Owt Good On, Mam? – Pub Athletics

I'm gonna level with you. I know it goes against everything it means to be British, but I am not a pub man. Never have been. Though it's social suicide to admit such a thing, I'm very much of the school which believes “Pay for a drink? There's perfectly good taps in the kitchen sink!” and pubs; with their socialising and urinals are just not my tempo. As such, catching only glimpses of their sounds and stinks when striding past an open door whilst going about my important business, to me these are exotic worlds. None moreso than the pubs of 1970's Britain, clouded beneath musket gas of ciggy smoke, and where the simple purchase of some nuts, if one is lucky, may reveal the fading image of a bare breast. But among the chatting, boozing, sorrow-drowning and flirting, something else was going on in these establishments – sport.

For folks like me who'd rather stay home, Yorkshire Television's Indoor League helpfully brought these sports into viewers' living rooms. Not the usual guff you'd see on Grandstand – though presented with exactly the weight and importance of football – these were proper sports, contested by working men and women after a hard day's graft. Darts, arm wrestling, skittles; if Slap Fighting can be a televised sport, why not shove ha'penny? From one perspective, this is the analogue e-Sports. Created by dart commentating legend Sid Waddell, Indoor League ran from 1973-77, airing at 5:15pm on a Thursday, perfect for sitting down with your tea on your lap after the hoot of the factory whistle. I'm watching a pair of episodes, first coming from The Irish Centre in Leeds, and hosted, as always, by Yorkshireman and cricketer, Fred Trueman.

In a powder blue shirt and tie beneath a half-buttoned grey cardigan, far-too-black hair swept in a wig-like crest from left to right, Fred as much resembles a cartoon as the flat-capped pub goers rendered on a mural behind him. Pint in one hand, pipe in the other, he walks into frame to rest it on a billiard table. Hubbub and bustle murmur in the background as he informs us that last year they scouring the pubs of Great Britain – “skimmed the top of the milk from the nation's tap rooms” – while this year, they've recruited talents from further afield; the United States, Scandinavia, and the Isle of Man. We're promised “more stars than a Midsummer Night” with “portraits of skill and technique.” And what stars!

Before the main proceedings, there's a breathless (because of the smoke) tour of Indoor League's various pursuits, beginning with a cry of “one hundred and eighty!” as three darts pierce a treble twenty. Both genders are at play, as a female darter shakes her head in self-disgust after a bad throw. “Temperamental, but talented,” says Fred. A black arm wrestler (former World of Sport star 'Iron Fist' Clive Myers) grapples with an opponent, while Fred describes him slightly problematically as a “boy with his eyes bulging like his biceps!” Men with enormous collars and even bigger sideboards pump the handles of a foosball table, and there's character on every inch of the screen. A woman with a blonde beehive, necklace of pearls the size of ping pong balls, bends over the green to slam a ball into its pocket. “And glamour comes to the American pool table, in the shape of Vera Selby.” This is a vivid, busy portrait of an Olympic mix of disciplines, or as Fred puts it “if Van Gogh had been round with that lot, there'd be no need for him to lop off his lughole through lack of inspiration.”

This week is all about ladies darts; “the birds of a feather... markswomen who wouldn't have let down Henry the V at Agincourt.” Outside of track and field, this must've been one of the first places one could regularly see women's sports. Given it's just people chucking little spikes, over and over, even for knock-kneed sport haters like myself, darts is oddly watchable in any form, but here in a 70's pub, there are no men with painted mohawks, nor cutaways to an audience in padded Batman fancy dress. In their place, horn rimmed spectacles, cardigans, and hair so high and wide, there are husbands who've not felt sun on their skin for years. Each lady has a look so distinctive, they could be used to compile a working Guess Who? board, and with none of the stupid gimmicks familiar from the men's game, like that paedo Dracula with the candelabra. These are women called Mary Smith and Jessie Cattrick from Middlesbrough; each likely the first time that British housewives saw themselves represented at a sporting event. Arrows fly in highlight reels, finding rest in doubles and trebles, and we cut to Fred, arms folded, clutching his pipe. “They're just some of the lasses that can serve up tonnes just as easy as they serve up Sunday dinner.”

