He was awarded five-figure sponsorships, mostly, it has to be said, by breweries. And although he drank alcohol, it was not by the gallon measures that sustained his fellow players.ĭeller was instantly hailed as the new face of darts, the angelic poster boy for a revitalised, modern, broadcasting-standards-friendly image. Not what you would call athletic, perhaps, but no beer gut to speak of. 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. But Deller checked out with a treble 20, a treble 18 and a double 12 to become world champion. 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. '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 the final he met the number one player, Eric Bristow, the 'Crafty Cockney' himself. 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. The winner of that championship was a young unknown named Keith Deller. 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. Back in 1983 10 million people watched the final of the world championship. But even if broadcasting has changed a great deal in the past couple of decades, that was never a fair charge. It used be said that there was nothing on British television except snooker.
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