County Durham dart-blowing star's memorabilia 'should go on display'

The owner of a once-famous professional dart-blower's memorabilia is calling for it to be put on public display.

Ronald Tomlinson, from St Helen Auckland in County Durham, performed as variety star Rondart, making a living by spitting darts from his mouth.

The daughter of a childhood friend, Elaine Vizor, inherited his posters, theatre bills, letters and the darts themselves.

"It would be wonderful if they could be displayed somewhere locally," she said.

"So that people, the local people, the generations now who've not really known much about Rondart, and possibly nothing about Rondart, could see them."

Rondart appeared on stage and television from the 1950s to the 1990s and died in 2005.

In 1965 he appeared in a television performance of Billy Smart's Circus alongside "bewhiskered" period acrobats The Herculeans and a collection of trained budgerigars.

By 1984 he had been spotted by Paul Daniels and appeared on the magician's prime-time BBC show in an evening schedule that also included Terry Wogan, Bob Monkhouse, Noel Edmonds, Dynasty and Juliet Bravo.

Chief feature writer for The Northern Echo, Chris Lloyd, said Rondart was likely to have learnt dart-blowing from his father, who fought in World War One.

One version of the story involves trenches too narrow to throw darts properly so he "put one in his mouth and started spitting it down the trench", he said.

"The other version of the story is that he was very badly injured in the trenches, he was left for dead for three days, face down in the mud and, when he eventually recuperated, he didn't have the use of his arms and so he just spat darts rather than threw them."

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