Staying Power

Phil 'The Power' Taylor is the uncontested king of darts, his sixteen world championship titles between 1990 and 2013 far outclassing anything else the game has seen. He started out as a protégé of Eric Bristow, the Crafty Cockney, having wandered into his Burslem pub with a set of darts his wife had given him for his birthday. At that time Taylor was earning £52 a week working in a ceramics factory and hardly played. But jaws dropped and pint mugs tipped over as this newcomer suddenly unleashed a gift for flight that had soon eclipsed even the Crafty Cockney himself, and amassed Phil a haul of over 200 professional tournament victories. Staying Power is a year in the life of a legend, twice nominated for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, a man who made darts look a doddle to British pub-goers everywhere and set his seal on the game as the bloke to beat. A year of triumph and disaster, in which Taylor crashed out of the world championship in the second round to young outsider