Leighton Rees, 63, of Wales, Who Threw Darts, Deftly - The New York Times The New York Times World |Leighton Rees, 63, of Wales, Who Threw Darts, Deftly Search Leighton Rees, an imposing Welshman who became the world's first professional dart-throwing champion, died on June 8 in Pontypridd, South Wales. He was 63. The cause of death was cardiac arrest, said his wife, Debbie. In 1978, before the finals of the first Embassy World Professional Darts Championship in Nottingham, a tournament named after the cigarette brand sponsoring it, Mr. Rees went through his usual warming-up routine, downing two pints of lager and a brandy. He then announced that he was ready ''to give John Lowe'' -- his opponent -- ''a headache,'' according to The Daily Telegraph, and proceeded to do so with a stream of well-aimed darts, winning the championship and £3,000 in prize money.

As always, he relied on his celebrated ''cobra'' throw, a seemingly effortless gesture in which he let his arm flop limply to his side, like a snake's head, after launching each dart. The 1978 triumph was never to be repeated, however. The previous year Mr. Rees was a member of the Welsh team that won the first World Darts Federation World Cup. In 1970, 1974 and 1976, he won the Welsh individual championship. Although he reached the finals of the second Embassy world championship in 1979, once again facing Mr. Lowe, he lost. He never again reached the final, though he took part in these championships until 1990. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Leighton Rees was born on Jan. 17, 1940, at Mountain Ash in South Wales. He left school in nearby Pontypridd at 15, with one of his teachers saying he was good ''only for reading the sports pages of The South Wales Echo,'' and took a job at a motor vehicle parts company, where he worked for the next 21 years.

Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy His skill at throwing darts soon became evident in the local pubs and workingmens' clubs, however. After teaming up with another talented player, Alan Evans from nearby Rhondda, he started entering darts competitions and playing exhibition matches in pubs all over Wales. By 1976, he was making enough money at darts to give up his job and turn professional. Mr. Rees was helped as the sport grew in popularity in the 1970's and 80's on British television and in the United States. It was casting off its proletarian booze-and-cigarettes image and briefly became a spectator sport, dominated by high-earning professionals with loyal fans. More recently, it has lost its popular appeal in Britain. Beginning in the late 1970's, Mr. Rees was a regular visitor to the United States and its darts competitions, his wife said. He spent up to three months a year in the country, playing regularly in the North American Open at Las Vegas and entering competitions in California, Arizona, Florida, New York and elsewhere.

In 1980 he met Debbie Ryle while visiting the former ocean liner Queen Mary, by then berthed at Long Beach and converted into a tourist attraction. She herself was a talented dart thrower from Anaheim, Calif., who played for her hometown. His courtship was hindered, however, by a strong Welsh accent, which Ms. Ryle said she had difficulty understanding at first. With this obstacle overcome, they married in 1980 in Las Vegas while Mr. Rees was playing in a competition there. He is survived by his wife and a stepson, Ryan. Leighton Rees - Telegraph Leighton Rees 12:02AM BST 10 Jun 2003 Leighton Rees, who died on Sunday aged 63, was the first Embassy World Professional Darts Champion. Born on January 17 1940, Leighton Rees spent almost all his life at Ynysybwl, near Pontypridd in Wales. At Mill Street School in Pontypridd, which he left at 15, one of Leighton's teachers declared that he would be "good only for reading the sports pages of the South Wales Echo".

After leaving school, he found work as a storeman with a motor car spare parts company, remaining in the job for 21 years until deciding to become a professional darts player in 1976. In 1972 Sid Waddell, now the darts commentator for Sky Sports, was the producer of Yorkshire Television's Indoor League pub games show, the first to feature darts on national television. His researchers had reported that South Wales was a crucible of the emerging sport, and that the programme should include in the line-up Tony Ridler of Newport; Alan Evans of the Rhondda; and, above all, Leighton Rees of Ynysybwl. The trio did not disappoint. Ridler and Evans both hit 180s in their matches, but the dry humour of Rees was the highlight. Over a cigar and a lager he told the presenter, Fred Trueman, stories about Evans and himself hustling the English.

He was particularly scathing about John Lowe and Brian Langworth, singling out their sketchy knowledge of Welsh geography: "Alan and I and 300 fans had got a rare welcome waiting for the two English champions in Maerdy in South Wales, and the fools went to another Maerdy 100 miles north." At the News of the World championships at Alexandra Palace in 1976, where Rees was a firm favourite for the title, hundreds of his fans waved dragon dolls and leeks. But observers noticed a pallor to his face, and the famous "cobra" throwing style was cramped. He lost in the early rounds, and his friend Alan Evans, as well as dozens of Rees's supporters, broke down in tears. The following year Rees was a member of the Wales team which won the very first World Darts' Federation World Cup; he was also crowned the World Cup singles champion. His finest hour, however, came at the first Embassy World Professional Darts Championship at Nottingham in February 1978. The characteristic lazy arm action was in perfect stroke, and he and Evans played a classic match that made darts an instant television hit.

Teasing and pulling faces, Evans set the pace with two 180s. Then Leighton Rees banged in a 10-dart finish - the first ever televised. The crowd went wild, and the BBC's executive producer Nick Hunter called it "the arrows that made darts live up to all our expectations". Warming up for the final in a pub with Sid Waddell and Eric Bristow's father George, Rees downed two pints of lager and a brandy, then declared that he was ready "to give John Lowe a headache". This he did, in style, becoming the first world darts champion and taking a prize of £3,000. After the final he seriously suggested to the Welsh selectors that they drop him and blood new talent. Meanwhile, Evans commented that Rees could now afford a chauffeur and that "Pickfords had been on the phone tendering for the job". At the 1979 world championships Rees was interviewed live by the commentator David Coleman, and the darts player had clearly had a few drinks. The next morning he came down to breakfast red-faced.

His sister, he reported, had given him a rocket over the telephone, telling him: "You have shamed the whole family. You went on telly tiddly. Mam is so upset she will not go out to the shops." After his 1978 world championship victory Rees toured the world as a darts professional; he also captained Wales (earning a total of 77 caps for his country) and played county darts for Glamorgan. But he never abandoned his roots. When not playing darts, he was at his happiest watching Pontypridd Rugby Club - preferably when they were bashing the English. Leighton Rees is survived by his wife Debbie (nee Ryle), a Californian and a keen darts player; they married in Las Vegas, where Rees was competing in a tournament, in 1980.

