Jim Bowen, star of Bullseye darts quiz, dies at 80
AS a former binman, teacher, comedian, quiz show host, actor, singer and radio DJ, few TV personlaities had such a varied career as Jim Bowen, who died yesterday at 80.
Bowen was best known as the host of the game show Bullseye, which ran on ITV for 14 years from 1981.
He became a cult figure, particularly among university students, and his catchphrase ‘Super, smashing, great’ entered popular culture.
Other famous lines from the show, which had a Sunday teatime audience of 17.5million at its peak, included ‘You can’t beat a bit of Bully’ – a reference to the game’s mascot, a bull in a darts player’s shirt – ‘BFH’, which stood for the bus fare home for contestants who didn’t win a prize, and ‘Here’s what you could have won’.
His wife of 59 years, Phyllis, was at his hospital bedside when he died yesterday morning after falling ill a few weeks ago.
Although the cause of his death is not known, he had suffered three strokes since 2011. Darts champion Eric Bristow led tributes, tweeting: ‘I’ve done every year of Bullseye and ten Christmas shows and had 15 days with him on the QE2. I played darts in the afternoon and he played with his band at night, we had some late nights. Great memories.’
Boxer Frank Bruno added: ‘Jim Bowen RIP. A great comic, we worked together many times and had a lot of laughs together. Jim and Ken Dodd, a sad time for the entertainment industry.’
Bowen and his wife had two children, Pete and Susan, and two grandchildren. He was born to an unmarried mother and adopted as a baby by Joe, a brickworker, and Annie, a weaver in a mill.
He started off as a PE teacher and went on to become deputy headmaster at a primary school before being inspired in the early Sixties to try stand-up after seeing Ken Dodd perform.
He said: ‘I watched seven hours of Ken Dodd… completely decimate 7,000 people. He left them in ruins with laughter, and I thought, “That’s some feeling that he must get after that”. So I learned his act.’ He got his break on ITV’s The Comedians before Bullseye.