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Bullseye Special 22/10/05

Last night saw a Bullseye Special run by comedy presenters Ant & Dec on Midlands ITV at 8pm. The first few minutes of the show featured clips from old shows from the 14 years that it ran. Soap stars Vernon Kay and William Roache were the contestants playing for charity and a viewers prize. The programme kept to the old format with the first round played on a special board with different question categories worth different points depending which part of the segment the dart player hit with his dart. Andy Forham was Vernons dart partner and he showed his style by hitting two bullseyes worth a bonus 200 points each. Old time superstar Eric Bristow was Roaches partner and he did not do so well missing one category altogether. Bill Roache did not help by not being able to answer the questions and the pair slipped behind. In the next round where the player has to score as much as they can with three darts Bristow and Roache fared somewhat better albeit by default as Vernon failed to answer a couple of questions.

The next round was the Bronze Bully where a visiting darts player has to score 301 or more with 9 darts. The show had none other than darts number one player of all time Phil Taylor. It just goes to show how hard it is to make the score with 9 darts under pressure because although Phil is the greatest player to have ever lived he came nowhere near Bristow's record 380 and did not even get close to 301.

Vernon and Andy went through to the prize board where Andy immediately hit the bullseye holiday prize. He also hit 5 other prizes but Vernon failed to gain a single prize. The pair decided to stay with the prizes they had won for a viewer and let Bill and Eric throw for the star prize. This final round is played on a normal match board and the aim is to score 101 or more with 6 darts. It sounds easy enough but in reality a lot of people used to fail the challenge on the show. Bill went up first and hit the magnificent score of 27 making it harder for Eric. There was a time when Eric would not have had a problem with this but he is very definitely a spent force now and all he could manage was a miserly 52 making a total of 79. They failed to win the popular star prize of a speedboat that the show had on so many times.

It was hoped that if the Bullseye special had a big enough audience the show might be brought back as a normal weekly offering but it is still to be seen whether this will happen.