Sky Sports’ Emma Paton wades in on darts concern Wayne Mardle branded ‘vindictive’
Emma Paton has fronted a comical video advert with a message to anyone attending the World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace this Christmas
Emma Paton has waded into a darts problem branded “vindictive” and “nasty” by Wayne Mardle. Ahead of the 2025/26 World Darts Championship, Sky Sports presenter Paton has fronted a light-hearted Paddy Power advert about a serious issue in the sport – the scourge of whistling.
While a silent audience is neither possible nor desired, especially at Alexandra Palace, there is a consensus that whistling while players are throwing must be stamped out. In the skit, Paton leads the ‘Paddy Power Darts Whistle Squad’ and says: “There’s nothing more irritating than people whistling at the darts, so we tracked down some of the culprits to see how they like it.”
Paton is accompanied by darts stars Chris Dobey, Nathan Aspinall and Stephen Bunting, who put off a chef in a kitchen, someone giving a presentation, a watchmaker and a surgeon performing an operation by whistling loudly in their ear.
Paton adds: “This Christmas, don’t whistle at the darts, or else!” The video then concludes with Bunting whistling at a man struggling to relieve himself at a urinal. The Bullet quips: “Stage fright, is it?”
The video has already been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, with darts fans praising both its comedic value and important message. It will have gone down well with Paton’s Sky Sports colleague Wayne Mardle, who has been an outspoken critic of whistling fans.
He told the Daily Star at the 2023/24 World Championship: “I think whistling is vindictive. I think whistling is nasty. I think whistling is aimed at the player at that point, trying to make them miss. That’s vindictive.
“My personal opinion on booing is very different. I think idiots boo, I think vindictive individuals whistle. I want them out the game.
“I see that [whistling] like someone clicking their fingers in a restaurant. I got whistled at back in the day, but rarely. It seems to be more of a problem now.”
Legendary referee Russ Bray says whistling is his biggest gripe in the game. He said: “You get a general noise, but there is one person that will whistle over and above everything else. That is my biggest gripe, I hate it with a passion because it goes right through you.
“What these guys [who whistle] don’t realise is that these lads are playing for an awful lot of money, they’re playing for their dinners, their mortgages, things like that.
“People just don’t realise that. If you’ve got a bricklayer and you’re going up to him whistling in his ear and stopping him from working, it’s no different.
“The rest of it, the singing, that’s all part and parcel of it. It’s just the whistling that really annoys me.”
Watch the World Darts Championship on Sky Sports
The PDC World Darts Championship gets underway on December 11 and fans can watch every match exclusively live with Sky’s Essential TV and Sky Sports bundle.
