They were the three amigos who brought darts into our living rooms like a playful barrage of paper planes.
But one by one, the lights on the Sky Sports producer's dashboard have gone out and the voices have fallen silent. First we lost Sid Waddell, the Geordie bard who rivalled Countdown queen Susie Dent's command of the Oxford English Dictionary with his puns, pathos and pit-village humour, in 2012.
Four years later, Dave Lanning's refined burr was consigned to the celestial commentary box – and now John Gwynne has died, after a long illness, at 77. Such was the Lancastrian warmth of Gwynne's voice, which also decorated cricket and football, that he could make a last-minute winner at Rochdale seem like a funfair ride and a cartwheeling middle stump feel like a watermill.
