SPONSORED BY MSE ANASTASIOU Ltd                        OUR BUSINESS IS PROMOTING YOUR BUSINESS PHONE 99647124                                                       SPONSORED BY MSE ANASTASIOU Ltd                  OUR BUSINESS IS PROMOTING YOUR BUSINESS PHONE 99647124

   ‘Doctor of Darts’ on the Oche in Cyprus

 PATRICK CHAPLIN is a rare academic. He has a PhD in Social History – not that’s unusual – but it’s the nature of his subject that makes him unique. He is a Darts Historian and is known as ‘Doctor Darts’.

His thesis – Darts in England (1900-1939) – was the social piece of history that earned him the degree from the Anglia Ruskin (ARU) in Cambridge last year.

He is also a regular visitor to the island with his wife of 35 years, Maureen, and spent his seventh holiday in eight years here last month. While here he took a day away from holidaymaking to meet up with the officials of the Pafos Darts League, Limassol Darts Association, Larnaca DartsLeague and the Cyprus Darts Federation all in Limassol.

It proved quite a historic occasion and I managed to grab the good doctor for a little while to find out what makes him so keen on this pub and social club activity.

Said Patrick: “When I set up my original Darts History website back in 2000, I had no idea how successful it would be or indeed if anyone else out there in the global Internet community was interested in the history of this great sport.”

In fact, he has been staggered by the response from darts fans and within a comparatively short time this website has become among the most popular darts sites on the Planet.

Chaplin (58), who lives in Malden, Essex, is a retired civil servant, who now spends most of his time researching darts. He threw his first darts when he was seven year old at a fairground and started to play ‘seriously’ at the age of 12, although he never had any aspirations to be a professional player.

He worked or Essex county Council as an administrator from 1966 until he took Early retirement in March 2004 at the age of 53.

It took him 10 years of part-time, self-funded research before he was eventually awarded his PhD. Tony Wood, the editor of the magazine – ‘Darts World’, dubbed him - ‘The Doctor of Darts’ -.

“Darts really began to take hold after in the 1920’s. In that ear there was so much going on with dance, greyhounds, cinema, theatre and leisure became a family thin g – if you could afford it,” said Patrick!

“So brewers, publicans and licensed victullers in the mid-20’s got together to find a way to bring the working man in particular back into the public-houses. They set up a standard set of rules for Darts and it went from there.

“You could say that the game of Darts saved the English public-house,” he added.

Darts is said to have its origins in the cross-section of a tree and an old name for the board is a butt, which infers that the bottom of a wine-barrels was used as the original dartboard. It is also said that archers used these types of targets with shortened arrows.

In recent times the game has had its ups and downs but it is certainly booming at the moment in Cyprus, where the Pafos Darts League alone has reported an increase of teams from 16 last year to 28 taking part for the 2008-09 season.

 (The Manchester University Press will be publishing the book – Darts in England, 1900 –1939, A social History in their series Studies in Popular Culture in May 2009)