A world-champion darts player writes home…
Dear Mother and Father,
Shame you canāt congratulate me. I am, I know, a disappointment to you. You hoped I would follow in your footsteps and become a literary critic or expositor of abstruse texts. Instead, I stand before you as winner of the 2025 Paddy Power World Darts Championship, for which the prize-money far exceeds all youāve earned from the 22 books youāve written together over the course of 40 years. I donāt gloat. I seek only your approval and your love. Millions of adoring fans around the world applaud my skills and call my name ā Frederick “Fatboy” De Selincourt ā but you hang your heads in shame every time I enter the arena to Morriseyās Youāre the One for Me, Fatty. I have dedicated every nine dart finish Iāve ever thrown to you, yet still you disown me.
Where did it all go wrong, you ask. Well, the answer to that is straightforward. It went wrong when you, daddy, saw me plucking feathers from my cot pillow and throwing them at mummy. “Iāll buy the boy a set of plastic darts,” you said in an unlikely fit of populism. I remain surprised that you even knew where to buy darts from. Didnāt you once say you only ever shopped at Foyles. “And donāt forget a dartboard,” mummy said, out of concern for the furniture.
Do I need to remind you that I threw my first maximum from the pram and regularly hit nine dart finishes before I could walk. “One hundred and eighty!” were the first words I ever spoke. You could have stopped me then but you were too busy touring Third World universities for the British Council. Faute de mieux, I became a darts player on the altar of your careers. When I told you I was to be apprenticed to Jocky Wilson you raised no objection, thinking horse riding ā while not exactly the career youād wanted for me ā at least opened doors to a better class of person than I was ever likely encounter in the Ally Pally.
For 18 months I sharpened Jockyās arrows and fluffed his feathers and for a further 18 sat at the oche to watch where he placed his feet as he threw. I know what youāre thinking, but had those been Nureyevās feet youād have applauded the conscientiousness of my studies. But whatās the difference?Ā Ā Is not excellence excellence? When people refuse to call darts a sport or even an art because ā they say ā it amounts to no more than chucking a primitive missile at a narrow strip of sisal fibre, I remind them of Jane Austenās description of writing as painting with a fine brush on two inches of ivory. How often did you read me that passage when I was growing up! How well I remember you arguing with each other about its applicability to Jane Austenās prose at its best. You scoffed at me when I said I believed Jane Austen played darts with her sister Cassandra in the garden of the Austen house at Chawton. But could she have described those two inches of ivory had she not been familiar with that narrow band of dartboard in which I earn my living? How many maximums did Jane Austen throw? Which was her double of choice? Those are discussions for another time.
Letās not argue about nomenclature ā sport or art or neither, darts enable the human spirit to achieve greatness not by spraying grand gestures around but by fixing on a fine detail of existence and concentrating all its fire power there. Jane Austen or Tolstoy? Your preference was always for Jane Austen. As is mine. You can keep your Olympics and your Test Matches and your Cup Finals. Give me darts at the Alexandra Palace any time. Precisely because of their smallness, those tiny treble bands on a dartboard are more challenging to creativity than a wicket, a goalmouth or a finishing line. Or the Battle of Borodino, come to that.
You have commented over the years on my adiposity. How can a pair of fleshless neurasthenics such as you, who chew their fingers to the bone for artās sake, have produced someone my size? Eat less, you have pleaded. Exercise more, you say, forgetting how many miles I walk every day from the oche to the dartboard and back. My dear mother and father, do not think I am fat because I am indolent or because I cannot say no to cakes and ale. I am fat because I love darts.
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SubscribeHoward forgot to mention the arithmetical gymnastics required in darts, including the multipliers for doubles and trebles and the precise subtractions required to complete each round.
No doubt, after practising and playing thousands of games, some of those calculations become rote, but nevertheless there’s a degree of alertness and mental agility involved.
I don’t know much about darts, but I know I enjoyed this entertaining and, I suspect, rather profound essay.
As for Jocky Wilson, if the narrator of the piece really was his student, he must be quite old. Poor Jocky retired from darts in 1995 and spent the rest of his life as a diabetic recluse.
Dear Fatboy
If you’d been listening when we explained the Paradox of Zeno to you, you would understand that the dart cannot ever reach the dartboard. Your victory is therefore an illusion.
Sorry to disappoint you
Your loving Mother and Father
Bravo Howard – great stuff – very funny. Fred de Selincourt is the new Keith Talent
This has completely brightened up the Saturday before the drudgery commences for another year. As a lifelong fan of both darts and snooker (surprisingly common amongst my mostly university educated friends, male and female), I now retract my opinion that darts, however entertaining to watch, is a game but not a sport. Just a crying shame that it isnāt on free to air tele anymore. Anyway, Masters Snooker up next. Happy days!
Note to the author, Jocky Wilson plied his trade at Jollees nightclub in Longton and not the Ally Pally
Oh no! Does Howard want to gentrify the last proper working man’s sport? Footie is now for the elites who can afford to pay to watch. Sadly it seems the darts has gone the same way. The Beeb seems to have given up on the followup champs at Frimley Green, which used to take place a week or so after the PDC.
But I think darts is still the most democratic sport. Basically anyone can take it up without the expensive equipment or coaches that you need for most other sports to get to a high level. As Howard says, it seems to help to have a bit of ‘bulk’, presumably to help with stability while lining up your shot. Well that’s my excuse for having a poor finish š
Compliments from the US, but what did I just read? I feel like the 18 year old version of myself reading the Sun Also Rises – having masterful prose pour over me while reading about a world i am unconnected to and can’t comprehend.
I’m trying to say this is one of the most enjoyable and masterful things I’ve read in a long time. I had to look up words left and right (unbegrudgingly), I didn’t know if it was autobiographical or if you’re writing in the place of another or if you’re just making this up (doesn’t matter), but it was as on the mark as it’s subject.
Love it, thank you.
Seems to be in quarantine. Iāll try again:
This has completely brightened up the Saturday before the drudgery commences for another year. As a lifelong fan of both darts and snooker (surprisingly common amongst my mostly university educated friends, male and female), I now retract my opinion that darts, however entertaining to watch, is a game but not a sport. Just a crying shame that it isnāt on free to air tele anymore. Anyway, Masters Snooker up next. Happy days!