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"What I did get from Luke Humphries in Bahrain was a thank you - that's quite unusual" - John McDonald glowing in his praise of newly-crowned World Champion
PDCThursday, 08 February 2024 at 13:30
John McDonald has been the regular master of ceremonies at major PDC tournaments for many years. However, darts was not the 63-year-old Englishman's first great love.
McDonald invariably gets to announce all the great darts champions, as he recently did with newly-crowned world champion Luke Humphries. "What I did get from Luke Humphries in Bahrain was a thank you - that's quite unusual," McDonald told the Daily Star. "I think he was getting excited about how it would look and how it would sound. He spoke to me earlier in the day about it.
It's clear that Humphries has made a good impression on McDonald. "He is a super lad, Luke. Nobody deserved it more than Luke. Long may he reign and I hope he has a great reign. What a super player, right across the board, he's got it all. You look at his style, everyone wants to be like him. Everything is nice about him, he hasn't got a nasty bone in his body," says the MC, full of praise.
"I remember when Michael Smith said that the thing he looked forward to most was me introducing him as world champion, that is quite nice," continues McDonald. "All I am is a tool. I am just a tool for them to get to the stage. It's about them, and if I can make them feel better and do a good job for them, then fine, that is my job done."
McDonald's first love, however, was not darts, but rather boxing. Thus, he used to work full-time as a boxing photographer. "I was 32 years old when I thought I'd have a career change. Things were changing and I just thought I wanted to do something else," he recalls. "A friend of mine said 'You're always doing impressions, why don't you just go and do it'. Tell you what, good idea. The rest was history."
McDonald, however, will always keep both feet on the ground. "It's not about me and I'll cringe when people talk about me. If someone says 'you were brilliant', I think really? What was I brilliant at? Scientists, surgeons, they are amazing, not sports announcers. We just get up and say a few words," he says.
McDonald will travel every Thursday to join the PDC at the Premier League Darts over the coming months. "It's an exciting time. I think it is just the pure size of it, the size of the event. If you look at some of these places where we go, they are massive arenas. For a player it's the same old, same old, but for us it's absolutely incredible," he explains.
"I did the very first Premier League in 2005. When it started it wasn't quite as long as it is today. It's a full-on thing now; some of the places we go, you can't go there and come back the same day, it's a busy old business. You're going to Berlin, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and places like that, we're up in Scotland three times, Ireland and all the other places we go, you can't just go there and drive home after work, it's a full-on tour."
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