Bellies and Bullseyes: The Outrageous True Story of Darts by Sid Waddell (Ebury Press 2007)

 

During my first performance I managed to upset some of the crowd and players. David and I did our thing on a first-floor balcony, about sixty feet up and back from the stage action. We were not soundproofed in any way, because, I assume, at the snooker, ‘Whispering’ Ted Lowe and the others operated at the table side and very much sotto voce. Not the style of the lad who was soon to become dubbed ‘The Geordie Lip’. I got really excited and loud when a Geordie team, from Cramlington near Ashington, were going well. So much so that an angry voice from below threatened to ‘come up and smack that bastard on the balcony’. Then I loudly predicted a player would try to go out from 128 with 60, 60, double 4. The bloke froze on stage, turned theatrically, looked up at me and bellowed: ‘No I bloody won’t’ – then went out with 60, 18, bull! It brought the house down, not so much for winning the leg but mainly for putting me in my place. But, believe me, this was small beer compared to the stick that lay ahead.

Yuri Geller's done a number on me . . . and that number is 9.

 I think my dartboard is suffering from a draught. 

Tungsten Tales

 Mixing Darts with a knock-off of Scrabble. Get in. 

The Crafty Cockney : the autobiography by Eric Bristow (Arrow Books 2008)

 

Streetwise

‘You play like a poof!’

These were, the words my dad George said to me when he first watched me play darts. I was eleven years old and he'd just bought me a board for my birthday. I was playing in my bedroom.

‘I can't take you down the pub if you play like that,' he said.

I’d never played darts before, but three weeks later I was getting regular three-dart scores of a hundred plus. The trouble was 1 had a unique style of throwing that in my dad's eyes looked suspect. It involved standing to the side and holding the dart lower down the barrel so my little finger rested on the tip of it. This hindered my throwing action. To overcome this I raised my little finger in the air so there was no contact with the point.

‘You look like a little posh boy holding a china teacup,’ he said.

‘Give it a rest, Dad,' I said to him. This is the way I play, and this is the way I'll always play.’

He didn’t like it, but it was a style that gave me five World Championships, five World Masters, two News of the World titles, four British Opens, three Butlins Grand Masters and numerous Open wins in Sweden, Denmark and North America, plus a host of other tides — and pretty soon everybody was copying my throwing style. As soon as I got good there were thousands of other players in pubs and clubs up and down the country all playing with raised pinkies. They thought they could be great darts players just by lifting up their little finger. What a bunch of wallies!

Close but no cigar

 Getting closer? No idea.

Happy/Sad

  . . . and I had so much of the bullseye to aim at with that third dart.

Bad/Bad

 Downside: Not one treble 20 . . . not one

Upside: . . . nope, I got nothing.

Infuriating Joy?

I've been suffering from the 'Big D' for the past month, so this is both infuriating but also joyous in its own way.

. . . I scored 2 with my next three darts.

Woe is me . . . an ongoing series

Throwing for a 180 with Dartitis.

An ongoing-fucking-miserable-series . . . 

Am I still laughing at this point?

 Christ.

John Bullseye . . .

 All this flag shagging on social media has unearthed within me a hitherto unknown #501Nationalism within my inner self.

From now on, I'll have a patriotic lump in my throat every time I score a 26.

The Bad Luck of the Oirish . . .

If I had a shamrock for every time I hit triple 5 or triple 1, I'd have a lot of shamrocks.

Woe is fucking me . . . (Part 3)

 A 180 with dartitis. I should be happy but I'm fucking miserable.

40/50

Woe is fucking me . . . (Part 2)

My dartitis in two pics. It took me about 70 seconds to throw my third dart (should be about 5-7 seconds between throws, if that)  . . .  and look where it ended up.

I guess I could just try to pass it off as a 160 outshot.

In case people are wondering what 'dartitis' is, this will give you a sense of it.

Woe is fucking me . . .

My first 180 with Designa Mustangs (23 grams).

Sadly, also my first 180 with what I think is a horrible case of Dartitis. It kicked in a couple of days ago. I hope it's just a temporary blip due to me flitting between different types - and weights -  of darts the last few weeks, but I don't know. I've never been so miserable in my darting life.

39/50

They came with different flights and stems as you can see below. I really like the Kyle Anderson flights. Very nice.

My Day, My Darts

 Just rewatched John Carpenter's 1976 classic action thriller, Assault on Precinct 13.