Patrick Chaplin: Leighton Rees Patrick Chaplin: Players Past & Present Leighton Rees Leighton Rees Included In The Dictionary Of National Biography Leighton Rees, the first World Professional Darts Champion and probably the best-known and best-loved Welsh darter of all time, has become the first British darts player to appear in the prestigious Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) published by the Oxford University Press. The Dictionary has been described by the Daily Telegraph as ‘The greatest reference work on earth.’ Darts Historian Patrick Chaplin has been invited to prepare the entry on Leighton’s life by the Research Editor of the DNB, Dr. Alex May. Patrick, who is also a member of the British Society of Sports History, told Darts World ‘It’s an absolute honour to be asked to write a piece about Leighton. The Dictionary of National Biography is an illustrated collection of more than 50,000 specially written biographies of men and women from around the world who shaped all aspects of Britain’s past.

Leighton certainly helped shape the future of the sport of darts and so has every right to be included.’ Leighton’s wife Debbie, saw Patrick’s article in draft form, says that it is ‘A true testimony to a great man.’ © 2006 Darts World/Patrick Chaplin In January 2007 the article about Leighton appeared in the Oxford DNB. The following is a copy of the original work submitted by Patrick to the DNB. OXFORD DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY Rees, Leighton Thomas (1940-2003), darts player by Patrick Chaplin Rees, Leighton Thomas (1940-2003), professional darts player, was born on 17 January 1940 at the Lady Aberdare Maternity Home, Mountain Ash near Pontypridd, Glamorganshire, only son of Ivor Thomas Rees, lorry driver, and his wife, Olwen Holt. Although he travelled extensively as a professional darts player, for most of his life his home was Ynysybwl, near Pontypridd.

He was educated at Trerobert Junior School and the Mill Street Secondary Modern School. It was during his period at Mill Street that he threw his first darts at the local Ynysybwl United Services Club. In 1979 Leighton admitted ‘I was only an average pupil and cannot remember being gripped by the urge for learning.’ Upon leaving Mill Street at the age of 15 one of his teachers declared he would be “good only for reading the sports pages of the South Wales Echo,” his mind having been more on rugby football than anything else. (Daily Telegraph) He immediately began work a local factory, Simmonds Air Accessories, which specialized in manufacturing nuts and bolts, eventually moving into the Despatch Office where he remained for twenty-one years. It was during his lunch hours that Leighton became interested in darts. A factory team was established, based at The Colliers Arms at Porth, and played in the Pontypridd District Darts League. Leighton was a team member for two years before signing for the United Services Club, Ynysybwl on whose books he remained for his entire career in darts. Leighton’s ambition was always to win the prestigious News of the World Individual Darts Championship.

Although he reached the Grand Finals in London on no less than three occasions (1970, 1974 and 1976) his dream was never realised. Rees later said, ‘It is every player’s dream of success and, as it turned out, my impossible dream.’ (Lanning, 58) By 1974 Leighton had been capped for both the Wales and Great Britain national teams and was receiving numerous invitations to appear at events and play exhibitions around the country. This placed him in a dilemma. He told his biographer Dave Lanning ‘I loved my job, my workmates, the uncomplicated routine of my life. A simple home life, Mum’s cooking, friendly employers, a boisterous, if beery, social existence. It all offered an odd sort of security, protection. You could call it humdrum.

But I was perfectly happy and who needs fame, fortune and flashiness if you’re happy and healthy enough not to have a hangover after a night out with your mates?’ (Lanning, 7) It was during the late 1970s that the ubiquitous pub game of darts was elevated to a global sport by the combination of the drive and organisational skills of the British Darts Organisation (BDO) and the involvement of television with its innovative split-screen technology. Almost overnight amateur dart players were transformed into highly paid professional players. Eventually, convinced by his manager Eddie Norman and his Welsh darts colleague and friend Alan Evans, Leighton turned professional in 1976 and became one of the darts players who helped usher in a new era for the sport. (The Times) Leighton’s first major international success came at the Wembley Conference Centre, London in December 1977 when he led the Welsh national team to victory in the inaugural World Darts Federation (WDF) World Cup and won the individual title at the same event.

(Darts World, January 1978) But the highpoint of his darts career came on 10th February 1978 when Leighton became the first ever World Professional Darts Champion in the Embassy World Professional Darts Championship organised by the British Darts Organisation (BDO) and held at the Heart of the Midlands Club, Nottingham. He beat England’s John Lowe by 11 legs to 7 in the Final and collected the winner’s cheque for £3,000. (Darts World, March 1978) Later, in honour of their world champion, Leighton’s local council named a street after him, Leighton Rees Close. (John Lowe, 296) Although winning the World Professional Darts Championship was the pinnacle of his career, Leighton continued to be a leading contender in all major darts competitions for which he entered. In his international career he represented Wales on no less than 77 occasions and, even as his health began to decline in the 1990s, he remained a highly popular player on the lucrative exhibition circuit until ill-health forced him into retirement (The Times).

In 2002, in what was to become his last major interview, he spoke to his old friend and adversary John Lowe about his career in darts. Leighton told John that he would not change anything but then added, ‘If only I had a crystal ball at the time. I would have looked after my health and money differently.’ (John Lowe, 296) Leighton eventually succumbed to a long-term heart condition and died on 8 June 2003 at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, Llantrisant. He is survived by his wife Debbie (nee Ryle), whom he had married in Las Vegas on 16 August 1980, and son Ryan. Patrick Chaplin © 2006 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography It is hoped that Leighton is not the only darts player to eventually be mentioned in the prestigious DNB. Supplementary note – December 2007 I recently learned that Leighton’s wife Debbie passed away during the summer of 2007. My sincere condolences to Ryan.

