I remember watching the competitions in the ‘80s at a time when the T.V schedules were packed with snooker, boxing and Darts and when (in our house at least) it was against the law to turn your T.V off. Well, not until the little white dot/striped lines/high-pitched whine of shut-down, appeared anyway.
I remember quite enjoying watching Darts, as a sport I found it far more interesting than football or cricket, and the documentary reminded me of how tense the finals could be. It also reminded me of how much people sneered at it (they showed that infamous ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’ sketch where the ‘sport’ involved the number of times you raised the pint glass to your mouth). I feel that I should champion Darts because it’s very much a working class sport, with its origins in local pubs, and also because it was a sport in which women excelled.
It really bugs me that people take issue with Darts being defined as a sport. If you break down any sport, or any activity, for that matter, it seems rather simple and pointless. I don’t really ‘get’ football but I dislike the nihilistic definition of it as just a load of men kicking an inflated bladder around a field. You could say that of any activity - embroidery is just someone sticking a sharp object into some fabric to decorate it with coloured thread. Cooking is just putting some chemical components together to make something else...And so on. Do we want to be watching ‘open heart surgery’ live or something equally ‘valid’? If people find it entertaining, then it qualifies as entertainment. I know this could bring forth a barrage of comment and criticism of the dire state of T.V and the depths that people stoop to in the name of entertainment. But the point is, is that it’s all subjective, innit? We all like different things. It turns out that I could still quite happily watch a Darts match but football, car racing, and pretty much any other televised sport you could mention, make me want to curl up into a ball and hum gently with my hands over my ears (there is something about the noise of a football match or that buzz saw whine of a F1 race!)
It seems that Darts, like most sports, is a game of nerve as well as precision. Champion player, Eric Bristow (The Crafty Cockney), began to suffer from ‘Dartitis’ a condition which meant that he found it very difficult to actually let go of the dart. He saw psychiatrists and specialists but no one could help him. His then partner, fellow darts champion, Maureen Flowers (Goldfinger), suggested that he practice with someone else, he spent spent hours practicing with and coaching an up-and-coming player and the results were quite interesting.
If you fancy watching the programme there should be a link here:
Of course, it may only be interesting to those of us doped up on Lemsip!
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