And, there's a dartboard spot in the film! Looks like whoever was throwing the darts has my sort of aim. Sadly, I have to report that the board did not survive the assault. I shed a tear.

Bobby Dazzler: My Story by Bobby George (Orion 2006)

Yes, he could be arrogant at times, both on and off the oche, but I think he needed that for his game. There was never any malice there. If he had something to say, he would always say it to your face and I respected him for that. He was blunt but he was also honest and I never once heard him bad mouth anyone behind their back.

In 1977, Eric and I won the pairs at the Crayford Open and almost met each other in the final of the singles. I reached the final and Eric got to die semi-finals where he lost to Peter Chapman, a darts veteran and former News of the World champion.

Peter had a big hairy chest and used to love to show it oft by playing dart with his shirt open all the way down to just above his navel. Eric was never shy in coming forward and mentioned the chest hair to Peter, asking if he grew an extra hair every time he lost a match. When Peter asked why. Eric replied. ‘Well, you’re playing my mate in the final and you've just grown another one. Look!’ He could be a saucy bastard at times.

The two of us had some great times together, particularly in the early days, winning lots of tournaments and causing havoc all over the place with our money races. We always had a laugh too. I once played Eric in St Paul’s Way, east London. I went up to the oche and hit the wire under the treble 20 three times in a row. No score. Eric was in hysterics until he got up to the oche and did exactly the same with his three darts. No score.

Six darts hit six wires. It was incredible. I have never seen or heard of anything like that before or since. Some drunk in the crowd heckled us and told us we were rubbish. Quick as a flash. Eric went over, offered him his darts and said, ‘Go on then, you do it. Hit the wire three times.’ It was a priceless moment.

At that time, money races were the only way to earn good money from darts, and if you were a decent player, this was normally easy money, too. Eric and I were normally so confident that we carried little cash on us because normally we won. I say, normally.

One night I drove Eric to the Mother Hubbard pub in Loughton, where he took on Bob Wood in a money race for £200, which was a great deal of money back then. He lost. Eric came up to me at the bar and asked me to lend him the money to cover his debt, but I had nothing like that amount of cash on me. We were both flummoxed for a moment, until Eric went over to Bob and offered him a game of ’double or quits’ against me! Suddenly, I was the one in the firing line. If I won, we were in the clear and if I lost, we somehow had to find £400.

The match was played over seven legs of 1001 and at one stage I was in serious trouble against him. With little money in our pockets. Eric and I were about to get lynched by the locals, and we were outnumbered by about 30 to one. At the end of one leg, I walked over to Eric and handed him the keys to my Ford Cortina, parked outside. I told him that if I looked like losing, he had to get outside, start up the engine and leave the passenger door open for me. In the worst-case scenario, we would have to make a run for it. We would have no other choice. The money race would probably turn into a car chase.

I went back to the oche and no sooner had I played my first three darts of the next leg when Eric shouted out with the keys in his hand, ‘Bob, I can’t drive.’ I couldn’t believe it. Talk about waking me up! Our only chance now was for me to win the match. I pulled out several maximums and nicked it on the final leg. I was wet through with sweat at the end, and that was just to cancel out a bet that Eric lost. We left the pub without a penny between us, and never went back.

That was our apprenticeship but there is no doubt that such experiences improved our darts. My game was improving all the time. The cheques and the trophies were proof of that.

Eric and I became the game's version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and we stuck up for each other through thick and thin. I will never forget that about him. Most of the others just looked after themselves but he wasn't like that.

Leighton Rees On Darts edited by Dave Lanning (Atheneum 1979)

But darts, like so many Sports, is a question of pacing, of reaching a peak at the exact right moment. Now, on reflection, I realize I had peaked just a game too soon. That semifinal was the high-spot and, without any disrespect to George Champion, I believe I could still have beaten him had I played more steadily than spectacularly. I needed the peak form I had just enjoyed for the final because only the very best would have contained my opponent, the computerishly consistent Billy Lennard.

Maybe I simply "peaked" too soon, or maybe it was the circumstances that affected me, because there was a very long interval before the Grand Final, the most momentous match of my life. The competition was ahead of schedule for the television boys who were broadcasting live at 3:35 P.M. Lennard and I were ready to go at about 3:00 P.M. Timings were further complicated by an objection to the winner of the 3:30 P.M. horse race that the TV network was also covering. Thus, the TV boys came in for a fair hit of criticism over that long wait, which thousands of Welshmen believed was my undoing. It was not until much later that it was established that it was the organizers, the News of the World, who had specifically requested live coverage. The TV people would have been perfectly satisfied to record the final as scheduled (which now, in fact, is the practice) and replay the tape later.