© Patrick Chaplin 2007 World Dart Champions Share / Home / Resource / World Champions Today there are two recognised World Dart Champions the BDO / WDF Word Champion and the PDC World Champion. The first World Champion was Leighton Rees from Wales. Leighton beat John Lowe 11 legs to 7 and won £3,000.The final was played in legs not sets as it is today. The first World Championship was held at the 'Heart of the Midlands' night club in Nottingham. The tournament then moved to Jollees Club Stoke-on-Trent where it remained until 1985. Since1986 the World Darts finals have been held at the Lakeside complex Frimley Green, Surrey. In 1992 saw a number of players split from the BDO and form their own darts organisation; The World Darts Council later to be renamed as the Professional Darts Corporation PDC (See History ). In 1994 the PDC staged their first World Darts Championships to rival The BDO Championship. Many of the best names in darts had moved to the PDC and it has always been bitter rivalry of who is the best.

In 2001 the BDO introduced the first women’s World Darts Championship. Trina Gulliver from England has won this event every year from 2001-2007. In 2008 Trina reached the final again but this time she was defeated by Russia's Anastasia Dobromyslava 2-0. Trina lost again in the 2009 final to Francis Hoenselaar but regained her crown in 2010, 2011 and 2016. Trina has qualified for the World final ever year since it's conception. The lists below shows the World Champions of past and present. Many remember the winners but who did they beat and what was the score? The first World Championships, 1978, was play best of 21 legs not set play as it has been ever since. A few past World Champions Leighton Rees, John Lowe, Eric Bristow MBE, Jocky Wilson.

Phil Taylor & Trina Gulliver MBE 2017 BDO / WDF Men's World Champion - Glen Durrant (England) 1978 - 3 PDC World Championships Main Sponsors: 1994 - 1995 Skol International, 1995 - 1996 Proton Cars, 1996 - 1997 Verons, 1998 - 2002 Skol International, 2003 - 2014 Ladbrookes, William Hill 2015 - Current The highest average achieved in the televised stages of the PDC World Championship Finals is 114.05 set by Michael van Gerwen in the 2017 semi-finals. Michael beat Raymond van Barneveld who also set the highest losing average seen also seen at the championships, 109.34 Phil Taylor recorded a three dart average of 110.94 in the 2009 final. The highest ever for any major darts championship final.

The 2017 final also broke the most 180’s hit in any darts match, a total of 42. Michael van Gerwen hit 20, 180's while Gary Anderson hit 22, 180's Adrian Lewis hit a nine dart leg in the opening set of the Ladbrokes.com PDC World Darts Final in 2011. The first ever dart player to achieve this feat in a World Darts Final For more information on PDC events please visit the PDC website 2016 PDC Unicorn World Youth Darts Champion Corey Cadby (Austraila) 2011 leighton rees : definition of leighton rees and synonyms of leighton rees (English) 5 External links Early life Rees was born in the village of Ynysybwl , where he was to spend most of his life. He attended the local Mill Street School in Pontypridd where one of his teachers famously declared on his report card that he would be "good only for reading the sports pages of the South Wales Echo ".

After leaving school he found work in the store room of a motor spares company, a job he did for over twenty years until he became a professional darts player in 1976. It was during his time working as a store man that Leighton found the sport of darts , becoming a regular for his local pub and county. It was not until 1972 though that he gained any real national attention. Sid Waddell , now a commentator for Sky Sports , was at the time producer of Yorkshire Television 's Indoor League - a show with pub games tournaments. Waddell and his researchers had heard reports of a trio of great darts players in the South Wales valleys, an area that was quickly becoming a hotbed of talent for the sport. The three names mentioned were Tony Ridler of Newport , Alan Evans of Rhondda and especially Leighton Rees of Ynysybwl. Waddell quickly offered all three the chance to play on national television and they did not disappoint, Ridler and Evans both scored a number of 180s in their matches, but although he did not perform as well on the night it was Leighton Rees who stole the show.

Over a lager and a cigar he told presenter Fred Trueman , in his soon to be famous brand of dry humour, stories about himself and Evans hustling the English. Darts career After the early exposure on Indoor League, Rees turned professional in 1976 and went on to make the final of that year's News of the World Darts Championship . He was also part of the 1977 Wales team that won the very first World Darts Federation World Cup . Rees' finest hour however would come in 1978 at the inaugural Embassy World Professional Darts Championship , in Nottingham. Seeded third he easily dispensed with Australian Barry Atkinson in round one at a score of 6-0 before taking on his close friend, Welsh team-mate and fifth seed Alan Evans in the second round. It turned into a classic with both players averaging over 90 per three darts (almost unheard of in those days). Evans took an early lead with a couple of 180s before Rees recorded the championship's first ever ten-dart finish (also the first ever televised) before eventually running out a 6-3 victor.

At the time the BBC 's executive producer Nick Hunter proclaimed it as the match that made darts live up to all their expectations and cemented it as a National TV item for years to come. In the semi-final Rees actually struggled to beat a determined American, Nicky Virachkul 8-7 in the semi-finals but showed a whole different set of battling qualities to pull through into a final against the great John Lowe . Rees would again average over 90 with Lowe not far behind in a great final, eventually sealed 11-7 by Rees to win his only ever World Championship . In the defence of his title in 1979, Rees returned to the final, again beating Evans along the way before this time losing to Lowe by 5 sets to 0. A quarter-final in 1980 and a last-16 place in 1981 followed, after which Rees could only manage round one exits in 1982, 1983, 1985 and 1990. Despite this his matches nearly always resulted in full arenas and he remained one of darts most popular competitors.

It is because of this that he is credited alongside the likes of Lowe, Eric Bristow , Bob Anderson , Jocky Wilson , Cliff Lazarenko and now Phil Taylor as bringing darts to the masses via the television screens. He had an exceptionally good record on Bullseye , frequently scoring more than 301 with nine darts and thus having his charity money doubled. Rees also wrote autobiographical account of his life in 1979, titled “On Darts” which also featured tips on playing the game. Outside Darts In 1980, Rees married his wife Debbie, a Californian, in Las Vegas while he was competing in a tournament there. There is a street in Ynysybwl named after him, Leighton Rees Close. Despite being the first world champion, Rees possibly missed out on darts' glory years. The prize for his title was £3,000 and as the prize money rose and tournaments began to spring up all over UK television channels, Rees' form began to slide and he never managed to match the continued success of Lowe, Bristow and Wilson. Rees was forced to make his living from playing exhibition matches with his great friend Evans.

