I am writing this having just ironed my black-and-white Toon top ready for our Premier Darts League to Newcastle this Thursday.
It will be great to climax 14 weeks of darting derring-do on the banks of the Tyne. Taylor, Barney and Wade are through but only a madman could pick between Lewis, Manley and Mardle for the fourth place at Cardiff. I think my money is on Adie. He has matured and could meet Mardle needing only a draw at about ten o’clock on Thursday night. It will be a belter of a clash between two top showmen. Don’t miss it.
I don’t think I can top my best line of the whole PDL series. At Liverpool Adie was trying so hard I yelped ‘HE’S TREMBLING WITH THE TURBULENCE OF HIS OWN TOSTESTERONE! (sic.) Why is it that Icelandic consonantal alliteration always comes at moments of high emotion? Answer: Read Gray’s ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’ all about ‘plodding ploughmen’ and find out.
HOUND OF THE WADDELLVILLES
I am breaking new ground with my old pals John McCririck and Gary Newbon at the Greyhound Derby later this month. I will go live commentating on one of the last heats before the final. So, I’ve been on the blower to my old pal Harry the Dog Findlay - co-owner of Cheltenham champ horse Denman - who now lives in palatial splendour in a mansion near Bath. He genned me up on a bit of jargon and I’m confident I won’t be ‘a rag who makes rickets’ (Trans: a twit who makes mistakes.)
OLDIES AND YOUNGIES
It’s nice to see that Brissy, Deller, Anderson, el Lobo and Co. are doing a Legends of Darts tour that will be televised. I shall watch with nostalgia as the mullets, wigs and spear collars are got out of mothballs and paraded. I also hear a Young Legends tour with Colin Osborne, Kevin McDine and Michael Van Gerwen in the frame is being mooted. That too will be a belter.
So why the boom in our sport? Two answers. One, Phil Taylor, now averaging 107 per night in the PDL has taken darts to the fantastic limit. The Power is now better than ever, mark my word. Two, grabbing a beer and a placard and letting you hair down at the PDL, just like going to a pop concert, is as far as you can take being a sports fan without getting locked I up or certified insane. We are, as they say in Yoghurtland ‘LICKING THE LID’.