In a full leg, Kay “The Shipley Bomber” hoys at the board like she's stoning a man to death, lit cigarette in the other hand, shaking her head as she gets a 26; a 31; a 13. Her opponent, Nana Mouskouri lookalike Brenda, hammers out the 100s. The cartoons from the mural stand round the set in giant cardboard cut-outs, art deco style at odds with the setting, like finding a 1930's French fashion magazine mopping up piss in a Wetherspoons. The low-scoring Shipley Bomber takes so many throws, the score man has to hurriedly wipe clean the now-full blackboard. Her opponent too goes to pieces, once miles ahead, but missing the winning double again and again. Both women repeatedly put their darts wide, evolving into an agonising yet beautiful spectacle, commentator remarking “one feels that the dry sherries are taking their toll.” Men's darts players are of course tee total. When Brenda finally lands a double-one, the place erupts.

We go to a break with Fred promising “I'll see thee” and quaffing from his pint, greeting our return with an “ey up!” Next is Jean (“a little blonde from Stockport”) vs. Millie, who's got a throwing stance akin to taking a curious glance over a neighbour's fence, twisting each dart 720 degrees in her fingers. Jean's is more of a nervous 'your mum going 'ooh, I don't know what i'm doing!' while playing Wii Sports on Christmas Day'. She took it up when she was courting; “makes a change from park benches I suppose,” and as Millie scores an eleven, she's deemed “silly Millie!” Other match-ups are “an absolute ding-dong” between Mrs. Westwood and Mrs. King, which sounds like an ITV detective series about two busybody potters, and Mary Smith taking on Sweden's champion, Greta, who once again is labelled “a temperamental little lady from the land of the lakes.”

Darts clearly spoiled us, as the next episode focusses on bar billiards, with footage of last year's winner wiping his mouth with a sleeve as he pots the final ball, returning tonight to defend his crown. Even surrounded by an audience which includes an old lady rubbing her fingers round the inside of a wet, empty glass, bar billiards makes for visually unimpressive television. This is pure village fete, manned by a vicar offering three shots for 10p; it's snooker for babies, with one of those wooden sewing mushrooms my gran used to have protruding from the middle of the table. As happened in the ladies darts, both competitors go to pieces at the end. “Bound to be nerves when there's some money about” says the commentator, of its £150 prize. After ten minutes of frenetic yet deeply uninteresting footage of men in shirts bending over a table, last year's champ is defeated. The winner's called onstage to be awarded a TV Times gold medal, balanced on a red cushion along with the cheque, by a pair of smashing ladies. A little fairytale trumpet parps as Fred wraps the medal round his neck, and it's exactly like the end of Star Wars, if it were filmed in a giant ashtray.

Then it's the semis of table football. Fred scalds us with “if you think there's not much skill in this game, watch out for the lads coming up,” but I'm sorry to inform him that's exactly what I think, even if he reckons there's as much athletic prowess as you'd get in a first division game of real football. These tables were in every youth club, tuck shop, and older brother's bedroom of my childhood, most with a taped-on sign warning NO SPINNING! But come off it, it's just random; ball bouncing around wildly and nobody with any control. Teams are the astoundingly named John Kropacz (pronounced Crowpatch) and Frank Bowkett (sadly not pronounced bouquet) vs Sandamas and Merchant. Commentary says Kropacz has a trademark up his sleeve; “the ricochet off the outside man to the centre forward,” but I'm definitely right, it's just blokes yanking on rods and hoping for the best. They give it proper coverage, with slo-mo replays, but out of all the games, this most comes across like a joke; the Stare Out contest in Big Train. A goal rattles in, and rowdy fans are told to quiet down by players needing to concentrate on moving poles in and out and wiping sweaty hands on jeans, as commentary pretends the little plastic players are capable of “selling the dummy” and making passes.

