The Genius of Sid Waddell

There was an outpouring of public affection on the news of the passing of darts commentator Sid Waddell. He contributed so much to a sport, and the art of commentary, over a storied career that saw him commentate both for the BBC and Sky. He was also a prolific author, TV producer and Bafta winning director. (Here is another tribute I did for Mirror Sport about Sid)

With Yorkshire Television’s Indoor League he helped bring darts to a TV audience.

He was the greatest. And I’m gutted. 

I came across an essay by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges entitled, “The Enigma of Shakespeare.” There is a section in which the great writer dissects Shakespeare’s unique charm. An idea struck me like a bolt of lightning. This isn’t just the source of Shakespeare’s charm; it’s the source of Sid Waddell’s. They're doing the same thing.

Here is the section in question. Keep reading I promise I have a point here:

“Shakespeare, had, as we know, a profound feeling for the English Language, which is perhaps unique among Western languages in its possession of what might be called a double register. For common words, for the ideas, say, of a child, a rustic, a sailor, or peasant, it has words of Saxon origin, and for intellectual matters it has words derived from Latin. These words are never precisely synonymous, there is always a nuance of differentiation: it is one thing to say, Saxonly, “dark” and another to say “obscure”; one thing to say “brotherhood”and another to say “fraternity”; one thing - especially for poetry, which depends not only on atmosphere and on meaning but on the connotations of the atmosphere of words - to say, Latinly, “unique” and another to say “single.”

For example, when Macbeth, gazing at his own bloody hand, thinks it could stain the vast seas with scarlet, making of their green a single red thing, he says:

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

In the third line we have long, sonorous, erudite Latin words: “multitudinous,” “incarnadine”; then, in the next, short Saxon words: “green one red.”

Shakespeare felt all this; one might say that a good deal of Shakespeare’s charm depends on this reciprocal play of Latin and Germanic terms.”

The idea of the double register fascinated me. And the idea immediately struck, ‘Wait a minute. This is why Waddell is such a genius. He has a triple register. Latin, Saxon and Geordie.”

The Cambridge educated, and Shakespeare fan, Waddell, was a master of the reciprocal play of Latin and Germanic terms. And Geordie too. He would weave the intellectual with the guttural and sprinkle on some Geordie wit. He was the closest a sports commentator ever came to a poet. No one will ever get closer. 

And he was funny. He was really funny.

Anyway, that’s one theory about the genius of Waddell. The man who changed a sport, and made sports commentary an art form.

Relive some of his best lines:

“Keith Deller is like Long John Silver – he’s badly in need of another leg.”

"There's only one word for that: magic darts!"

"William Tell could take an apple off your head, Taylor could take out a processed pea."

“As they say at the DHSS, we’re getting the full benefit here.”

“The players are under so much duress, it’s like duressic park out there!” 

"When Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer... Bristow's only 27."

"Phil Taylor's got the consistency of a planet... and he's in a darts orbit!"

“That was like throwing three pickled onions into a thimble!”

“It's like Dracula getting out of his grave and asking for a few chips with his steak."

"This game of darts is twisting like a rattlesnake with a hernia!"

"Keith Deller's not just an underdog, he's an underpuppy!"

"This lad has more checkouts than Tescos."

"Cliff Lazarenko's idea of exercise is a firm press on a soda siphon.

"Rod [Harrington] now looking like Kevin Costner when told the final cost of Waterworld."

"Big Cliff Lazarenko's idea of exercise is sitting in a room with the windows open taking the lid off something cool and fizzy."

"As Freud said to Jung in Vienna, you can psych up too much for a darts match."

"Bristow reasons; Bristow quickens; aaaaah Bristow!"

"The atmosphere is so tense, if Elvis walked in with a portion of chips, you could hear the vinegar sizzle on them."

"This lad has more checkouts than Tescos."

"William Tell could take an apple off your head, Taylor could take out a processed pea."

"[He's] as happy as a hound-dog who's won a year's supply of Boneo."

"If we'd had Phil Taylor at Hastings against the Normans, they'd have gone home."

"Look at the man go: it's like trying to stop a water buffalo with a pea-shooter."

"He looks about as happy as a penguin in a microwave."

"Bob came on like the Laughing Cavalier … now he looks like Lee Van Cleef on a bad night."

"It's the nearest thing to public execution this side of Saudi Arabia."

"He's perspiring like a pudding in a pot."

"His eyes are bulging like the belly of a hungry chaffinch."

"His face is sagging with tension." (Even on such a sad day every time I read this one I piss myself laughing)

"There was less noise when Pompeii was swamped in lava! Absolute pandemonium here! Barmaids are frozen like Greek statues watching! No beer's been served! Everybody's eyes [are] absolutely hooked on that board."

"You could hear a blob of vinegar drop on a chip in this hall."

A working class hero is something to be.