sport

‘Working class golf’ – the posh media will never understand it

A close-up image of a dart, against a white background. It's one of the darts used by Luke Littler, 16 year-old runner-up in the 2024 PDC world darts championship. On the flight the words 'The Nuke' are reproduced.

Broadcasters and journalists – please stop trying to explain darts.

I know you were privately educated and find darts to be kind of exotic – like chicken shops or pigeon racing – but when you invite a contributor to answer the question “…but is darts a sport?” or laughingly ask what “one-hundred-and-eighty!” means, you’re embarrassing yourself and your profession.

Every now and then we’re offered a vivid snapshot of the class composition of the British media and the instinctive prejudices of reporters, producers, editors and presenters. 16 year-old darts prodigy Luke Littler has given us a fresh illustration of the intractable and tedious ruling-class domination of the media in Britain, of the narrow and backward and tragically involuted interests of the major outlets.

Text from the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper 3 January 2024 - Sorry to all Luke Littler fans but darts is not a real sport. Comparing Littler to Tiger Woods is absurd as the teenage darts sensation does not lead the life of a professional athlete. Oliver Brown
Chief Sports Writer — Telegraph sports writer stays on message.

Darts has been a recognised, international sport for decades (although Sport England, the official body, dominated by the men in blazers, only offered darts formal recognition in 2005). The famous players of my youth – Jocky Wilson, Eric Bristow, John Lowe – all went pro in the 1970s and were wealthy celebrities by the mid-eighties.

Black and white photograph of a group of men playing darts outside a pub in Wales. Details from the archive page: Mr Ifor Williams, the carpenter from Cynwyd near Corwen and his workers playing darts at lunchtime. Photographer: Geoff Charles. Date: 17/12/1964 — Darts in 1964. From the Geoff Charles Collection at the National Library of Wales

Playing darts – and the various grassroots championships and tournaments – has been a vital platform for working class men and women to enjoy themselves, to compete, to win fame and even to make some money – for a hundred years. But as a proletarian sport darts has been labelled as aberrant, a permanent outsider to the real sports. Here the chief sports writer from the posh people’s paper explains that darts can’t be a sport because its latest superstar doesn’t work out like Tiger Woods did, dodging the more salient comparison between golf and darts—that when you think about them for more than about a minute they’re both splendidly, indefensibly ridiculous activities.

Real sports in Britain were invented on the playing fields of Eton (and Rugby obvs) and codified by aristocratic amateurs. A pastime that emerged from the pubs and clubs of working people, played in precious time off by people who worked six days a week, couldn’t possibly be elevated to the status of a sport. The very idea that a sport might emerge in a wholly working-class environment, in the total absence of middle-class officials or governing bodies (or PE teachers and headmasters) was anathema. It literally could not be a sport.

So when reporters sent off to attend darts matches amusedly observe the scenes at the back of the crowd, ask fans why on earth they’ve come all the way from Holland and ‘share the atmosphere’ like clever anthropologists who’ve noticed something interesting happening amongst the lower classes, they’re perpetuating the stupid, backward class hostility that still structures life in Britain. They should stay away (send someone from the sports desk).

Cover of paperback edition of Martin Amis's 1989 novel 'London Fields'. The cover is white with a large dart with red flights overlaid. — Posh literary dweeb Martin Amis wrote a whole novel about darts in 1989.

There have been quiet periods in the history of darts but the PDC world championship is now thirty years old (a break-away championship first contested by 16 leading players in 1994). Prize money was, from the very beginning – if not exactly Formula 1 – at least comparable to other world sports. Games were carried on live TV, winners were celebrated everywhere in the pop media. I once saw 1980s prodigy Phil “The Power” Taylor mobbed by fans and autograph hunters in an Irish airport. He was so chill.

The annual championship meeting has been filling the huge, main hall at Alexandra Palace for over 15 years. Every match sells out. I tried to get tickets for this year’s event months ago and evenings were going for over £250/ticket. Premier League footballers and soap stars fill the front tables.

Darts fans wearing traffic cone hats at the PDC world championship

PDC events have been noisy and chaotic – with crowds encouraged to dress up, bring signs and banners and come up with inventive chants – since at least the switch from Essex to Ally Pally in 2007. It’s one of the most entertaining sporting events you can watch live. Players enjoy the racket, play up to the audience and get extra energy from the noise behind them. Fans from Holland, Canada, the Baltics and elsewhere attend.

And to finish, the rules are really simple (there’s a handy one-page summary) and scoring is easy to understand (honestly, you could be an expert in ten minutes). Print them out and put them on the wall near the coffee machine.

This scientific study compares scoring results from historic matches with those from the period when matches were played without audiences during the pandemic and actually concludes that there’s a (slight) negative effect from having a noisy crowd in the room.
If you’re my age you may sometimes find yourself experiencing flashbacks to a 1970s ITV programme called The Indoor League, presented by retired cricketer Fred Trueman. On this 1975 episode you’ll see a 19 year-old Swedish prodigy Stefan Lord piling on the 180s and a tense women’s competition.
Women have probably played darts for as long as the men (see The Indoor League for examples of competitive women, some travelling from other countries to play, back in the seventies). The women’s World series has been played for over twenty years and there are now dozens of professional players.
Bullseye carried darts mania right through to the mid-nineties. It was a sweet show. Big-hearted entertainment from another era. Here’s a 1985 episode.
It was mega-promoter Barry Hearn who perceptively called darts ‘working class golf’—a game played by ordinary people with extraordinary skills.

How do you like your tradition?

