Murray Walker on speed? That'll be the motor-mouthed darts commentator Sid Waddell

Darts is changing, yet there is one constant: a constant who breathes fire into the sport. A constant without whom darts as a television spectacle would not thrive.

To locate him, you have to turn away from the giant stage in the cavernous West Hall of London's Alexandra Palace and enter a room covered by black cloth, with two chairs, monitors on the wall and a desk with enough space for a couple of notepads.

This is the Sky Sports commentary box and it is here that you find Sid Waddell, the man whose tongue twisters brings darts alive.

But watch out for flying arms if, like me, you are privileged enough to share the commentary box with Waddell, John Gwynne and Dave Lanning.

They are up and down out of their chairs and if the finger pointing to indicate who speaks next doesn't dig you in the ribs, the hand-waving will slap you in the face. It is semaphore with sound.

The stomach-churning emotions of the players on stage are relived in the box. When Michael van Gerwen suffered a cruel bounce out on double eight, Waddell slumped forward on to the desk in empathetic despair.

When Taylor had to squeeze a double to the left of an awkward-lying arrow, Waddell moved to his left. Good job Taylor didn't need to go right, or Sid would have fallen into the audience.

Even 13-times world champion Taylor admits: 'Sid is darts. He can make a dull game seem like a world championship final. He's mental, mad as a hatter.'

He's a 67-year-old mad hatter, the son of an undersea coalminer in Ashington, home of Jackie Milburn and Jack and Bobby Charlton.

He's a Cambridge graduate in modern history and was a champion sprinter on the verge of an England rugby cap before a leg injury curtailed his career at 19.

He's a novelist whose first book in 1973, Bedroll Bella — about a biker groupie — was so earthy it was taken off the shelves in WH Smith and Menzies on its second day, just as Waddell was planning the sequels, Beanbag Bella and Bedbath Bella, when she changes profession to teaching and nursing.

He's a vocalist with The Steaming Hot Gravy Boatmen, who were so awful their first gig ended with them being booed off stage.

And he's a television producer, whose all-consuming passion for the darts he first played in a working men's club, primarily because 'I was too impatient to play snooker and the girls used to hang around the darts board,' fuelled the vision that brought it to TV.

'I knew it would be good telly. Once we worked out that we could split the TV screen to see the agony and the ecstasy on one side and the 60s flying in on the other, we knew we were on to something.

'The fact that darts players don't look like great athletes has always attracted me.

'These unlikely looking guys with bellies and tattoos. In the old days, they could do their thing with a few drinks down them.

'That gave it an appeal of: "How can they do this?". While some people would be in intensive care with that much drink inside them, Jocky Wilson would win. It just tickled me to see this lot on the telly.'

The vehicle Waddell steered in 1972 was ITV's legendary Indoor League — fronted by England fast bowler Freddie Trueman and featuring everything from swing skittles and bar billiards to shove ha'penny, arm wrestling to table football.

Trueman's catchphrases — 'I'll si'thee in a tic' and 'We've got pubbers and scrubbers, and potters and slotters' — were scripted by Waddell.

He took the microphone for the first time when the darts world championship was born and TV sport's soundtrack was never the same again.

The mix of literary allusions and historical references-with the language of the common man is beguiling.

He explains: 'I want grandmas to put their knitting down and girls with pierced belly buttons to stop putting their make-up on and say: "Why are those blokes so excited?" With our team at Sky, you've got to be over the top. You've got to be loud and have good timing.

'You're trying to use your enthusiasm, your vocabulary and your sense of humour. 'And you've got to talk obliquely. If there's a bloke on screen in a daft hat and no teeth, you don't say: "There's a bloke in a daft hat and no teeth." You say: "If I looked like that, I wouldn't come out to things like this."

'I'm never quite as excited as people think because with my voice, when I shout, I squeak.

'It's partly because I'm a Geordie as well. We tend to exaggerate. Newcastle always "crucify" Sunderland when we've won 1-0.'

Waddell transcends his sport in a way that perhaps only Murray Walker can match.

Not bad for an asthmatic who, until he met a voice coach three years ago, only had enough breath to utter six words at a time.