The Magic Marker — An interview with Jack Langston
The Darts Referee talks marking in the PDC, his YouTube journey, and his battles with Dartitis.
Jack Langston is one of the most versatile figures in darts.
Known to many as ‘The Darts Referee’, he’s been involved in the sport of darts in one way or another since childhood. From marking for the PDC, to his YouTube Channel, to how a Steve Beaton exhibition became his catalyst to the top — We sat down to discuss Jack’s Journey all around darts.
The first question was the cliché one that long time readers are used to me starting with — his darting origins.
“So, originally, my Grandad played darts when I was a kid, and I was probably about 5 or 6. I remember he had a dartboard in his garage, so I just use to go and watch him throw, and he’d pick me up and show me the dartboard, and I’d stab the darts in the dartboard.
Then eventually I got old enough to the point when I was allowed to throw, and I was like 8 maybe, and I just continued throwing.
I’ve had a few breaks here and there but for the most part I’ve played since I was about eight years old.”
It was then we moved to his first foray into the upper echelons of darts — becoming a marker for the PDC. Compared to the process that is Q School, the recruitment and appointment of markers is much less widely covered, so he spoke on how he made it to the PDC a decade ago:
“So, I was always pretty good at the darts maths side of things, I think playing from a young age, and I think it helped that I was good at maths at school as well, and I think playing from a young age I’d picked it up quite quickly.
I carried on getting better and better, until it got the point when people where asking ‘could Jack mark my game’ when I was 16 or 17. People would request I mark their games because they knew they were getting a marker that wouldn’t make mistakes and would always get the score right.
Then one day, I think I was 16 or 17, I went to an exhibition. It was a Steve Beaton exhibition — it was a local one, and I went to that and I went up to the guy who was running it, and I asked if I could mark it. I think he was a bit shocked, like ‘Why would you want to do that?’, but he said ‘Yes, feel free to go and mark 17 legs of Steve Beaton 701’ or whatever it was.
So I did that and I spoke to a guy called Scott Alexander who’d come with Steve Beaton, because he was like one of the markers. Back in the day when I first started, in 2011/2012, there were only like five or six markers who did the Pro Tour. Today you have to get on a waiting list and hope you get picked for it, but back then, no-one really did it — it was unpaid, it was all voluntary.
I was like ‘Yeah, I would love to do that, I think I’m good enough to do it and I’d love to give it a go.’ So I spoke to this guy called Scott who’d come with Steve to this exhibition, so he put me in touch with another guy called Dave. Steve said ‘If anyone can help you it’s him’, so I spoke to this guy called Dave and he said he’ll sort me out, he said come along to a Pro Tour and we’ll give you a couple of games, and you can like see if you’re good enough, because there’ll be someone watching you.
It was very nerve wracking the first time, the thing is for me, it’s like, if you’re a big football fan, and you go and watch England play football, and you see Harry Kane or someone similar, or one of the big players, and you can’t believe ‘Wow, I’m standing this close to that person, that’s unbelievable’, but for me, darts was my football when I was growing up. Most kids loved football, I loved darts, so walking into this room and seeing every darts player I’ve ever watched on tv, just in this room, was surreal.
I’d never really met anyone before darts related, and I just walked in and everyone’s there, so it was the most surreal thing, and I was a bit nervous when I walked in, when I did my first ever game, but it was alright really, I did quite well.
I was shaking a bit, and it probably wasn’t the neatest handwriting I’ve ever done, but I got through it.
I kind of thought to myself yeah I’m not bad at this, I could definitely do this.”
It’s very different scene in terms of marking from a decade ago — with raised interest in the roles and such technology as DartConnect being introduced. When it came to hierarchy and room for progression back in the early 2010s, he said:
“Back then, it was show up, and as long as you weren’t awful, as long as you could do the job adequately, you got a game.
But nowadays, I haven’t been part of the scene for a little while, but I hear there’s quite a few people who want to do it and there’s a bit of a waiting list to do it.
You can be a good marker, but there’s a difference between being a good marker and one of the best markers, and although neither of them will make any mistakes really.
If you can have the neatest handwriting, as that’s something I always did, it can help you stand out. I always made sure of that, because if my maths was perfect all the time, but so was 20 other people’s maths, then I wouldn’t stand out, but if my handwriting is perfect, or better than everyone else’s, that was my way of trying to get up the ladder.
You have to stick out as being good at the job, but at the same time there’s a lot of staying in the job for a long time.
