Bob Potter OBE: Lakeside Ringmaster Dies at 94

Bob Potter, the owner of the Lakeside Country Club who has died aged 94, was Mr. Entertainment who for one week a year became Mr. Darts.

His venue is incomparable for many darts fans in its stature and significance, but Potter’s contribution went far beyond the arraz.

As well as the likes of Eric Bristow, Raymond van Barneveld and Phil Taylor, Potter’s Lakeside staged the likes of Tommy Cooper, Morecambe and Wise and even Sammy Davis Jr.

What Potter is however most associated with is his unwavering and steadfast commitment to the British Darts Organisation and its World Championship.

In fact, the relationship only got closer as the years passed. When the British government tightened restrictions on tobacco sponsorship, forcing Embassy to break off from the BDO Worlds, the Lakeside Country Club started to play host and patron.

Even when the BBC dropped the competition, there was no indication that Mr. Potter was too about to throw in the towel. It is a level of commitment matched by very few, one which stood even when the chips and numbers were down.

And it is one which has carried beyond the remnant ashes of the BDO into the fluttering phoenix of the new World Darts Federation era, for whom the Lakeside remains an immovable magnet.

The controversial and radical move of the BDO’s Des Jacklin to move away from the Lakeside in late 2019 was a short-lived and failed attempt to revive a flagging body.

The 2020 edition of the organisation’s World Championship, the first since 1985 not to be staged in Surrey’s Lakeside, proved to be a PR disaster. The BDO would not make the end of the calendar year.

For a man of business, Bob Potter’s personal loyalty to the BDO and its people is commendable. It allowed the Lakeside to remain a centric focal point of darts far longer than it may have otherwise.

Perhaps it was an indication of his personal resilience. In the late 1970s, just as the modern professional darts circuit which would influence the rest of Potter’s career began to take shape, the Club suffered a damaging fire.

Such an incident might have walked other promoters out of business, but for Potter, the Club’s best days were still ahead.

Potter’s death will be mourned deeply by his friends and family, but it will also raise inevitable questions about the future of the Lakeside Country Club’s relationship with darts.

The Club has proved essential to the establishment, or reestablishment, of the WDF since its post-Covid revival. In April last year, it again played host to the World Championship and will do so again this December.

It also regularly hosts darts exhibitions and other significant tournaments, for example, last year’s World Seniors Masters.

And for many, whatever the merits of the Alexandra Palace, Circus Tavern or Winter Gardens, it remains the mythical and mystical site of darting pilgrimage.

‘The Home of World Darts’: an often bemoaned and disputed slogan, but one which speaks to its everlasting hold on the darts consciousness.

The Lakeside is, was and probably always will be a symbol of a time when darts began to rule the roost, and Bob Potter was an essential cog in all of that.