From Indoor League, we move to the final of TSW's Inter Pub '86. Terrific opening credits have Chas 'n' Dave style honky tonk piano over shots of darts hitting bulls, pints being pulled, men's big hands forming into the arm wrestling position, and the title of the show on a beer mat. By the end of it, my ceiling's magically gone yellow. Highly regional, the competition went out in 1986, '87 and '90, and this year's final goes down on neutral ground of Torquay, pitting Portland's Clifton Hotel against The Carpenters Arms in Sherborne, in a series of challenges to determine which pub is the best at games. On the line is an engraved tankard for the winning landlord, with additional prize money of £750, plus £250 to the runners up.

The first category is a rather surprising talent show, judged by a moustachioed man in a jumper with dozens of little teddy bears knitted into the design. Named Ed Welch, he turns out to be a television composer of some note, having scored the Confessions Of film series, and composed the themes for Blockbusters, Catchphrase, Crosswits, and Knightmare, among many more, including the aforementioned fantastic opening for this show. He's aided in judging by “two lovely girls,” Diane (lead singer of hotel band April Union), and a young Ruth Langsford. In front of a boisterous crowd, first act is comedian Terry Scannell, opening with a Benny Hill salute, and straight into an “Alwight?! Alright at the back?!” It's all long-winded jokes with bumbling delivery and various accents, plus impressions of Stallone and Reagan, but the audience of big sideboards and perms are very amused.

Clifton's entry are four-piece band The Scandals, four chaps with a cover of Rod Stewart's Sailing, into You'll Never Walk Alone which gets everyone off their chairs and swaying. They've a vocalist with a beautiful mullet and red braces over a sleeveless white shirt, and a keyboardist in a piano key tie, who beat out Scannell for the points. However, judges spring a bonus prize of five hours in a professional recording studio to Scannell, who'll need to memorise a lot more other comedians' jokes to fill all that. Next is skittles, hosted by a man with a ginger moustache who's a very high talker. Everyone crams tightly either side of the bowling lane (a long piece of yellow lino), so rambunctious, given just the audio, you'd think two bare-chested men were engaged in a fuck-fight to the death.

Even better than that, it's a bald man in trousers squatting down to fling a ball down the track with such violent force, he hurls onto his belly like a human torpedo; unnecessarily so, for little wooden skittles like children use in the garden. His actions incite a chant in the audience of “Willy Willy Willy! Oi Oi Oi!” and either that's his name, or something fell out when he chucked himself on the floor. The Carpenters' bowler, Bruce Forsyth chin and comb-over like a brown river on an ordinance survey map, has a more leisurely and classic style, blowing on his hand before dropping to one knee. With this, he takes the win, and another five points for his team, each represented by a pint of beer.

Host Peter Barraclough flinches when a man bellows right in his ear as he introduces the darts, in a beat-the-clock speed game, where a young chap resembling Dahmer faces a guy with a droopy Kenny Powers tash, who's an even higher talker than the redhead. What's in that beer, helium? Keeping time is a sexy maid with a comedically oversized pocket watch, bigger than her head. As Kenny takes the victory, an old lady hooks her handbag over her elbow so she can applaud. Then, the arm wrestling competitors come down in boxing robes, and in a neat crossover with Indoor League, the referee is Clive Myers. It's a decisive victory for Clifton, in which he doesn't even need to go Over The Top (the t-shirt for which Myers is wearing).

Final round's a one-minute speed quiz, with two man/woman pairings; one team pushing a bell, the other a high-pitched noise which really startles the older chap from Clifton when they demonstrate it. Questions are like “how do you know The Queen is at home?” and once again it's Clifton, taking the entire final, as the place erupts into jumper-clad arms maniacally punching at the ceiling. Langsford gets wolf-whistled at the trophy presentation – perhaps by a young Eamonn Holmes – and the winning team flood the stage, arm wrestling champ puffing on a roll-up, with a plastic novelty hat perched on his massive head. Between this and Fred Trueman's lot, if pubs were like this all the time, I might go in one.

(NOTE: apologies for any scrappiness or missed typos. I've been absolutely flattened by illness this week. This was meant to go up at midnight, but I'm practically sliding onto the floor as I type this)