MY JOCKY HORROR SHOW

Unbelievable! Jeff Stelling recalls how 30 years ago he got tongue-tied at the tungsten festival

- MIKE WALTERS 

JEFF STELLING launched the Professional Darts Corporation on Sky Sports with a Jocky horror show 30 years ago today.

And the arrows have become part of our soundtrack to Christmas ever since the award-winning presenter's slip on Boxing Day 1993.

While you were drifting in and out of consciousness on the sofa after snacking on tins of Quality Street, with the thud-thud-thud of tungsten hitting the board in the background, Stelling was the ringmaster who first introduced the PDC to our living rooms.

Hartlepool's biggest fan is best known for excelling as Soccer Saturday's presenter for almost 30 years until the great monkey hanger left Sky earlier this year.

But he has never forgotten the day darts went nuclear as 16 players, including seven world champions, made their breakaway - and how he marked it with a rare blooper. Now 68, Stelling said: It was incredibly controversial at the time and these upstarts leaving the British Darts Organisation were the equivalent of Kerry Packer's circus in cricket or LIV Golf.