For many years I put Sid Waddell, darts commentator, in the same bracket as Dickie Bird, cricket umpire. Both on occasions got more attention than the sportsmen. The best umpire should not be noticed, and Dickie gave me the impression that he wanted to be the centre of attention. Likewise I wondered whether Waddell's allusions to Shakespeare, Greek mythology, the planets and so on were really just him showing off how clever he was. Peak Waddell saw Stephen Fry join him in the commentary box for a stint , with me at least wondering who was really laughing at who.
I needed a break from in/out, Levae/Remain, political insults and 24 hour rolling news on a PM resigning and a Leader of the Opposition not resigning so decided to give Dan Waddell's biography of his dad, 'We had some laughs', a go.
What I found was an affectionate account, but by no means a hagiography. Sidney was obviously not the easiest person to live or work with. He was egotistic, could be boorish, held grudges and was often insecure.
Dan's writing flows and the best bits are really funny. Sid really did love and admire the darts players, and felt it was his duty to chronicle these working class heroes.
I was startled to learn that Sid's first attempt at fame was as a writer of soft porn novels. He created Bedroll Bella, who was a female version of the character played by Robin Askwith in the Confessions series (which obviously as a teenager I never watched or read). The book was published and Sid had high hopes of it being the first in a series. Sadly - for him although probably not for the wider literary world - Bedroll Bella was a victim of Mary Whitehouse, with both WH Smith and John Menzies refusing to stock it, as a result of her (that is Mary's not Bella's) Festival of Light Campaign. That was Sid's story anyway, but his son suggests that the flop may have been because the book was not very good - 'with a plot as skimpy as Bella's knickers.'
Waddell senior though remained proud of Bedroll Bella until his dying day, believing that he was the first fiction writer to employ the term 'vinegar stroke.'
Sid definitely did create the show The Indoor League, which I can remember watching on lunchtime TV in the 1970's when I should have been studying for exams. It was introduced from the Leeds Irish Club by Fred Trueman, pipe in one hand and pint in the other, with the catchphrase on the approach to the commercial break of "Aye'll sithee"*.
The sports featured included shove ha'penny, arm wrestling, pool, table football, cheese skittles, table skittles and bar billiards. It was the darts though that provided the best telly, enhanced by Sid ensuring that all the players were given unlimited free booze. The best darter was the Welshman, Alan Evans, 'the Cochise of the concentric rings' as Sid described him. Most of the darts players on the Indoor League were recruited fairly randomly from the pubs of Yorkshire, and were pretty crap. Evans genius therefore stood out even more, with in his case the free beer helping. Sid reported that Evans drinking number was 8, the number of pints he need to be at his most accurate.
As darts boomed, with coverage of the world championship on prime-time BBC, the Darts authorities became more sensitive about the sport's image. The Fat Belly / Even Fatter Belly sketch on Not the Nine O'clock News, where Oxbridge educated middle class comedians poked fun at the excesses of the working class arrow throwers, meant Sidney (also Oxbridge educated but from a very different background) had to employ euphemisms to describe the drinking. When the great Jocky Wilson was missing the board because he was drunk, he was guilty of 'over preparation.
Sid loved going to the pub, and had firm ideas on pub etiquette.
1. Most important - buy your round
2. If you were drinking quicker than others don't tap the table and break the rhythm of others. Instead buy yourself an 'inbetweener.'
3. (in contrast to 2.) Nor nurse your drink. If others were ready and it was your round, you buy it.
4. Never jump the queue at the bar.
5. Never hold others up by paying in any other way than in cash.
6. If you were pissed, go home.
Not surprisingly given his background Sid's politics were to the left. When one of his drinking partners started using the Pudsey Conservative Club Sid declared he would only enter the building in order to lay dynamite under it. Dan though suggests this may have been for effect, and that when sober he was more apolitical than revolutionary. He describes his dad as a 'lager socialist' in that his views grew more left wing according to how much he drunk. Sober he was rumoured to vote Liberal Democrat!
There are many genuinely funny anecdotes in the book which certainly cheered me up at this tense time for our country. Sadly though there is one occasion where Dan is reduced to toilet humour. Sid's fame was spreading and as a result he started doing celebrity commentating gigs. One was for a local cricket club charity day, 'highlight' of which was a competition to guess where a donkey had a crap (as I said not funny). The donkey did not arrive but an enterprising club member replaced him with a horse. The cricket pitch had been divided into squares and people paid for one. The square in which the horse took a dump was the winning one.
Sid's role was to sit on a gantry above the club house and commentate on the event. Fuelled by many pints of Webster's Bitter Sid did his best to liven up the 'action'. Unfortunately the horse was constipated and took hours to defecate by which time everyone had given up and gone inside. Obviously I repeat not clever and not funny at all.
*Yorkshire for 'I will see you later'