Death Rees quit his exhibition work after having a pacemaker fitted and also had a heart bypass operation in his later life. He returned to the stage of the World Championships to make the draw for the event in the year before his death. He died in his home village, Ynysybwl, in 2003, aged 63. External links 'As you get older, you get more happy, more placid. The killer instinct just goes' | Sport | The Observer Search executive jobs Search all jobs 'As you get older, you get more happy, more placid. The killer instinct just goes' When he won his only world darts title in 1983, Keith Deller was hailed as a new model hero of the pub game. For a start, he was slim. He even attracted the attention of novelist Martin Amis, who wrote about him in an Observer profile. But that wasn't his only brush with high culture. Interview by Andrew Anthony Sunday 5 March 2006 Observer Sport Monthly It used be said that there was nothing on British television except snooker. But even if broadcasting has changed a great deal in the past couple of decades, that was never a fair charge.

For there was also darts. Back in 1983 10 million people watched the final of the world championship. That's a quarter of the adult population transfixed by the sight of a group of overweight tattooed men drinking and smoking and, in between, throwing arrows at a round cork board. The winner of that championship was a young unknown named Keith Deller. He was a qualifier who, on the way to the final, beat Jocky Wilson and John Lowe, the second and third ranked players in the world. In the final he met the number one player, Eric Bristow, the 'Crafty Cockney' himself. 'He's not just an underdog,' said the commentator Sid Waddell of the 23-year-old Deller, 'he's the underpuppy.' It was a close match that went all the way to the 11th set. In what turned out to be the deciding leg, Bristow allowed a chance of a bull's-eye finish to pass, believing that his young opponent would never make the 138 that he required to win.

But Deller checked out with a treble 20, a treble 18 and a double 12 to become world champion. In the morbid setting of professional darts, where the spherical Jocky Wilson provided the model body shape, the 23-year-old from Ipswich appeared something of a physical freak. For a start, he was slim. Not what you would call athletic, perhaps, but no beer gut to speak of. He didn't smoke. And although he drank alcohol, it was not by the gallon measures that sustained his fellow players. Deller was instantly hailed as the new face of darts, the angelic poster boy for a revitalised, modern, broadcasting-standards-friendly image. He was awarded five-figure sponsorships, mostly, it has to be said, by breweries. He embarked on a national tour and became a regular participant on television. He featured in Prime Minister's questions and, for a brief period in those dark days before the advent of gastropubs and multichannel television, Deller looked set to become a figure of national renown. Just a year later the youthful lustre had already begun to fade.

By 1984, in the unforgiving judgment of Martin Amis, 'he looked like a darts player'. Deller never won another world championship, but nor did he disappear back into total obscurity. Instead, he settled into that group of top players who were never going to be the very best. In 1993 professional darts split into two antipathetic factions. Terrestrial television was losing interest in the tournaments, which were all arranged by the British Darts Organisation, and the players were losing income. So when Sky TV offered coverage, the top players, including Deller, broke away to form the rival Professional Darts Corporation. Since then Deller has gone slowly down the rankings and up on the scales. Twenty-three years after his finest hour, he is 34th in the world and about three stone more firmly rooted. Yet when I meet him in a pub near his Suffolk home, he is immediately recognisable. The task of identifying him is made easier by the fact that he is the only customer playing darts. Indeed, he is the only customer. He uses the pub as a training ground. It's here that he practises his doubles for an hour each day.

'If you're at home,' he explains, 'the phone rings.' He still wears a boyish expression, in a Harry Enfield kind of way, but now it's framed by greying hair and the darkening ravines of middle age, and coated in the bloodless pallor that comes from spending too much time in public bars. The effect is rather like a young actor made up to look as if he's aged two decades. Deller is a cheery soul. Once he has established that there is no fee for the interview - 'You never know' - he is happy to reminisce about the old days. He started playing darts when he was 12. 'Mum and Dad had a dartboard in the kitchen.' At 15, he was playing in a local pub team. 'I just drank Coke.' By 17, he made it into the divisional finals of the News of the World competition at Alexandra Palace in north London. 'I was just too nervous,' he says of his early exit. 'Maybe that was the first part of the learning curve on what it's like to be under pressure.' Pressure. No wonder they drink, these dartsmen. How else do you steady the hand for such precision work?

Of course brain surgeons manage it, but they don't tend to perform in front of a fired-up crowd or against a ruthless opponent. 'At the end of the day,' Deller tells me later, 'it's not about drink - it's about bottle.' Competitive darts always comes down to who can handle the pressure, but before that it's a matter of who does the most practice. Deller used to practise seven hours a day, every day. 'I'd say, "Right, it's 10 o'clock at night, I've got to hit five 180s before I go to bed". Do silly things like that, just pushing.' But after he became world champion he no longer had time to practise. He went on the road for six months, a minor celebrity touring the country, meeting mayors, giving exhibitions. 'Wherever I went I couldn't spend anything. Up in Yorkshire I went into a restaurant, they wouldn't let me pay. I was in the papers or on the TV nearly every day. I did Jim Bowen, This is Your Life and Surprise, Surprise. I went to Stringfellows and it was straight in. Didn't have to queue up.

I just burnt out,' he says, sounding exhausted at the memory. 'At the next world championship I remember Channel Four said that if I won it again I'd be the first millionaire darts player. I lost in the first round.' Still, he made a tidy sum in that first year of glory. 'People say, "What difference did it make to you winning the world championship?" I say, "I had no money at all and three months later bought a house in London with a swimming pool".' His victory was bigger, though, than simple material gain. To Deller, it transformed the sport. 'Darts sales went through the roof. All the youngsters were taking it up. They were putting it in youth clubs and everything, because a lad who lived on a council estate had just come through and become world champion.' The council estate trope might sound a little unnecessary or superfluous. After all, it's not as if the rest of the darts fraternity emerged from the stockbroker belt. But what it really points to is how much Deller continues to savour the Rocky-like arc of his own underdog-made-good story. According to Deller, audiences never tire of hearing the tale.

