Freddie Flintoff is presenting a new series of the popular darts quiz show that was originally broadcast in the 1980s, and was best known for its bull mascot and quirky prizes
Cricketer and Top Gear star Freddie Flintoff has revealed there is one aspecting to hosting the revival of darts quiz show Bullseye that makes him nervous.
Freddie gets to play darts in the series, which he describes as “nerve wracking” even though he has played the game quite a lot over the years.
“A lot of the cricketers play. We used to play on tour a lot in our hotel rooms,” he says. “We’d go to these far flung places and never see anything of the country. We’d be watching television in our rooms and playing darts.”
The series, which follows on from a Christmas special last year, sticks to the original format of the beloved 1980s show that was presented by Jim Bowen, which Freddie remembers watching when he was young.
“It was the little things as a kid watching it I remember, from Bully moo’ing to Jim Bowen counting the money out before the ad break,” he says. “You would see Eric Bristow taking on the darts challenge to try and win the Bronze Bully and then you’d all sit there wondering what the prize is going to be – whether it’s going to be a caravan or a speedboat or a car or some holiday in some far place that you’d never heard of at that time. So it was a laugh.”
Freddie rewatched old episodes in preparation for hosting the show’s return, and noticed that it was filmed very differently to how it is made today.
“We do it now and we stop when I mess up on the auto-cue and this and that. But back then, it was like it was all done in one scene, Jim Bowen walking from one place to the next and he’s making mistakes and he’s just going with it, and there’s something really nice about that,” he says.
The new series features professional darts players including current world champion Luke Littler, but a highlight for Freddie was the appearance of player Stephen Bunting.
“He’s from St. Helen’s which is only down the road from where I’m from. He’s just a nice fella who loves playing darts. He stands so far to one side as he throws because his dad used to have a really narrow corridor in the shed or something and that’s where he had to stand, and he stuck with it.”
“He came on and did his party piece singing ‘Gold’ by Spandau Ballet. I thought we’d have to tease him into it but no, I got a microphone out and he was straight on,” he says.
“Stephen was messaging me after the first Christmas special of Bullseye went out saying ‘oh get us on Bullseye .’ And I think that’s what all the darts players want to do. I think they all want to come on, it’s like a feather in the cap to get on the show.”
