‘I worked with Luke Littler on Bullseye reboot – what he did first wasn’t staged’

Luke Littler has defied logic over the last 12 months. He’s even managed to become a star of Bullseye – 30 years after it was a staple of British TV.

The teenager hadn’t been born when the iconic -theme game show made a brief comeback on Challenge TV in the mid-2000s following its original ITV heyday in the 1980s and early ’90s when comedian Jim Bowen was its host. With interest in darts at an all-time high, Bullseye returned to ITV in December with a one-off Christmas special presented by

In keeping with the show’s original traditions, it featured a professional player taking part in a charity throw-off – and who better to call upon than the Nuke? was introduced to the audience and casually chucked a 180. The caller for the Bullseye reboot, Richard Ashdown, had the best view in the studio.

“Bullseye in itself is amazing, and I’m glad that it’s back on mainstream TV,” says Ashdown, a spotter for Sky Sports’ coverage of the sport. “Make no mistake, Luke Littler has had a massive impact on that. He was the natural choice to be the professional to appear on the pilot, and he was sensational.

“He gets the big introduction from Freddie Flintoff, walks on set, says ‘hello’ to everybody. We asked him to throw three darts at the board, and he went treble 20, treble 20, treble 20, and I called the ‘180’. That genuinely happened.

“In the gameshow world, there is no fudging, like getting him to throw that dart again. You’re playing for money, everything has to be validated. I’m there as an announcer, doing all the fun stuff, [saying] ‘innnnnn one’ but I’m also adjudicating it. It was legit, he just walked on stage and hit a 180.

“At one point, he was asked, ‘can you get us a bullseye before the break?’ He just threw it straight away without thinking. He was told, ‘no, not yet, when we go to a break’. It was already in the board! He was brilliant.”

Ashdown also enjoyed working with Flintoff, 47, despite the former all-rounder’s wise-cracks about his diminutive stature during the show. He adds: “He’s great. I’d never met him before, he was lovely.

“It’s great for him to get back [on TV after his devastating car crash while filming an episode of Top Gear in 2022] and he genuinely loves darts. That’s why they went for him. You just had to see his reaction to Luke’s 180.

“It was like how we see fans here [at Alexandra Palace] after a nine-darter. He was just agasp at what was playing out. It was really good fun.”

After the pilot, Bulleye could now return to our screens with a full series. Speaking during the before the pilot aired, Ashdown explained: “It was a case of let’s do this pilot, this Christmas special, with a view to a full series in 2025. That’s been the talk around ITV and the production company who make it. Nothing’s confirmed yet.”

The signs are promising, though, with the pilot reportedly attracting an overall audience of almost 7million when tallied in early January. That was made up of 3.3million for the original broadcast on December 22, 2.6million for the repeat on Christmas Day and 700,000 streaming the episode on ITVX.

It has also been reported that Littler could receive a big-money offer to become a regular fixture on the show. The Nuke’s rise has jet-propelled the sport’s already rising popularity.

“If you’d asked me two years ago, I’d have said – thanks to the endeavours of the PDC and Barry Hearn – how much the game was globalising and growing with younger players and more players,” adds Ashdown, who was a handy player himself in his youth before switching to refereeing and spotting.

“What we have now with players like Luke Littler – like we had in the 1980s – are characters who transcend darts. We’re seeing Luke appear on the Jonathan Ross talkshow. It’s incredible what’s happening in the game.”

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