What's certain is that he hasn't yet tired of telling it. He does around 80 exhibitions a year all over the country, in which he takes on local players and answers questions. The one he's always asked, he tells me, is 'Do I still use the spring-loaded darts?' It's not a line of inquiry, I confess, that was uppermost in my mind. What I want to know is whether, having started at the top and never returned to that peak, there was anything he wished he had done differently. He thinks for a moment. 'If I was honest,' he says, 'and my wife knows this as well, it's that I've never been recognised for the sport. Eric [Bristow] got the MBE and it would have been nice for me to have been recognised because before I even won, me and a friend raised money for a girl that needed a kidney machine.' There is more than a hint of an East Anglian David Brent in some of Deller's pronouncements, a kind of benign solipsism all the more charming for its down-to-earth delivery. 'Twenty-four years I've been a good professional,' he continues. 'I've never been controversial, represented England.

John Parrott won the snooker and straight away the MBE. I mean, good luck to him, he's a nice lad, John, but I feel my achievement was a bigger thing to the British public. I'm not saying it like sour grapes but I would say that was my only regret.' We're drinking mineral water. Long ago Deller became fed up with what he thinks is the media's obsession with darts players' refuelling habits. 'I always remember I went on a Radio 4 programme with Barry Took. First thing they asked was "What is all this drinking and smoking?" I said, "Why don't you ask me about my achievements? You don't ask a pop star what drugs he's taking. You ask him about his album".' Fair comment, except, what if the pop star's act included jacking up on stage? No doubt there would be a good chance that the topic would crop up in an interview. Nowadays, Sky TV does not allow PDC players to drink or smoke at the oche, yet the makeover has never fully convinced. What continues to undermine the game's aspiration to be seen as a disciplined sport is the capacious girth of most of the players.

By comparison with the current elite, Deller still looks svelte. For the past decade the game has been dominated by Phil 'the Power' Taylor, the PDC world champion, which is screened on Sky. 'Best player I've seen by miles,' says Deller. 'By miles.' Taylor is a hefty cube of a man, though he is nowhere near as substantial as his fellow PDC players Colin Lloyd and Peter Manley. The other world championship, the BDO, has been mostly won in recent years by a former postman from Holland, Raymond van Barneveld, himself no martyr to low-calorie diets or the running machine. Earlier this year van Barneveld lost in the BDO final to another Dutchman, the unknown Jelle Klaasen. As far as Deller is concerned, Taylor is the only real world champion. 'I think the world champions who have been winning the BDO in recent years would not have beaten Taylor.

Taylor averages 107 [for every three darts thrown] but people win the BDO with 94 averages.' Just after I spoke to Deller it was announced that van Barneveld had left the BDO circuit to join the PDC, where he will go up against Taylor. The move should decide who is the best player in the world, or at least that small section of the planet that plays the game. The word 'world' in darts is about as geographically inclusive as it is in American baseball's World Series. You get the sense that Deller is not that concerned with top-flight competition these days. His conversation invariably drifts back to the golden age of darts, when Jim Bowen's Bullseye was on television, and he, Eric and Jocky were always on the oche. 'A lot of the boys now,' he says with head-shaking resignation, 'they don't know 'em.' Given the choice between playing celebrity golf in Spain and a darts tournament, Deller admits he'd probably opt for the golf. 'Your nerve goes,' he says. 'When I was young, defeat never came in your mind. It was, "Come on, I want 'im".

But as you get older, you enjoy life. You get more happy, more placid and that bit of killer goes, to be honest with you.' The killer returns with a vengeance at Ken Rick's bar in Islington, north London. Islington may be synonymous with the bruschetta revolution that brought forth the gastropub, but Ken Rick's is a riot of competing attractions and none of them culinary, an old-style boozer with dizzying carpet, fruit machines, multiple TV screens, jukebox, thick curtains, pool table and, yes, a dartboard. Two dartboards, in fact. But Deller has a problem with the one that is selected for this evening's event. 'Look at the difference between that board and this one,' he says, pointing to the two adjacent boards. I study the two intently but to my untrained eyes they look identical. 'The one on the right is two inches lower,' says Deller. I nod in agreement, though it still looks exactly the same to me. The other one can't be used for technical reasons: it's too near the bar. He tells me several more times during the evening that the board is too low.

It's as though a brain surgeon had been asked, without warning, to operate on the throat rather than the cerebellum. The kind of thing that could put you right off your rhythm. But in 10 two-legged matches no one comes close to winning a game against Deller. 'Standard's not that good,' he confides. During one game an opponent makes a 140 score, but Deller replies with the same total and runs out an easy victor. Afterwards, he comes over and explains his response. 'As soon as I threw that 140, he was dead in the water. Cut throat. You match 'em and they ain't done nothing.' It's what Keith Talent would have called clinicism. Talent, you may recall, was the sexist, venal and comically monstrous anti-hero of Martin Amis's novel London Fields. He was also a darts player with a daughter called Kim - the same name as Deller's wife. 'Yes,' says Deller, when I remind him of Amis, 'crafty.' Amis interviewed Deller in 1988 for this newspaper and London Fields was published a year later.

In the interview Amis described Deller as 'genial, straightforward, considerate, clear-eyed' and 'charmingly uxorious'. He couldn't have detailed a more contrasting character to Talent if he had tried, and maybe he was trying. 'It's funny because that [the interview] was in Enfield at a wine bar,' recalls Deller, without explaining the humour in the location. 'He came in and was smoking roll-ups. He was having a beer and there was me having a glass of water. I just have a drink to play darts, just to calm your nerves a bit, but I can't drink like some of them. And then he was asking these questions. And then we saw that book and the darts player was the murderer or his wife was. But whether he based it on me,' adds Deller, smiling, 'I don't know. Do you? His father was John Lee Amis, wasn't it?' Kingsley, I say. 'My wife loves books,' he says. 'I'm just a sports fanatic, me. Big Ipswich Town fan. I took the trophy to Portman Road when I beat Eric.

Everyone cheered, even the away supporters.' It's time for the Q & A with the punters. It's not an impressive turnout, if truth be told. London, Deller informs me, is a useless venue for darts, not like up north where they appreciate the game and put out proper players. He takes the microphone and explains the format to a largely bemused crowd. Eventually they realise they are supposed to ask questions. 'How good is Phil Taylor?' someone shouts. 'Too good,' says Deller. He runs through some of the anecdotes that he told me in Suffolk. The time when he met Glenn Frey from the Eagles and recited the lyrics from 'Desperado'. The breakfast he had with the actor Richard Roundtree, star of the original Shaft, his appearance throwing darts on Hart to Hart, the American TV series starring Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers, and the origin of the spring-loaded darts legend. 'And that's a true story as well,' he tells the audience at the end of a rather opaque rendering of that particular tale.

