa Monica, California. Bristow wore a shirt (which he received from the same pub) depicting a uniformed British policeman, a Union Flag and the title Crafty Cockney whenever he took part in a tournament.

Robert Francis George (born 16 December 1945) is an English darts player and presenter. He is widely recognised as one of the game's biggest personalities, known for his flamboyant entrances in which the "King of Darts" makes his way to the stage bedecked in jewellery, wearing a crown and cloak and holding a candelabra to the sound of Queen's "We Are the Champions".

George won several leading darts tournaments, appeared in two World Championship finals and was the first full time exhibition player. Since 1998, he has also worked for the BBC as a co-presenter and promoter of the sport during their coverage of various darts tournaments.

George only took up darts at the age of 30, but quickly improved, winning the first tournament he entered, and then making his first appearance at the World Masters less than a year later. He has won several tournaments around the world, including the prestigious News of the World Championship in 1979 and 1986, the Butlins Grand Masters in 1979 and 1980, and the Nations Cup in 1980, as part of an England triples team with Tony Brown and John Lowe. George's News of the World victory in 1979 came without dropping a single leg, the only player to do so.

George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War (1914–1918) until his death in 1936.

George was a grandson of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and the first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. From 1877 to 1891, he served in the Royal Navy. On the death of Victoria in 1901, George's father became King Edward VII, and George was made Prince of Wales. On his father's death in 1910, he succeeded as King-Emperor of the British Empire. He was the only Emperor of India to be present at his own Delhi Durbar.

As a result of the First World War, other empires in Europe fell while his expanded to its greatest extent. In 1917, he became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German public sentiment. His reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement, all of which radically changed the political landscape. The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the elected House of Commons of the United Kingdom over the unelected House of Lords. In 1924 he appointed the first Labour ministry and in 1931 the Statute of Westminster recognised the dominions of the Empire as separate, independent kingdoms within the Commonwealth of Nations. He was plagued by illness throughout much of his later reign and at his death was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII.