Leighton Rees: Darts' first professional world champion

With the first Champions League of Darts to be held in Cardiff in September, BBC Wales Sport remembers the first professional world champion, Welshman Leighton Rees.

From a feature broadcast in 2008, Leighton's son Ryan talks about how his father became a professional player and what it was like to be one of the pioneers of the sport in the 1970s and 1980s.

Rees died in south Wales in 2003 due to a long-term heart condition. The press obituaries all credited him with contributing hugely to the mass appeal of darts in the UK and the USA.

His popularity was another common observation, with one tribute reading: "He was a friend to everyone, a gentleman and a true ambassador."