Essentially perfect small town joy or ridiculous and contrived ceremonial fiction?

I was watching this ace video about the shrovetide madness that takes over in several small English towns in February each year and just gurgling with joy at the completeness, the perfect, hermetic correctness of the whole thing. It’s a kind of unarguable tradition. So rooted in the life of these communities. It just is.

The loons in Ashbourne and half a dozen other communities have been crashing around en masse with a huge, leather ball (this year’s Atherstone game was a particularly wild one) for eight hundred years (it might be six hundred, or nine hundred – nobody seems to know) and they see no good reason to stop.

And the obvious contrast that jumped out at me was with the other tradition that we’re all supposed to be engaged with right now – the coronation of a new monarch – a tradition so overblown, so pretentious, so deliberate, that it sucks all the air out of the very idea of tradition, leaving us with the pathetic tradition failure of King Charles and his pen holder, in which a flunkey is berated for not knowing the exact detail of a ritual that was probably brand new.

Part of the Coronation Claims submission form provided by the UK Government for the 2023 coronation of King Charles III - the full text of the form is at the URL linked from the image — Sorry, you’ve missed the deadline

There’s an enormous national effort going into the production of authentic-looking tradition for this coronation. The government has set up a scheme, for instance, that permits people to fill in a form and claim ‘a historic or ceremonial role’ in the event. The Coronation Claims Office “…will ensure we fulfil The King’s wish that the ceremony is rooted in tradition and pageantry but also embraces the future.” Basically, people with plausible stories will get an invitation to put on some kind of costume and attend the coronation. And in this way tradition is made.

We know that most of the traditions of the contemporary monarchy were invented in the late 19th Century – either from whole cloth or based on rituals forgotten since the middle ages – in response to the institution’s last really big crisis of esteem. Some of the traditions are even newer. The big revival of royal tradition began with Victoria’s spectacular diamond jubilee celebration in 1897 and the first true state coronation – with all the parades and public showbiz – was Edward VII’s in 1901. Before that they’d essentially been private events, not really for the hoi poloi. Permitting subjects to cheer from the side of the road was a breakthrough for royal engagement with the populace. It is well known that the new king hates all this.

British life, like that of any modern nation, is a pattern of tradition and novelty; eternal and brand new; authentic and pretend. The rituals of our monarchy, though, are a suffocating simulation that makes a joke of the whole idea of tradition. The institution’s desperate effort to retain legitimacy in a changing world has turned Britain into a tradition factory, a manufacturer of low-grade historical fiction, a fake state.

The video is a lovely half-hour doc from a football channel called Copa 90 that’s won loads of prizes.
The key text in our recent understanding of British royalty as elaborate invention is David Cannadine’s essay in this excellent book.
Everybody knows the royal traditions were invented but the question is, do you care?
This article by Simon Heffer from the New Statesman is about the crisis produced by Victoria’s withdrawal from public life that triggered the monarchy’s massive renewed investment in tradition (paywall).
The crazy mediaeval football thing is surprisingly widespread and might be the origin of actual football.

Blue collar thrills

There’s a village in the flatlands of South Northamptonshire called Podington. Nearby is what used to be a US Airbase. In 1966, some locals decided to introduce the frankly weird and unsuitable US sport of drag racing to the abandoned runway and, in honour of its American roots, they called the track Santa Pod Raceway – borrowing some glamour from all those hot, dry Californian salt pans and desert strips, I suppose.
The school holidays are almost over so I took Olly (4) to Santa Pod’s ‘Easter Thunderball Pro Fuel Shootout’ on bank holiday Monday. A meeting like this is a kind of working class Henley Regatta, a huge family picnic with candy floss, an aerobatic display, dodgems, a Wall of Death and chip vans – all set to the utterly impenetrable howling and grinding soundtrack of the cars themselves. Whole conversations are conducted in mime. Hot dog vendors lip read.

The noise is the main thing. The only thing, really. It’s more than a noise. It’s a big shock the first time you hear it. Less like the rumble of a big engine than a huge, percussive grunt or crash with no apparent source – the gates of hell come to mind. It’s so huge and so physical (stuck for adjectives: acute? Cataclysmic? Shocking? Visceral?) that it makes you want to cry (like the opera).

Most races last 5 or 6 seconds. There’s a persistent smell of exotic substances (methanol, nitrous oxide) and burning rubber, the track is continually sprayed with an acrid degreaser (“cover your children’s eyes, ladies and gentlemen. Just a mild irritant”), a single run will use 40 litres of fuel. Crashes and engine failures are routine (although hardly anyone gets hurt).

Drag racing is the pursuit of a simple, 1940s teen pastime to its logical (but entirely unreasonable) conclusion. It’s all about prosperity, abundant free time, permissive traffic laws and cheap gas. It has to be the least environmentally-friendly pursuit on earth and it’s a total anachronism (I feel a bit dirty talking about it). The kids who raced their Chevys and Fords between traffic lights in little post-war Californian towns can have had no idea that such a rich and strange culture would result (huge in Norway, apparently). I think I’m addicted.

(tip: get some ear defenders for your kids. They sell them at the raceway).

Click on the small nine-frame pic above to confirm that I really didn’t manage to catch a dragster in a single one of those nine photos!

Some links: Some of those mind-blowing sounds from the US (although they’re a pretty pale reflection of the cacophany at the raceway). Some great and evocative pics of drag racing in the UK in the 1960s. Lots of pictures and videos of more recent UK drag racing. The Santa Pod site plays a sound when you load it and I think it might be the first one I’ve ever approved of.