Dear Diary
Monday 21st December, 2009 will go down as the daftest day I’ve ever had in my 37 year’s connection with darts.
At 3.30 pm I was lounging in my hotel room prepping up for the Paul Nicholson, Terry Jenkins match which I was sure would be a real cracker. Then Dave Lanning rang me to say “There’s a blizzard blowing outside so you and me better make tracks up the North Face of Muswell Hill.”
4 pm saw us in a car with the walk-on girls, slithering down the road past skewed buses and abandoned cars looking like igloos. It took us 40 minutes for a drive which normally takes 5 minutes.
Bad news when we arrived; only 3 out of the 10 players were in the practice room. Muswell Hill was now closed to all traffic so if we ever did get any darts at all, it looked like the only audience would be the 80 people in the VIP Champagne bar.
Even worse news; Russ Bray was 3 miles away and walking to the venue, having abandoned his car. Dave Clarke was still stuck south of the river and Paul Nicholson was beginning a two and a half mile walk from Highgate.
We were in a state of emergency by 6.30 and all hands were summoned to the pump. Rod Studd got ready to present the show and Russ Bray was thawing out, ready to replace MC, John McDonald, who was lost in the blizzard.
Amazingly, at 7 pm we got on air as normal with replays of the victories of Taylor and Barry Rate. Didn’t know how many jokes Dave and I got through till I watched it all again. My favourite: 3 lads dressed as sauce bottles – my line – “Condiments of the season”.
Then it was Dave giving it big licks on Van der Voort against Dylan Duo. Dave said he would soon be “Blowing in the wind”.
By 9 pm there were well over 700 people in the crowd and they deserve a massive round of applause for making it up to the Palace.
At 9.15 I joined Dave in the commentary box for the match between Nicholson and Jenkins and it brought the crowd to their feet.
By 11.30 I was back at the hotel after slaloming downhill for half an hour. I talked French literature with Didier, our master chef, whose first experience in England was working on the Catherine Cookson TV series in the North East. The I bid him adieu and was in bed by midnight, dreaming Eskimo dreams.