Darts Player Phill Nixon

Despite what you might think from their size, most darts players do not make a fat living out of their sport. Take Phill Nixon. For 33 years, the 50-year-old father of eight from Ferryhill, a former mining town in County Durham, has been plugging away in pub leagues waiting for his big break. For the past 20, he has been trying to qualify for the British Darts Organisation world final, a beer-sodden jamboree at the Lakeside Country Club in Frimley Green, Surrey, that is televised live on the BBC and has a cult following.

This year he finally qualified; better still, against all the odds (he was the remote 500-1 outsider to win the title), he made it to Sunday's final; best of all, having fallen 6-0 behind in the best-of-13-sets match against hot favourite Martin Adams, he fought back to level at 6-6 - jabbing himself in the leg with a dart at one point to galvanise himself - before losing the deciding set.

For once, however, winning isn't everything. Nixon's long battle to qualify and the fact that he is sponsored by the regulars at his local pub, the Eldon Arms, who raised several thousand pounds to cover his expenses at the finals, made him the story of the tournament. He was the romantic's choice against Adams, the hard-nosed pro and England captain, who has been a fixture at Frimley Green for more than a decade.

Though he had never before won the title either, Adams doesn't need his mates in the pub to stump up for a hotel. Nixon lost his job as an assembly worker making ventilation units three years ago, and has been a house-husband since then. He has eight children from three marriages (darts isn't the only thing he's good at, quipped a BBC reporter on yesterday's Today programme), and looks after his two school-age children while his wife Suzanne, a careers adviser, is at work. Darts has had to come second to vacuuming and collecting the children from school, but he says the £30,000 he won on Sunday and the sponsorship likely to follow will make it possible for him to turn fully professional.

As for the bad publicity about slobbish darts players in shiny, marquee-sized shirts, don't believe it, he says. "Some of the lads don't drink at all, and I've lost weight over the past couple of months to get myself in tip-top condition for the finals."

He will be back next year - thinner, fitter, and even more determined to win. Thanks to the cash and the kudos, he will be a sharper darts player, though it's possible his vacuuming will have gone downhill.