It may not be everyone's idea of fun on a Friday night but, as Deller is quick to point out, very few darts players are able to earn a living on the exhibition circuit. And he is one of them. 'I think there's a lot of envy in the darts world and a lot of back-stabbing on the quiet,' he says. 'There's jealousy that people like myself do very well. But I say, well, win the world title. It's like the Oscars,' he explains, 'once you've won it, you're always introduced as Oscar-winning. Same as the world championship.' 'All sports are eventually confining,' wrote Amis, 'and there is no cave deeper or darker than darts.' I say goodbye to the world championship-winning Keith Deller and leave him with his small band of admirers in a pub on the Essex Road. Later there will be a disco. One man's cave can turn out to be another man's Hollywood Hills. When Martin met Keith Eighteen years ago, Martin Amis interviewed Deller for The Observer. Amis then called the darts-playing anti-hero of his novel London Fields Keith Talent. Here is an extract from that 1988 interview.

I motor out to Enfield for lunch with Keith Deller. Shock winner of the 1983 world championship, Keith was for a while the great white hope of darts: young and apple-cheeked, a breath of fresh air. But then Keith showed that in darts it is hard to do your ageing one year at a time. By 1984, he looked like a darts player. It would have suited my preconceptions if I had found Keith half-drunk in some roadhouse, smothered in tattoos and darts magazines. On the contrary: Keith and his pretty wife, Kim, awaited me over their Perriers in the anteroom of a pleasant businessman's restaurant. There was talk of the gym, and countryside rambles with dog Sheba. No alcohol and no nicotine. It was I who felt like the true darter of the company, with my drink, my roll-ups, my North Circular pallor. Keith is genial, straightforward, considerate, clear-eyed. He is also charmingly uxorious, constantly deferring to Kim, who, for her part, is fully abreast of Keith's darting hopes and fears.

In a conversation that often went like this - '143?' The Joy of Six: darts | Scott Murray | Sport | The Guardian The Joy of Six The Joy of Six: darts From Leighton Rees's 1978 fag-tastic win to Phil 'The Power' Taylor's rise and fall, our favourite moments in darts history Keith Deller won the 1983 BDO title with a scarcely believable checkout in one of the greatest finals ever. Photograph: Don McPhee for the Guardian Friday 13 January 2012 05.23 EST First published on Friday 13 January 2012 05.23 EST Close 1) 'Foot' Anakin 300-7 The Man (1908 Leeds magistrates court) The sport of darts – don't bother arguing the point, we're simply not interested – has been played in Britain since the Middle Ages, when archers devised an indoor version of their game to while away the hours lost to rain.

Cut-down arrows were flung by hand at a target – usually the sawn-off end of a log – while folk looked on agog at the precision skills on show, cheering, singing, imbibing mead, and babbling ye incoherent non sequiturs. A pattern was set. By the early 1900s, the modern sport as we know it was taking shape. Experiments were made with metal, rather than wooden, arrows, while the log end had become a board with numbered sections. But the increasingly popular game was nearly scuppered in its infancy by the powers that be. Darts is only played today thanks to the sterling efforts of one heroic pub landlord from Leeds, who took on The Man in the first high-pressure game of arras – and grifted his sorry ass. Our swashbuckling hero – who goes by the admittedly underwhelming monicker of Foot Anakin – was taken to court in 1908 for allowing darts to be played in his public bar, the Adelphi Inn on Kirkstall Road, Leeds. Darts was considered a game of chance, and games of chance were banned by law from taking place on licensed premises.

However, Anakin argued that darts was not a festival of luck but a game of the greatest skill, and so he erected a dartboard in a Leeds magistrates court to prove his point. Anakin threw three darts: 20, 20, 20. He then handed the arrows over to a court clerk, who missed the board with his first two throws, then threw a seven. Anakin snatched the darts back off the hapless legal man, and peppered the red bit: three double 20s. "Would you care to repeat that, Mr Anakin?" demanded the magistrate. Anakin threw three more double 20s – you sense we're veering into the ludicrously apocryphal now, but let's go with it – and the case was won. Thanks to a man called Anakin, darts had the force; within 70 years, it would be the sport with the most participants in the country.

2) Leighton Rees 11-7 John Lowe (1978 BDO World Championship final) The most glamorous, sexy and downright fascinating period in British history was the 1970s – don't bother arguing the point, we're simply not interested – so it's no surprise that the ersatz splendour of darts really took off during that decade. The professional game started building a television presence in 1972, when the News of the World Darts Championship – first contested in 1927 – was featured on ITV's World of Sport. It drew an audience of more than seven million. Yorkshire Television – its Leeds studios based on the same Kirkstall Road that was once home to Foot Anakin – hauled local producer Sid Waddell off its flagship Calendar news programme and ordered him to ride the tungsten zeitgeist instead. Waddell – who had also produced documentaries starring urbane travel journalist Alan Whicker – created the legendary Indoor League. A celebration of pub games such as bar billiards, table skittles and shove ha'penny, it is chiefly remembered these days for the saloon-style presentation of the pitch-perfect Fred Trueman.

Witness his joyous link here , all pretence to smooth continuity out the window, as he contemplates the intricacies of table football while getting slowly skittered on Newcastle Broon. (Trueman was, according to Waddell, usually half-cut by noon, though this was not unique behaviour during filming, as free booze was on tap for all competitors and Yorkshire TV staff. Whether this was the smartest idea in the history of television production is a moot point. The recording of one programme, filmed in an Irish bar in Leeds, had to be abandoned for the day when fisticuffs broke out over the table football, the brouhaha spreading like wildfire as guests from a wedding reception being held at the same venue, coincidentally holding their own brawl, crashed through the doors in a cartoon cloud of fists and boots. Riot stopped play at the Indoor League.) And yet the show – ludicrously scheduled at 1pm, incidentally, sandwiched between the ITN news and Crown Court – was a serious sports programme too: the centrepiece was a prestigious darts tournament, drawing the best players from around the globe. In 1975, it was won by the USA's Conrad Daniels.

