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Darts With The Lid Off
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DARTS WITH THE
LID OFF by Alan and
Geoffrey D’Egville
A retrospective
review by Mat Coward (c. 1983)
 Has darts
changed all that much in the past 45 years? Perhaps not says MAT COWARD, who
recently made a surprising discovery…
Darts
has swept the country from end to end, from top to bottom, side to side and even
diagonally … the man who cannot speak the lingo of the dart is nowadays an
outcast. The girls can’t stand him and the men never do, not even half a pint.
You may be head man in your business, but in the bars of England the only thing
that counts is whether you can score a double quickly.
The above
paragraph reads like any one of a hundred recent newspaper articles about the
post-TV boom in our sport, doesn’t it? But in fact it comes from the “Foreword
or Something” to a book called DARTS WITH THE LID OFF by Alan and
Geoffrey D’Egville – published, amazingly, in 1938!
Even more
surprising than the early publication date is the fact that the book is a
comedy, a humourous guide to the niceties of the game – something that modern
darters have yet to come up with. It is written in a light, jaunty style very
similar to that classic text-book (containing all the history you could
remember, as it claimed) 1066 And All That, which prompts me to wonder if
A & G D’Egville might be pseudonyms for Seller and Yeatman, the authors of
1066. Certainly the cartoons used to illustrate the finer points of the game
are rather familiar.
What this
book - which I picked up for ten bob the other day in a local second-hand shop –
really shows the modern darter, is how little the game has changed, for all the
big money, sequined shirts and throw-by-throw broadcast coverage.
On the
subject of gamesmanship, for instance, we find that the subtle art of barracking
an adversary is no recent invention. The author’s introduce us to Bill Snoot of
the Pin & Winkle, who “chews tobacco, and makes clucking noises continuously. He
wears a crimson choker whose dazzling brilliance renders all doubles invisible
to all other players.” And then there’s Bert Sparkes, turning out for the
Dartsman’s Arms, who is “a trifle asthmatic, and exploits this to the full when
playing darts by wheezing in his opponents’ ear when he looks like being
dangerous.”
The
D’Egvilles put particular emphasis on the importance to the well kitted-out
player of a good understanding of the language of the sport, and one of the most
useful, as well as amusing, parts of the book is the Glossary. The section is
semi-serious and it’s interesting to note that the expression ‘Bed and
Breakfast’ for a 20, a 5 and a 1 was as out of date then as it is now: “It’s
origin”, according to the Glossary, “dates back to the good old pre-war days
when the price of bed & breakfast at the average hostelrie was two and
sixpence”.
Some of the
entries in this list are mischievously obscure, such as “Euston Road – Two
Fours. We know why, but you must ask someone else”, and others give good
examples of the British talent for understatement, for instance “Father’s Boots!
– A reminder that the player’s shoes are over the line, and a gentle request to
move back a bit”!
This
vocabulary also includes some strange advice to the society-conscious darter, as
in the entry for the shout of ‘Game!’. “To say ‘Game’ at darts is considered
most frightfully bourgeois; always say ‘Office’ or ‘Hops’ or the more
picturesque ‘Cats on the counter’”.
There is
also a streak of purism showing through, as in their remarks on the game of
Golf - “Like Cricket, another tiresome and unnecessary variation on the
dartboard”. Some things have changed, however, as evidenced by the Glossary
entry headed “Never Won A Game”. We’ve all heard this phrase used when the
number left on the board is 123, but, strangely, in this book the number to
which the superstition is attached is 99. What’s wrong with 19, treble 16,
double it? It’s interesting to speculate, indeed, on how either of these ideas
could have become established so widely, since, as the D’Egvilles put it, a
player leaving such a number is “expected to lose for no logical reason that the
authors can see.”
If,
however, you still feel unsure of being able to hold your end up in a
conversation about the technicalities of this complicated sport, an advert in
the back of the book may help you. “You can learn to talk darts in three months
with the aid of the Dartophone”, the ‘advert’ claims, “Do you know the meaning
of such common phrases as: ‘You’ve Bin’, ‘Five to muck’, ‘Father’s boots’, and
‘Lodger’s Bed’? No? Then you need Dartophone. Ability to talk darts is now
essential for the Diplomatic Services and the Matric.”
