Bumph Box

I can find no valid argument to defend why I enjoy watching the BDO World Darts Championships on the BBC every January. Yes, it’s darts. Yes, it’s shit. But it’s the way that this shit is presented and hyped that intrigues me so. I could begin the story back in the mid to late 90′s when I wasn’t going through a particularly inspired snippet of life. The mundane, yet ‘real’, nature of the darts, snooker, bowls… even horse racing (my how I now despise horse racing)… take your pick of the BBC sports. This authentic blandness helped me through in some twisted way. I recall a friend during that time, putting the horse racing on the telly ‘for a bit of colour’.

Maybe the story starts a little differently, when the PDC was born and Sky muscled in on the arrows action and stole all the best players. Throwing in their razzamatazz and doing what they could to jazz up the game. While looking tacky and blatantly stupid, it suited the sky audience of the time and left us BDO lakeside viewers wondering what the BBC could come up with. And early doors it wasn’t much. A load of no namers and the eventual winner of the post PDC split, hailing from Canada, John Part, things were looking bleak.

However, the Beeb started getting their act together and took a leaf out of the sky book of spin. the Dart MC’s were getting features, nicknames started becoming the norm – stupid entrances etc etc. At last, I could begin enjoying all the crap that makes the sport so fascinating to watch.

And at the centre of all this spin undoubtedly are the commentators. There isn’t much that makes my soul feel more relaxed than Tony Green doing his best to describe the players wives in the audience during a particularly dull five setter, which seems to make up most of the airtime (or maybe in my head it does).

Check out the Big Train ‘staring championships’ or the more recent (but not as good) Mitchell & Webb snooker commentary before tuning in this Saturday.

So don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of the darts as such. But I am fan. people think i’m taking the piss, but i’m not.