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There is a scene in The Office in which David Brent is asked about his biggest disappointment. "Alton Towers," he replies immediately, without even a hint of irony. This Sunday sees the annual BBC sporting back-slap, Sports Personality of the Year. I, of course, will...

Phil Taylor was once again the deserved victor of the recent Grand Slam of Darts, but beneath the main headline from the ITV4 tournament lies an intriguing story which threatens to take some of the gloss off a fantastic nine days of darts.The Grand Slam begins...

Invigorated by the hysteria of firstly Russ & Woss-gate and then the last dances of John Sergeant, I looked forward to Monday’s episode of Inside Sport on BBC1 with relish. An exclusive interview with Nick Faldo had been heavily trailed, not least with...

Why, in a sport in which the fans play such an intrinsic role, has the PDC just organised its’ inaugural tournament staged entirely without fans? And why did it take place in a golf club?As sports professionalise and grow it is common to hear a concerted...

Yesterday it was Kelly Holmes’s turn to trot out on the BBC the hackneyed line about the Olympics ‘putting the Great back into Britain’. If only the Northern Irish were part of the team she could also have put the United back into Kingdom. Our...

The inaugural BDO International Grand Prix reached a conclusion on September 20 with Scotland’s Gary Anderson the worthy winner of the £12,000 first prize. Currently number 1 in the World Darts Federation rankings, ‘Dreamboy’ reached the final...

It is scarcely a surprise that Blustering Boris managed to offend the Chinese, the French, and the Jaques family with his unbuttoned suit and his recent comments about table tennis, but whatever one’s view of London’s Mayor, Johnson certainly...

After a break of 96 days, the Barclays Premier League recommences on Saturday. For the next nine months twenty teams will battle their way through the twists and turns of the greatest football league in world. In May 2009 we will say farewell to three of them, crown...

Darts’ League of Legends makes its way to The Spa in Bridlington this week, with just two league nights remaining before Finals Night at the Circus Tavern on August 22.To those who follow the Premier League of darts, the format is familiar: eight players, seven...

Sport, so often, and with apologies to Martine McCutcheon, is about moments, perfect moments. No more so than in athletics, where fractions of seconds or centimetres make the difference between a reservation in the Beijing Olympic Village and two weeks of moping...

From 2011 the PDC will be adopting a tour card system. Announced last month, this is probably the biggest change to the structure of professional darts since the big split of the early 1990s. In the words of Barry Hearn, Chairman of the PDC, "this is Star Trek darts...

I received a letter from my bank the other day. One arrives on a hebdomadal basis (which is not relevant or particularly interesting, but is a chance for me to use the new word I learnt from a crossword. Everyone should learn new words). Their records showed that they...

I have a problem with Sir Allen Stanford’s $100 million five-year cash injection into our national summer sport, but it is not one that has been widely shared so far. I don’t like Twenty20 Cricket.My problem is not that the handful of games I’ve...

It was impossible to watch Phil Taylor retain his Premier League Darts crown last week without a sense of inevitability. Of all his major tournament victories, however, this was probably the least predictable – at least after his terrible start to the...

There are 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras in the UK, making us European leaders in something other than teenage pregnancy and drinking outside pubs. Most of them are a waste of space, at least according to one Scotland Yard Detective Chief Inspector. But...

An exciting night of darts at Wembley Arena in mid-April saw Phil Taylor and James Wade secure their places in the Premier League play-offs with two games to spare. For Wade, his fourth consecutive victory came in a tense deciding leg against Peter ‘One...

Chesterfield station becomes a little cold when the sun goes down. I know because I spent an hour there the other day having been thrown off a train on the way back to London from Sheffield.The final of the England national table-tennis...

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has held an interest in darts over the last fifteen years that the sport has recently been back in court. And, although the case was neither in the UK, nor a direct clash between the two sides of the tungsten curtain, the...

“So, how was the snow?” I was asked in the pub the night after returning from my first skiing holiday for twenty years.I didn’t know how to respond. I have always thought that skiing is over-rated. There, I’ve said it. Unfortunately, I...

Four weeks into its fourth year, darts’ only significant league event has finally become interesting. That James Wade is topping the table, a point ahead of Raymond Van Barneveld, is not particularly surprising. And it wasn’t entirely unexpected that new...

With football saturating every section of the newspapers last week (even the women’s pages were asking whether Cheryl should take him back), I finally went to the new Wembley. Not to watch a meaningless and disinteresting friendly against a team ranked 44 in the...

So the home secretary Jacqui Smith doesn’t feel safe on the streets of London.  If it hadn’t been for those pesky hoodies… Perhaps it would be better if Smith had lied – or at least followed the example of many Westminster colleagues by...

Two world championships full of drama, tension and emotion. Two worthy victors. Now for the silly season.January is traditionally a time for rumour and counter-claim in the darting world as players consider making the big switch. With the world championships the...

Monday sees the launch of my difficult second book, or my booky-wooky as I may have called it were I a former heroin addict and alcoholic who had been introduced to prostitutes by my father at the age of 17 and since gone on to be strangely omnipresent. Life would, I...