You’d see people who’d come in, they’d mark for a couple of weeks and then you wouldn’t see them for a year or so, and they’d come and do another one when it was local events, so they aren’t the ones who were going to get picked to do TV matches, it was going to be the people travelling all over the country.
I even ended up, at one point, going to Dublin to do a tournament when it was over there. I was the only the marker in the room, I was the only person who took the time out to go to Dublin and do the Pro Tour, and I think that’s when people started noticing I was up for doing it, and I was willing to spend some money, I was willing to sacrifice time and I was willing to go and try and make something out of it.
It never really panned out the way I planned, but now I do YouTube, which, looking back now, I’m very happy I chose to do the YouTube side of things, as this has been so rewarding doing this sort of stuff, and so yeah I think you just have to kind of spend the time, try and be as perfect and good as you can at doing the job, and eventually you will get picked for the right stuff at the right times.”
It was then we got onto the main topic of which Jack has gained notoriety for — his YouTube Channel, The Darts Referee. He produces all manner of content surrounding darts for the channel, but the commitment to building a channel isn’t an easy one — but coming into TDR, it was an experience he was already familiar with, saying:
“I’ve always been a massive fan of YouTube. I don’t watch TV, I’ll watch YouTube.
I’ve subscribed to so many channels, there’s so many people that I watch day in day out, or I’ll watch every video they upload, and I’ve always been like that, maybe since 2012 or 2013, so I’ve been in it for a good ten years solidly watching YouTube videos.
At one point I decided I just wanted to be a Youtuber, that’s all I wanted to be — a gaming Youtuber, like the ones I used to watch back in the day, like Ali-A. I don’t know if these names mean anything to you (they did), but I’d watch the Faze Clan boys as well, and there’s so many videos I’d watch and I’d say I want to be a gaming Youtuber, so I bought an Elgato capture card and stuff that I could plug into my PlayStation, and I started making YouTube videos.
This was obviously before The Darts Referee, I started making gaming videos, and had about 2000 subscribers on it. It wasn’t like an insanely successful channel, but I’d get home from work and just spend 5 to 6 hours a night trying to make a video to post that night, and then I’m doing that same thing again and again and again, and although the videos weren’t performing or anything like that, I just loved making them, I loved editing them, and then you’d watch them back and you’d think ‘Oh I made that, that’s cool.’
When I ended up stopping with the PDC, I was properly into Fortnite. I was probably playing 40–50 hours a week. I had this really good computer, and all I was doing on it was playing Fortnite, and I kind of thought to myself I really should do something else other than just play Fortnite all day and all night, and I thought alright I’ll start a YouTube channel.
I’ll do another one, we’ll start one from scratch and see how it goes, and I was thinking ‘Do I or do another gaming channel or something else?’, and back then I think the biggest YouTuber as far as darts went was a channel called Darts Planet TV, and they had maybe 5–6k subs, and that was the peak, that was the biggest channel on YouTube really, as far as I was aware anyways, and I kind of thought I could give darts a go.
I had some things to say, and I feel like because I’d been a referee before, I’ll have a little bit of credibility, I won’t just be some guy who started making videos out of nowhere who didn’t know what he was talking about. I had something to say, and I had some level of knowledge as to what I was talking about. I wasn’t going to come across as a complete idiot who was going on about nothing, and I also had the drive to make videos like I did before, and I also had the knowhow of how to edit them, and do the audio and stuff.
I was 70–30 on making a gaming channel, but I went for the darts channel, and yeah, I mean, I can’t imagine if I’d taken the decision to go the other way that it would’ve gone well, or it would’ve gone any better. It might have done, but I’m very happy that I chose the darts and decided to give it a go and just make videos.”
When it came to the lesser spotted side of YouTube — like the process behind the video and commitment, he said:
“There’s a little bit more to just making videos, and just trying to upload. A lot of people will say do a video a day for five years and you’ll do this, or whatever, or for two years or for three years, you’ll have 100,000 or 1,000,000 subscribers or whatever, but you do need to put a decent amount of effort into what your making, and how you’re doing and stuff and really put a bit of effort in.
I find the videos that I put the time into always do better, than the videos I don’t put time into, If I’ve done a video in an hour, filmed edited and uploaded in an hour, it’s probably not that great a video.
I mean, it’s a bit of a filler, but if I’ve spent a week on a video, it always does well, so yeah I do think there’s a lot of perseverance needed, and there’s a lot of learning needed as well.
I’m three and half years into this journey, I did probably three years on my last channel, so I’ve been doing it for six or seven years I’d say, and I’m still learning stuff I didn’t know a week ago, and I didn’t know obviously years and years ago, so it’s just a case of trial and error. If something works, try it again, if it works obviously keep doing it, but if it doesn’t work you need to figure out why, and then try something different.
It’s just changing so often on YouTube, and it’s just a case of trying to do the best you can with what you’ve got, and sometimes that means spending two hours on a thumbnail, or spending an extra few hours editing the video just to make it a little bit cleaner, and that can go a long way and make a big difference.”
It was then I had to flag up a relatively short video he’d made a day or two prior to our interview — showing off a ‘Gorilla Darts’ board, which just so happened to be a crime against humanity. He took the opportunity to show it to me as it was by his desk, saying:
“I’ve got it here — I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.
That was bad, that was awful.”
It was the closest I’ve ever come to ending an interview on the spot. I kid of course, but if you don’t believe me as to how bad this board is, head over to his channel and watch the video.
Back to the originally scheduled questions, those of you who know me will know that I enjoy obsessing over artillery. Jack has released three sets (not including the recent Ash Coleman darts) under The Darts Referee name — And I had to ask about his own personal process when it comes to design:
“I’m just about to release my third set.
The first was literally an exact copy of what I was already using. I wanted my own darts, and I thought that if I make 100 sets, someone else might want the dart, and that was that, so there was no real thought process into that one, that was just: Make the dart, put my colours on it, put my logo on it and that was it.
Then the second dart, I went for something that I thought other people would like more than I would. I threw my second dart for about half an hour, put them away and never threw them again, it’s just not the dart for me, but they sold really well, and people really like them.
If you go on ebay and search for my darts, they’re selling for more than they did when I originally sold them, so people do want them, there is a demand for them.
I hope the same sort of things happens with the next ones, although I am using the next ones, so I kind of go for what I want first, and after that I go for what I think will do well, and what I think people will buy — so that’s the process I go for.”
One of the most notable developments in recent times on his channel is the emergence of Ashley Coleman — who has cemented himself as one of the emerging talents in the sport, with Q School on the horizon for 2024. Speaking on the origin of his relationship with Ash, he recounted:
“So, on a Friday night, I play in a league, and there are two blokes who run the league, two older boys, one of them is mid 70s and one of them’s like early 80s, two old blokes who have run this league for over 20 years now. One of the guys is called Colin, who I’ve played darts with since I was about ten, so I’ve known him almost all my life, a very long time. I’m actually having a throw with him in an hour — I still see him and talk to him all the time. The guy he runs the League with, is Ash Coleman’s Grandad.
So Ash is 26, so he’s a few younger than I am. About 7 years ago I was the captain of a team, we had a really good side, some really good players — people who play like Q School and stuff now, but back then they weren’t as good, but they were still good. We had this team, and we won the league like three years running, and it was a really good side, but we needed just like one extra player.
Colin was like, look, there’s a kid called Ash, he was playing local events — it was seven years ago so he would’ve been 19, so he’d probably only just learnt to drive really. Colin was like ‘Yeah Ash can come play with you’, so I was like ‘Yeah bring him over, we’ll get him on the team, we’ll see what he’s like, he’s going to be good enough’. He was good enough then to play for this team, quite comfortably, he’s always been one of my strongest players, and yeah, that’s how I met Ash.
He came and played for us on a Friday, and then I started a Super League team and he played for us on a Tuesday, so I was seeing him twice a week, and then lockdown happened, so this is a few years after that, we have lockdown, and then we get the go ahead to go around people’s houses, but darts hadn’t really come back. There weren’t any tournaments on for a good like three or four months after we were allowed outside again.
We had the idea, because, during lockdown I was playing darts on stream against my subscribers, but I’m not great. I’ve been ok at darts at times but I’m not amazing, so I’d be playing my subscribers and it would be 50/50, or I’d lose more than I’d win or whatever, but it would be fun, it was an interesting kind of thing. One day I thought, I don’t need to do this, I can do the talking and let Ash do the throwing, and Ash can then like beat anyone.
This was 2020, probably mid to late 2020, Ash started coming over, and started throwing against the subscribers and then it all went back to normal. Friday night league darts continued and tournaments started up again, and we stopped doing it — We’d been doing it for two or three months, once a week, and then I was talking to him a few months ago and I asked him ‘What nights are you free?’, because he plays on a Monday, a Tuesday, a Thursday, a Friday, a Saturday, and he plays County on a Sunday. He’s darts mad.