"It displeased the British," reported the Guardian, "who have become very possessive about the sport." Darts had become a world game, with the paper noting that it had also taken root in Sweden as "a major indoor sport". The time was ripe for a world championship. In 1974, the newly formed British Darts Organisation launched the World Masters, then in 1978 held the first World Professional Darts Championship at Nottingham scampi-in-a-basket variety venue Heart Of The Midlands. Sponsored by Embassy, which gave each participant 200 free fags every day, the first match resulted in a massive shock. The favourite and No1 seed – 21-year-old Eric Bristow, the reigning World Masters champion – was knocked out 6-3 in legs (this was the only year the matches were not divided into sets) by none other than Daniels, who ground out his victory by playing deliberately slowly to irritate the quickfire Crafty Cockney. Daniels's win over Bristow opened up the draw up for Nicky Virachkul, a Thai player who put his proficiency at darts down to his move to New York in the early 1970s.

"Everybody drinks a lot in the States," he explained, "and when you run out of things to say, you start playing darts. You have got to have two or three vodka and tonics to calm you down before a tournament." Virachkul made it through to the semis, where he lost a sudden-death deciding leg to No3 seed Leighton Rees (the 1974 winner of Indoor League). The Welshman would play John Lowe of Derbyshire in the final, Lowe having seen off Sweden's Stefan Lord in the other semi. The BBC had covered the event, with a highlights telecast every evening during the five-day tournament, but the Friday night final was not covered live. The national broadcaster had only two channels to play with in those days, and the darts wasn't going to shift The Pink Panther Show or Max Boyce In Concert off BBC1. BBC2 had an Open University introduction to engineering mechanics to broadcast, plus the John Spencer v Graham Miles tie from Pot Black '78, so the Rees-Lowe showdown was shown in extended highlight form late in the evening.

Rees won the final by 11 legs to seven, taking home a bumper £3,000 first prize (along with, let's not forget, a thousand gratis Embassy). But darts had arrived. It had hit the big time. 3) Keith Talent Deller 6-5 Eric Bristow (1983 BDO World Championship final) The tournament moved to Jollees nightclub in Stoke for its second staging in 1979, and would remain there until 1985. Rees and Lowe made the final again, but this time it was Lowe who won, smashing the champ by five sets to nil to claim his first title. His professionalism was paying off. Before each throw, noted the inimitable Frank Keating in the Guardian, Lowe "blew gently on the end of his fingers like Jimmy Connors". He was, said Keating, "a toothy hunk of a fellow who looked like an amiable extra from Coronation Street. But by golly, he could play darts all right. And subtract from 501 like an IBM computer." Lowe sipped orange juice while other players tanked their booze.

It's little wonder he reached the top of the tree. He was – it makes for a boring read, but no other word will do – nice. "I don't pray that the other man will miss, and I don't pray that I will win either," said Lowe, who had been brought up in a religious household, with a smile. His faith, incongruously, sent him back on the sauce in 1984. Admitting that he enjoyed the odd drop of lager on his downtime as much as the next man, he had felt increasingly "dishonest" in shunning it publicly, so took to ostentatiously sipping half pints when playing to avoid charges of disingenuousness. As displays of honesty go, you'll struggle to find a better example. But Lowe was destined to be usurped by Stoke Newington's answer to Attila the Hun (description copyright Sid Waddell). Eric Bristow was everything Lowe was not: a streetwise, cocky showman, the nearest darts had to an Alex Higgins. The public were indifferent to poor old Lowe, but either loved or hated the preening brilliance of Bristow.

"I couldn't be like Eric and throw two fingers in the air, because I would be scared lightning would strike me down," admitted Lowe. Bristow dominated the 1980s, winning the title in 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985 and 1986, though like all of Britain's highest sporting achievers, most folk only remember his dramatic defeats. The first came in the middle of his imperial phase. In the 1983 final, Bristow was the hot favourite to beat 23-year-old qualifier Keith Deller, who had shocked the world by putting out Lowe and the reigning champion Jocky Wilson en route. But Deller was in the form of his life. He went 2-1 up in sets with a 12-dart leg, then moved 3-1 ahead. Bristow pegged him back to 3-3, only for the youngster to move 5-3 up, requiring one set to win. He had six darts at a double for the title, but let Bristow back in.

The champion moved in for the kill, first levelling the match in sets, 5-5, before winning the first leg of the deciding set against the throw. It was the first time Bristow had been ahead in the match. Deller looked broken. At which point he turned on the burners, rattling off a 12-dart leg, then a 15-dart leg, to move within a leg of the title. Bristow had one dart at the bull to take the leg, but with Deller back on 138 opted to hit single 18 for his favourite out, double 16. It was a wise move, the smart percentage tactic. Sadly for Bristow, Deller stepped up and hit treble 20, treble 18, and double 12 to win the title with a scarcely believable checkout. It had been the greatest final, watched by the greatest darts audience ever: 8.3 million Grandstand viewers on a Saturday afternoon. Deller, his career destined to go into freefall, would never produce anything as good as it, but then to borrow that admission from Catch-22 author Joseph Heller, who has?

4) Jocky Wilson 6-4 Eric Bristow (1989 BDO World Championship final) By 1987, Bristow began to suffer from dartitis, an inability to release the dart properly. "It's no fun going on stage and playing like a dickhead," Bristow said with a sigh. "It breaks your heart. I keep getting beaten by wallies." And yet he still managed to scrap when it mattered, making world finals in 1987, 1989, 1990 and 1991. The 1989 final, against the 73.4% ABV Jocky Wilson, was probably the best of the bunch. "With the loss of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks to TV, darts remains the last resort of thoroughly improbable people," reported the Guardian's wondrous TV critic Nancy Banks-Smith, darts getting 10 times more room on the telly page than it did in the sports section (and thank God it did, with killer lines like the ones you're about to read). "Jocky Wilson looks as if he has been hit by a left.

