From the You Be the Judge Department......
Calming and contemplative, darts was right on target for a TV ratings bull's-eye until snooker took over in the 1980s. Jacques Peretti finds out where it went wrong for his heroes
Saturday April 8, 2006
The Guardian
When I was a kid, darts was massive. Fifteen million people tuned in to Bullseye, with Bully - a large side of beef in a striped shirt - bellowing: 'Iiiin one! A Teasmade.' Darts players were celebrities: Bobby 'The Dazzler' George encrusted himself in signet rings and gold belchers and appeared on a top entertainment show of the day, Saturday Night With Emu. World champion Alan 'The Welsh Wizard' Evans got to play a game with darts enthusiast Muhammad Ali (who won, declaring himself, inevitably 'The Greatest'). I know this might seem a bit strange to you, but to me, a middle-class child growing up in suburbia, darts was glamorous, the stench of beer, sweat and fags wafting through the telly and hooking me for life.
Article continues
Twenty years on, darts has disappeared. I tell a lie, Bullseye is about to be revived, on Challenge TV. But the game, as a mass entertainment phenomenon, is gone. You can sit in a pub listening to Crazy Frog, drinking chardonnay and puffing on a pencil, but you'd be lucky to find a dartboard. I wanted to find out why darts had vanished, and so I went off to meet my childhood heroes for a BBC documentary.
First stop, George Hall - Bobby George's incredible mansion in Essex, self-built in the shape of a dart. Bobby was darts' first millionaire: he has a stained glass dartboard over the front door, and his own personal Chinese takeaway in the grounds ('Wok This Way') because the wife can't stand the stink in the house. The mansion has 18 bedrooms ('I think I overdid it on the bedrooms,' Bobby concedes). Each room is painted a lurid yellow because a mate (another darts player called Tony Sontag) gave him the paint for free and 'I didn't...."
Well did anybody watch and what did you think?
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