The only day he had free was a Wednesday, and I asked if he wanted to play on stream, I said we’ll try and get it set up so it looks really professional and really cool, and we’ll show the opponents board, which we hadn’t done before. Before we’d only shown the opponents scores and never their board, as they didn’t have webcams, and we’d got to the point of people are hitting 9 and 10 darters, and it’s just like, you haven’t done that, have you? You’re not hitting 9 darters are you, so, we’ve brought it back with cameras to make it professional, to make it so people couldn’t cheat, and it’s going really well.
Ash is doing really well. People really take note of him, and he’s sent me photos of people asking for photos at County away games and at tournaments. It’s great that so many people care about him enough to buy his darts, we did 100 sets of darts in 8 minutes, which is mental. People asking for photos and stuff — he’s going to be a massive player someday.
We just need to get him through the process, going to Q School, and hopefully becoming one of the top players in the PDC one day.”
And, as someone so tuned in to the varying levels of darts, I had to ask his thoughts on the current situation surrounding the WDF and the ADC — and whether the latter will overtake the former in the near future:
“Yeah, I mean, back in the days of the BDO you never had the Modus Super Series, there’s many more local tournaments, and yeah, I do think that the ADC will probably overtake it eventually.
I think it’s a worrier for the WDF, but unless they do something drastic, or someone comes in with a load of money, or they change something — I don’t even know what that would be, yeah, I think the ADC is the next big thing and I think a lot of people are going to start going towards the ADC, rather than the WDF.
I think if the WDF ever lose Super League and County darts they’re in trouble. But at the moment that’s the things they’ve got that are big — and the World Championships, I mean they didn’t have one this year or whatever, but I think their version of the World Championships is probably the only legitimate tournament that rivals the PDC in anyway — it doesn’t, but it’s sort of the only one that ever really comes close, so if they ever lose that or County and Super League, then they’re in trouble.”
We then got onto something more sombre — His battle with Dartitis. Similar to ‘The Yips’ in golf for those who aren’t aware, it’s a horrible thing to see someone go through — so I can’t imagine how difficult it is to suffer with. Giving his insight into the condition, he said:
“The first time I ever got Dartitis, I was probably about 11 or 12, so I reckon I was one of the youngest ever Dartitis sufferers to ever play darts. I didn’t really know what it was until was fully in it, and then somebody told me what it was, so, it’s like a weird one, you can get Dartitis, without even knowing what it is.
I feel like a lot of people these days, they probably feel like they get it because they know what it is, but I got it without even realising that it was a thing.
As I tried to approach it, everyone had an opinion. They see you try to throw, and say do this or try playing with the lights off or put playing cards on the board or get a tin can and throw stones at it, do this do that, but until you’ve gone through it, you can’t really give advice on how to get over it.
A lot of people ask me for advice when they have dartitis. I’ve even had professional players message me on Facebook and say, look, ‘I’ve got this, how do I get over it?’, and I’m like, ‘Sorry mate, my way of getting over it was that I quit playing for two years, that’s the way that fixed it and I’m assuming that’s not an option for you.’ — it’s a weird one, it doesn’t make much sense.
I’m suffering with it a little bit at the moment, not badly, but a tiny little bit, and it just, it doesn’t make any sense.
When you’re in it, it’s the most frustrating thing ever because you just want to throw darts, and like, I’ll be throwing, I’ll go tonight, I’ll throw some darts, I’ll got for a Treble 20 and I’ll hit a Treble 13, and I’m like ‘How am I that far away?’.
I don’t do that left handed, and I don’t really play left handed, but it happens with my right hand, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s hard to approach, and it’s a real mental battle with yourself to try and get over it because you just want to play, and you just can’t, so it’s a weird one, yeah.
Your arm doesn’t feel right sometimes. I’ll go to throw a dart and flick it last second and be like ‘Why have I done that?’, I never do that, or, I’ll just bring my hand back and drop it a little bit as well. It feels like dartitis, but I know it isn’t.”
He even experienced a PDC event (if you can call it that) as a player, going to 2022 Q School — On whether the experience changed his game or improved it, he said:
“I never really thought of it, as I never went to Q School with the plan of getting a Tour Card, because I wasn’t good enough.