I have no clear recollection of that “long wait.” It remains one of those moments in life which are like suspended animation—floating in space as the astronauts do must produce a similar sensation. At the time it was all high octane, but now I have no standout memory of that delay.

American freelance writer Jack McClintock, who has contributed to Esquire, Playboy, the New York Times and the Washington Post, was among the ten thousand at Alexandra Palace that day, and his account, colorful and so typically American, is much more graphic than anything I can outline:

  When Leighton Rees was introduced it triggered something like a primal scream from thousands of highly charged Welshmen, a quality of uninhibited bedlam I don’t think I've ever witnessed before. The Great Hall was suddenly like a vast pinball machine in which every ball and bumper had a mouth and a can of beer. The Welsh enthusiasts sung a song containing no apparent vowels . . .

  . . . the final match for the championship would be played between Rees and Lennard and it was not only for the sake of suspense that there had to be an interval then. Foe the first time the crowd seemed almost a rabble Their noise was stupendous. Two shirtless young men reeled and lurched down the center aisle, hugging and screaming with joy and Welsh pride, bashing into chairs along the way.

  A dozen more clambered onto the stage carrying banners emblazoned with their favorites name— Leighton Rees, of course. They screamed. They waved their banners. They waved cans of pale ale. They waved pork pies. They waved, and munched, fat green leeks by the stems. They emitted almost visible exhalations. They stumbled, bellowed, grinned, pranced, belched, stomped, hollered, roared. One bounded to the brink and flexed a muscle-man pose for the TV cameras. Down front a young man held a five-pint beer can to his face with both hands and drank from it like a fat. thirsty baby.

  At the pillars the cans piled higher, rolled across the floor, more beer cans than I have ever seen. One rolled farther and a man descending from the bleachers stepped on it. The can rolled and he fell with a great noise. He got up, rubbed his eyes. absently kicked the can and tottered to the gents. . . .

 . . . Leonard and Rees were on the stage but the television people were not yet ready. Lennard stood smiling with his darts in his hand, his flights brightly emblazoned with the Union Jack. Rees stood beside him. portly in his red shirt, his dart flights a quiet, respectable, eminently restrained and tasteful white. The two men seemed to float on sound, ignoring each other, ignoring the crowd. two men alone and self-constrained, concentrating. The throng had moved up close like fans at a rock concert.

  A dignified announcement came from the ringmaster: the television problem would be solved in a moment. Ten feet away a young man with a beer in each fist shouted into one of those inexplicable sileces: “Stuff the television up your arsehole and let's get on with the game!” I glanced at Leighton Rees. He looked pained and embarrassed. Lennard smiled gallantly.

Billy won the toss for strike and after a third throw of 125 was always in command of the first leg. He produced another 120 at exactly the right moment to leave double eighteen, which he hit with his second dart. I had not managed to return a ton and still needed seventy-four when Billy checked out. In the second leg. it was a dour, tense struggle until Billy again produced a big score at the most telling time-a 137 (20-60-57} to leave himself two sixteens, the tactic of a true champion.

He duly wrapped up the title in nineteen darts and, in what should have been the fulfillment of a dream, I had not managed one score of a hundred, nor had had one poke at a double out. I had been well and truly beaten by a much better man of the moment.

Just for the record, here are the scores in that 1976 Grand Final, from the official News of the World sheet that is among my souvenirs;

First leg

Lennard: 55-45-125-60-60-120-36 

Rees: 85-45-85-55-60-97 

Second leg

Lennard: 62-60-40-85-85-137-32 

Rees: 60-40-83-41-60-55-60

New Board, Old Bull . . .

 

It's February 21st, a Sunday afternoon and I'm just posting this now whilst waiting for the football to start, and for Celtic to go through the motions against Ross County. I'm very hit and miss when it comes to the bull, so this is the closest I've ever come to the elusive triple bullseye throw. It's not something I religiously aim for but somewhere down the line, I'd like to knock it off my darting bucket list.

And the new board? Seven weeks on it's in the closet behind old trainers and surplus Christmas wrapping paper. The bounce outs were doing my nut in. Staples on dart boards are not your friend. See what happens when you try and do the right thing by buying local?    

The Chalk Man

That 138 checkout . . .