His throwing action suggests he is chucking half a brick through a windy. Eric Bristow looks like the left that hit him, but has a strangely dainty action with a raised little finger … It is fascinating to see men, who seem to be roughly hewed with hatchets, so physically dexterous. Bernard Shaw said Mrs Patrick Campbell looked as though she could thread a needle with her toes. They had that kind of delicate precision and their grasp of mental arithmetic is dazzling. Jocky may look like a Scotch egg but there is a pocket calculator in there." Wilson went 5-0 up. He stumbled as Bristow pulled the game back to 5-4 – "I didn't want to get whitewashed," he said, "it was a matter of professional pride" – but Jocky fell over the line. The wee man from Kirkcaldy, who sometimes took the stage in Tartan trousers that would barely have reached Jimmy Krankie's knees, gave Bristow a hug. "Eric seemed to bounce off Jocky's stomach and Jocky could only reach Eric's knees," reported Banks-Smith.

"Unlike Bristow, Jocky is a man of few words, most of them 'I cannae believe it'." Wonderful scenes. But it was the end of the golden age of darts. Wilson, soon to be lost to the top shelf he could barely reach, never made another final. Bristow, in turn, was taken hold by his dartitis. In his last two finals – against his upcoming protege Phil Taylor in 1990, and the vastly underrated Dennis Priestley in 1991 – he gleaned only one set. Priestley beat him 6-0, the humiliating whitewash he had been so desperate to avoid against Wilson. Bristow's jig was up. 5) Phil Taylor 6-5 Mike Gregory (1992 BDO World Championship final) In 1992, darts was about to be ripped apart by a bloody civil war. The top players, desirous of more money, better sponsorship, and more television exposure, broke away from the BDO to form the World Darts Council. Within two years, there would be two world championships.

With nearly all the top players in the new WDC version, the BDO would become something of a wasteland, an (even more) ersatz version of what had gone before. But the grand old tournament – if a 14-year-old competition can be considered in such reverential terms – still had a couple of classic stagings to go. In 1992, the new power in the game, Phil Taylor, won his second world title in a dramatic final. The No1 seed faced the No2 seed, Mike Gregory, and the match was as good as the Lakeside has ever seen. (The Deller-Bristow classic was, you'll recall, held at Jollees in Stoke, giving the Joy of Six some wriggle room here.) It was ludicrous: Taylor and Gregory traded heavy scores and huge checkouts in a match that went to the final set. Always leading, Gregory had two golden opportunities to land the title: two double eights at 4-3, then two double 20s and two double 10s at 5-4. All six darts were missed.

Taylor won the leg, then in the sudden-death decider needed only one chance to snatch the prize, hitting double top to nail the title, and visibly puncture poor Gregory's spirit. The modest Gregory tried to laugh off the misses as "the Bermuda Triangle of darts", a witty reference to the positions of the doubles on the board. But his reaction to defeat betrayed his true emotions: facing the crowd to proclaim Taylor the victor, he got halfway through a fistpump before his shoulders slumped and his arm limply fell towards the floor. The final star-packed BDO edition saw John Lowe – there at the start – make off with his third title, adding to the ones he won in 1979 and 1987. And that was that, really. In 1994, the WDC bandwagon began rolling. "The WDC have two or three good players – Dennis Priestley, Alan Warriner, Phil Taylor – and the rest are has beens," insisted BDO impresario Olly Croft. "That's tosh," countered Sid Waddell. "You've got to give the crowd a show and the BDO have got only one star, Bobby George.

The others have as much charisma as a convention of parking attendants. I'm not daft. I would rather commentate on Newcastle United than Blyth Spartans." The players were happy too. "It's a good throw out there," said Jocky Wilson during the first staging at the Circus Tavern in Purfleet. "I wasn't sweating at all, and normally I sweat like a pig. The only thing is, I could have done with a pint or 10." 6) John Part 7-6 Phil Taylor (2003 PDC World Championship final) The PDC era has, of course, been all about Phil Taylor, who has won 13 of the 19 world titles on offer to date.

(Pity poor Dennis Priestley, who won the first PDC staging in 1994 to add to his 1991 BDO crown – battering Taylor 6-1 in the final – before losing to the Power in four of the next six finals.) Between 1995 and 2002, Taylor won every title, the high point of that run a 7-0 thrashing of the 1994 BDO champion John Part in 2001, with a ludicrous 107.5 average in the final. Taylor's success bred resentment. Before playing him in the semi-finals of the 2003 championships, Alan Warriner complained: "They might as well call the PDC the Phil Darts Corporation. I am fed up with everything being about Taylor and nobody else. If he beats me, then I will punch him and knock him out." Taylor, not giving a flying one, did the battering instead. He won 6-1. At one point, a pitiful and humiliated Warriner followed a Taylor 180 with a score of 11.

Warriner offered nothing more than a limp handshake at the end, before scuttling off into the Essex night. But the 2003 final would give succour to players who had previously thought Taylor to be invincible. He was defeated 7-6 by Part, revenge for his humiliation in 2001, and proof that there had been at least some world-class quality floating around the BDO after the split. The result was incontrovertible proof that darts is indeed a sport, with physical factors playing a major part. Taylor had unveiled a glamorous new sexxx image at the tournament, having lost a great deal of weight, sporting a new hoop earring and neon-blond highlights. But it wreaked havoc with his game. "He's lost muscle weight below the navel and that has affected his balance," opined Sid Waddell before the final. "He now often throws a quarter to half an inch below the 60 bed." A year later, Taylor was back up to fighting weight – and back on top of the world. JOY OF SIX BONUS TRACK!!! Something that couldn't be worked into this piece; another example of Sid Waddell's genius.

The legendary commentator once explained to your hard-working Joy of Six hack why he had gone to elaborate lengths to crowbar a reference to obscure Finnish poetry into his previous night's commentary. He had envisaged the following scenario: a young couple were sitting at home on the sofa watching the darts. The lad was getting a bit randy, and was attempting to engage his girlfriend in a spot of hanky-panky. He had worked himself into quite an excitable lather, to the point where his zip was giving him some bother. She, however, was not in the least bit interested in his amorous advances. The literary reference may have whooshed straight over his head, but she had got it instantly, and was laughing heartily at Sid's bon mot. And wondering why she was going out with such a stupid bugger.

Question: Leighton Reece was the first world professional champion in what sport, in 1978?
Answer: Darts