In fact,
Darts With The Lid Off is full of spoof adverts, press reviews of the book
(“England is saved” – Evening Blues), lists of editions, and the like. For that
reason it is difficult to know just how to take the ‘Dedication’: “To the Loyal
Society of Dartsmen of 163 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2”. Is this another
joke, or has anyone ever heard of such a body?
The book
was an unusual and welcome find, and makes a pleasant change from the more
serious darts manuals which have appeared in such great numbers over the past
few years. It seems odd that the publishers haven’t thought to reprint it, now
that the potential market is so much greater. Surely it’s due for a reissue!
In the
meantime, I leave you with another quote, this one attributed by the authors to
Prof. Fie O. Wun, Shanghai
University:
“A dart in the hand is worth two in the wrong double”. Nothing changes in this
game of ours, not even the frustrations!
(Darts
With The Lid Off, by Alan and Geoffrey D’Egville, was published by Cassell in
1938)
© 1983 Mat
Coward
Biographical note:
Mat Coward
was a member of the all-conquering, 1982-4 Coach and Horses team in the
Hampstead Darts League in north London. Having failed to live up to that early
promise, he has spent the last 20 years working as a freelance writer and now
lives in Somerset where he polishes his trophies and dreams of what might have
been. For more information about Mat’s work
http://homepages.phonecoop.coop/matcoward/
Historian’s Note:
Many thanks
to Mat for allowing me to reproduce his review of Darts With the Lid Off
on my website.
Mat asked
if the name D’Egville was a pseudonym for Seller and Yeatman. It was not.
During the 1920s, 30s and 40s, Alan D’Egville wrote books on a number of sports
but particularly skiing, including Slalom; its organization and rules
(1934) and The Game of Skiing: a book for beginners (1936). Geoffrey’s
only literary work appears to have been working with his brother on Lid Off
but he may also have been the illustrator as no one else is credited.
Much of the
‘lingo’ used by the D’Egvilles in Lid Off had been lifted from Rupert
Croft-Cooke’s work Darts (London: Geoffrey Bles) published two years
earlier in 1936, but some was new. Not even Croft-Cooke dared publish ‘Euston
Road – Two Fours’. This was rhyming slang. In the 1930s, that road was famous
for its ‘women of the night’, thus Euston Road = Two Whores = Two Fours.
‘Office’ and ‘Hops’ were both terms called at the end of a game and meant that
the losers should pay up their half pint. (The serving area of some Victorian
pubs was called the ‘office’.) ‘Cat’s on the counter’ meant the same thing; a
‘cat’ being a measure of beer in the ‘good old pre-war’ days.
The ‘Loyal
Society’, or more accurately, the ‘£oyal Society of Dartsmen’ referred to in
Mat’s article was indeed a real society and more information can be found about
the ‘£.s.d.’ under the ‘History’ section of this website. Darts With The Lid
Off was, in its way, the official manual of the charity which had its
registered office at 163 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. All administration of the
charity was undertaken from that office.
As Mat
stated, Darts With The Lid Off was originally published in London by
Cassell. It cost three shillings and sixpence (3s 6d) and was probably
unaffordable by working-class darts players. I believe that, like Croft-Cooke’s
book (which retailed at 2s 6d in hardback when published in 1936), Lid Off
was designed to appeal to the middle and upper classes who had, in the late
1930s, recently taken to the game in droves, a craze that would only cease at
the outbreak of war in September 1939.
Mat found
his copy of Darts With The Lid Off in a second-hand shop and it cost him
‘ten bob’, about 50p. That was back in the early 1980s. That’s also where I
found my first copy of that fascinating book. Nowadays Lid Off is very
collectable but copies can still be found in second-hand bookshops and on the
internet costing in the region of £8-£15, depending on condition. (I fear that
the bookseller currently advertising Lid Off for £30 is likely to hold on
to his copy for a quite a while yet!)
Thanks
again to Mat Coward for reminding me of this unique humourous work on darts and
allowing me to let the review see the light of day for the first time in 25
years!
Patrick Chaplin
© 2008
Patrick Chaplin
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