Bringing the X-Factor to Darts
Gill Sherry
My Zoom call with Andy Boulton takes place the day after the Premier League Darts fixture at OVO Hydro in Glasgow, which seems apt seeing as Andy is one of the top darts players in Scotland. He also happened to be at the event with this son, Bailey.
Born in Stoke on Trent, Andy moved to Ardrossan in 2008. What brought him up to Ayrshire?
“A woman,” he laughs. “She played darts. I met her on the circuit, and that was it. I moved up here and I’ve been here ever since.”
Andy has played darts since he was a child and remembers his dad putting a dartboard up in his bedroom when the family moved house.
“Once I had that dartboard in my bedroom it was just something I did all the time. Nowadays, kids play on Playstations but for me, I was just constantly on the dartboard. Plus, I was further away from my friends than I was before, so I wasn’t going out as much.”
Practice makes perfect, as they say, and a couple of years later he was playing in a pub league.
“In those days you played for your pub team and then you would move on and get selected for your county.”
Which is exactly what happened with Andy, resulting in him qualifying for the Lakeside Championship.
“And then everything moved on from there,” he says. “My first Lakeside World Championship was in 2008, and my first PDC World Championship would have been 2015. I’ve played the game professionally now for maybe 10 or 11 years, so it’s basically doing something you love and getting paid for it.”
Andy had played in three British Darts Organisation (BDO) Lakeside World Championships before the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) introduced a qualifying school.
“That’s where you go along and there’s some tour cards up for grabs. If you’re successful, you end up on the tour for a minimum of two years.”
Andy secured his third two-year tour card on January 12th this year but, he tells me, the only way to keep it is by being in the top 64 players. There are 34 Players Championship events, 14 Euro tour events, and then the opportunity to qualify for Alexandra Palace.
Even non-darts fans are familiar with Alexandra Palace, or ‘Ally Pally’ as it’s affectionately known. The venue is famed as much for the fans’ fancy dress costumes as it is for the sportsmen and women who play there. But it seems fancy dress isn’t restricted to the North London venue.
“They all dress up at Ally Pally… but I was queuing up to get my tickets last night and the couple in front were dressed as Mario and Luigi, and another guy was dressed as a football referee. He had a football skull cap on, and he pulled a red card out of his pocket and blew his whistle!”
The darts craze certainly seems to be on a high. This is largely the result, Andy says, of the ‘Luke Littler Effect’.
“It’s massive at the minute, it’s crazy how it’s gone. Just to try and go out and buy a dartboard now is hard work – you can’t get them for love nor money! It’s had a massive knock-on effect.”
Andy is in the same stable management company as Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler, so he knows the reigning PDC World Champion pretty well.
“I know everything that he goes through. He is hot property. For the sport, it’s amazing. How he handles it is exemplary, really. I’m not so sure many, if any, would handle it as well as he is. He’s only just turned 18 and everything that gets thrown at him he deals with really well. He’s a lovely lad.”
Nathan Aspinall and Chris Dobey also share the same management as Andy.
“To be in a stable with three guys who are all in the top 10 in the world, it’s great. And they’re great friends.”
He has, he confirms, made plenty of friends over the years, and has been lucky to play against some great characters.
“I’ve been around the darts circuit a long time… meeting Phil Taylor and Raymond Van Barneveld was a highlight. Also, playing Gary Anderson. I’d obviously moved to Scotland, so you’ve got that banter of the Englishman living in Scotland! There’s a lot of characters now but when I started, Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson were still playing. They were the guys that really put the sport on the map.”
He goes on to tell me about his first ever game at Alexandra Palace.
“I had to play in a preliminary match against a guy called Per Laursen from Denmark on the opening night. Gary Anderson was the defending champion at that time… and the winner of mine and Per’s game was playing Gary. To win that game and go on and play the defending champion on the same night! I mean, Gary got the better of me, he absolutely destroyed me to be fair. I think I won about three legs, but it’s definitely a memory that sticks out in my mind. It was the honour of it all. Playing the World Champion at the World Championships is a massive thing.”
Gary Anderson is obviously known as ‘The Flying Scotsman’ for a reason. Which leads me to ask about Andy’s nickname. Where did ‘X-Factor’ come from?
“It came from my first ever Lakeside appearance. There was a game on, and the next match was live on TV, but because the first game had finished early, there was quite a big gap…”
Andy ended up singing for the audience to keep them entertained between matches.
“I went up on stage and sang ‘Sweet Caroline’. I think it’s the most nerve-racking thing I’ve ever done. I’ll have a go at karaoke but I’m not a singer!”
But his impromptu stage appearance isn’t the only reason for his moniker. Andy recalls going to county matches as a boy, before he started playing, and working as the MC for the night, calling out scores and introducing players.
“As a 16-year-old I used to get paid £30 a day. My pals were out delivering newspapers for £10 a week and I was getting £60 for the weekend. I was buzzing! So with singing, and the MC-ing, my pals said that ‘X-Factor’ should be my nick-name, and it stuck.”
He certainly seems to enjoy it when spectators cross their arms to welcome him into the arena. Imagine 3,200 people (most of them in fancy dress) doing just that at Ally Pally!
“There’s no atmosphere like it. It’s amazing to play at Alexandra Palace.”
Fingers crossed he gets to experience it again. And who knows, maybe his son will play there one day, too. Bailey has already experienced the Junior Darts Corporation (JDC) World Championships in Gibraltar and, after a period of ‘dartitis’ (yes, that really is a thing), he’s back at the oche.
“I’m 52 in a couple of weeks so I don’t know how many more opportunities I’m going to get at this level,” Andy concludes. “Giving it a good go is important. And hopefully one day my boy will get on the tour and we can do it together.”
How amazing would that be?
