A night at the darts: a stag and hen party with the spirit of a holiday camp
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Version 0 of 1. Lakeside, home of darts – I had no idea what romance the name alone conjured. The assertive Eighties branding makes it look like a Little Chef, and the lobby has the air of a place where you’re still allowed to smoke indoors. It is swarming, the crowd expectant but comradely, more Royal Wedding than Black Friday. In the entrance is an empty glass cabinet: “Due to a robbery,” a sign reads, “we have regretfully lost all the rewards and trophies that Bob Potter OBE and Lakeside have earned over 50 years.” Here stands darts. Disappointed, but unbowed. More and more of British life, from Ascot to Comicon, reveals itself upon closer examination to be an excuse for fancy dress. The British Darts Organisation (BDO) world championships – known (but never to them) as the poor relation of the Professional Darts Corporation, whose event takes place at Alexandra Palace – looks like a stag night, crossed with a hen night, organised by a TV professional, trying to recreate a Butlins. Some of the costumes have been months in the planning – a table of friends from the Isle of Wight are dressed, two as the Mario Brothers, two as Bananas in Pyjamas, along densely packed lines of cultural nostalgia. Other outfits, as Adam Grint explained, came together through sheer serendipity. “At five o’clock yesterday, we phoned a warehouse in Newbury. Today, one of us picked them up. It was a race against time.” They are dressed, he and his four colleagues from a visual effects company, as men lying in bed next to a dirty, square cut blonde wig; it’s supposed to be a woman, I guess, but it looks like they’re each being hugged by a tiny (actual size) Rod Stewart. It was conceived as an evening of client entertainment, but only one client agreed to come, and he’s sitting on a different table. Yet what an atmosphere. “The best bit,” said Andrew Wood, “is that you can mix with the players afterwards. It’s the closest you can get to a sports personality.” “No, no,” said Gareth Brannan, “call them athletes. They’re athletes but they’re also normal people.” Grint, apparently thinking me unconvinced, which I was not, added: “There aren’t many places you can pour all your communal food into one jug and eat it altogether.” It is true, there are not. Jane Smith, 44, takes it fractionally more seriously – she plays herself for the Whitby Ladies Rifle Club – but is dressed as a widow. She and her group came the day before, dressed as runaway brides. I’d heard a rumour that they came the day before that, dressed as a hen party; she gave me a look that said, “ew. Dressing as a hen party. Who would do that?”. “Ten year ago, I would have said that men’s and ladies’ were two different games. But now I think the ladies are catching up with the fellas. One of the women’s games yesterday was better than the fellas,” says Smith. Enid Vincent, 73, works for the BDO, along with her husband (I eavesdropped a conversation that could’ve been scripted by Alan Bleasedale; an incredibly drunk man named Raymond, 49, said to Mr Vincent, “you work here, don’t you? Can you get me a job?” “We’re all volunteers, you know.” “VOLUNTEERS?” “We don’t get paid.” “Can you get me one of the jobs that does get paid?”). Enid plays herself, and has represented her county nearly 200 times. “At one stage, I was good. But in all honesty, you really have to practise two or three hours a day.” This is the darts paradox; as the crowd has become more festive, the players have become more serious. Many people bemoan the end of indoor smoking as the death knell for darts players’ signature nonchalance, but Ian, 47, of the Isle of Wight party, said: “In reality, they stopped drinking during the matches a few years before that. It didn’t make any difference to watching it The audience can still drink.” Stewart, 40, and Scott, 47, think it has changed, in one key respect. It is way more expensive. Scott used to buy tickets to every session, give spares to his neighbours, approach it like a national holiday. “It’s become commercialised. They keep putting the prices up and introducing sessions they’re not going to get full houses for. I only bought one session this year. I’m not doing it, they’re taking the piss out of us.” It’s a wringer, to love a sport; if no one else likes it, it gets no attention; if everyone likes it, the prices go up. There’s probably some intensely sour spot in the middle, where it’s popular enough to inflate prices, but not to get the respect it deserves. And yet, with Scott in a cool helmet and Stewart in a hat the shape of a crocodile, it is hard not to conclude that they’re enjoying themselves in spite of it all. The finals are on Saturday night. I can’t tell you who might win. I haven’t understood any game so little since someone tried to teach me mahjong. |