It was a bit annoying that year, because that was the year that lockdown had relaxed, and tournaments had come back. I’d spent loads of time practicing at home, and I’d started getting a bit better, and I was going to tournaments and I was making semi finals and stuff in these decent tournaments, like 30 players tournaments, which I had never really done before, and I even beat Ash one week, that’s how well I was playing.
It kind of got to the point that in other tournaments I was beating players that play County and I was beating good super league players.
It then got to about October, so I had Q School booked already, and the only reason I went to Q School was for content, just to make a video on the experience, and I got to about October and I just started throwing a little bit worse.
I started playing in this Wednesday night league, where you’d go to a venue and you wouldn’t be able to have a practice there because there’s only one board or something, and it was a really short format — best of three and 301. It was really difficult to get ready for that type of game, but part of me, I kind of regret going and doing that, because it kind of messed my game up.
I’d be losing, and I think ‘I’d never lose to that player’, I’d lose a game and, you know it’s best of three 301, if they just throw one good score at the right time they’re getting darts at double, and there’s nothing you can do about it, but I just started playing a little bit worse, my confidence drained a little bit.
Then over Christmas, like a couple of weeks before, I got Covid. I spent the first three days in bed, I had 36 hours where I just felt awful — that’s probably the worst I’d ever felt. I was alright, but I was really out of breath, I was struggling to go up and down the stairs, I was struggling to just move in general and I was just very tired, and obviously then that was two weeks no practice right before Q School, so I went into the Q School — I couldn’t have been any less prepared.
I’d done all the work up to November/December, but then, I just got hit with Covid and it was really bad. If you ever watch my video back, and you see the Q School video, you can see that I’m out of breath all the time, like I obviously wasn’t testing positive when we went, but it was only a few days before where I started testing negative and started getting over it.
That kind of messed me up a bit, and then I got to Q School and I was thinking to myself ‘Right, well I’m not going to play very well, I’m going to play three players who are absolutely going to wipe the floor with me, and that’s fine’.
I could deal with getting beat at Q School because I’d expected to get beat. I’m not great at darts, but then the draw’s come out and I played one guy who, in the first game I was playing, I thought if I was playing alright, I would’ve probably won.
The next day I played against one of three players in the room I didn’t want to play against, because I knew them, and that was a pretty bad game, but then the last game I played like a real decent player and he smashed me, so yeah, Q School was really fun, I would do it again if I was playing well again, but I wouldn’t do it now.”
It was then that I remembered off the top off my head that the first day loss that he suffered was to Carl Gabriel — a name recognisable as a partner of Devon Petersen for South Africa at the World Cup in 2021. Elaborating further on that match and the experience, he said:
“Yeah, I played him on the first day, and I think he won with a 68 average, and I was there thinking, ‘How have I lost to a 68 average?’.
I wouldn’t have done that six months ago, no way, but it was just, I just went into Q School at completely the wrong time.
I feel like I would’ve done myself a favour if I had cancelled and gone the year after, but I was booked up, I’d already hyped up the video I was going to do, people were excited to see me there, and I thought I’ve already booked the hotel, I’ve already booked everything — so I decided to go.”
On his future aspirations, and what he’d hope to be able to say if we repeated this interview in exactly a year, he said:
“What I would hope to achieve, would be 100K subscribers on the channel, I would like to be throwing darts to a reasonable standard, so maybe a 70 average sort of standard, where I’d be able to win the majority of Friday night games, and a few Super League games here and there, and I’d like to do a bit more with the darts and the brand and stuff, have a few more options of darts, and have a better, just like a better shop.
I have a shop but everything on there is out of stock because I just don’t have the stock for anything anymore, because it all sold out but I haven’t really got the funds to replenish it all.
I’d love to bring out some proper darts, just like a load of darts. I’d love to bring out five sets next year, that’d be really cool, but I don’t know.
I think that a 70 average is reasonable if I can get my throw back together and get a bit more confident.
The channel — I’d love to hit 100k subscribers at some point in the next year, but realistically I don’t know if it’s possible. It’s possible, but I don’t know if I’m capable of doing it, so, we’ll see, but hopefully we can get it done in the next two years, but if we can get it done in the next year, then that would be ideal.”
And that was my interview with The Darts Referee. Thanks to Jack for his time and support. I know I usually end these with thanks, and I will, but I will make a request/recommendation — Head over to his channel, and show him some love. Watch some videos, like, subscribe and all that good stuff to support him on his road to 100,000.
Thanks for reading — and I hope you enjoyed my conversation with The Darts Referee.
Ryan Segal
