Behold the voice of darts in full flight

THERE are bad sports commentators, average ones and the occasional great one but perhaps, in the history of the profession, there has only been one from another planet - step forward Sid Waddell, the voice of darts.

Convincing the viewing public that darts on television is something to get excited about has been Sid's job specification over the years and, while it might be inaccurate to say he has succeeded, he's had a pretty darn good go.

"Welcome to a veritable cauldron of darting excellence in sunny Salford," said Sid as he introduced the beginning of Sky Sports' coverage of the 1996 World Team Darts Championships at the Willows Variety Centre last week.

Sid, it has to be said, has found his spiritual home on Sky Sports. The BBC had the monopoly on darts in the sport's halcyon days in the 1980s - who could we ever forget Jocky Wilson and Bobby "Liberace" George - but they never tried to inject any glamour into the sport. Sid's passion for his subject was always in sharp contrast to the channel's more conservative style.

The term "died and gone to heaven" sums up Sid's feelings about Sky's move into the darts' world. Their coverage of last week's event was so spectacular it stopped just short of having a Goodyear blimp hover over the Willows Variety Centre - there would have been one only the haze of smoke from all those John Player non-tipped in the crowd would have obscured the view.

However the channel's truly spectacular build-up to Friday's Group Four match between Ireland's Tom Kirby and Peter Manley and English pair Rod Harrington and Peter Evison almost caused Sid to spontaneously combust with excitement.

Through dried ice, flashing lights and to the deafening strains of The Irish Rover (The Pogues and The Dubliners' version), the Irish team made their entrance to the hall, led out by a young woman wielding a Tricolour - it was all too much for Sid. "We men can bond in many ways with high fives and low fives but the bonding going on between Manley and Kirby is spiritual," he shrieked emotionally.

Next out were Harrington and Evison, the Number Two seeds in the tournament, to the accompaniment of their signature tune, ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Thin. "They're dressed very preppy - they look like a couple of the Beach Boys before the cholesterol got to them," said Sid, thinking back fondly to the days when Jocky stumbled out to the oche with McEwan's lager stains all down his front.

"Rod and Pete came through there looking like a Panzer division ready to roll - consult your German dictionaries because, as they say in The Sun, we're all Euro now," declared our commentator. Well, maybe we're all Euro now but the tension in the hall (and in the living rooms at home) was not eased when the English pair, very unEuro-like, refused to shake hands with our Tom and Peter. Suddenly it felt like Gelsenkirchen all over again.

Except there was no Ray Houghton to, eh, put the dart in the English treble-twenty, no Packie Bonner and no Gary Lineker to miss all those chances. Instead Rod `this oche ain't big enough for the four of us' Harrington and his partner gave our boys a terrible thrashing in the opening sets.

Dave Lanning, Sid's co-commentator, got a bit excited when our boys staged a mini-comeback but, try as he might, he just couldn't match the master's descriptive powers. "We're going to have a darts shoot-out and it's going to be.. .em. . melodramatic," he said as the match fizzled out with a 6-3 victory for the English team.

The saddest aspect of last week's coverage of the darts was the almost complete absence of chubby, chain-smoking, beer-swilling competitors. It would not be accurate to describe the modern darts professional as anything approaching an athlete but some of them almost look healthy.

In the old days, the sight of Jocky and Bobby made you believe that you too could still be a sporting star no matter how little exercise you took or how much you smoked or drank you never felt that watching Torville and Dean or Red Rum. Snooker was the other 1980s sport that made you feel you weren't such a slob after all - remember Bill Werbeniuk? Bless him.

Bill, Jocky and Bobby are now probably tuning in to Aerobics - Oz Syle (which is on Sky Sports every bloody morning) in an attempt to mould their bodies to shapes more appropriate to the 1990s. Last Wednesday's edition came from the deck of HMS Success in Sydney and was presented by Michelle and her back up team of Effie, Nicola and June.

Michelle, who smiled at us for the entire half-hour, promised that the morning's exercises would be "low impact", which, of course, was easy for her to say when she weighs in at three stones, four pounds.

The bopping began only for our host to announce, 10 minutes after we'd started, that we should move any furniture out of our way. So once we unwrapped our legs from around the kitchen table we carried on to the sounds of Love, Love, Love, Here J Conic by Rollo Goes Mystic. "Right, left, pull back, push forward, bring it in, take it down, up and down, do it again." said Michelle and you wondered if Jocky and Bill were doing it at home in their leotards.