RECENT Memories have told how in the 1960s, shove ha'penny was all the rage in the pubs of County Durham, leading to the formation of a Durham shove ha'penny league which culminated in 1981 in the holding of the inaugural World Shove Ha’penny Championships were held at The Three Tuns Hotel in the city.

The shove ha'penny worlds attracted a global field – well, certainly there were competitors from Wales. In 1988, at the Three Tuns, one of the Welshmen, John Short, of Newport in Gwent, beat Dave Wardle of Crossgate club in the final, and the title went to Wales, along with the 1989 championship, and it has never returned.

The global interest in shove ha'penny – well, certainly the Welsh were as interested as the Durham pub-goers – was partly sparked by a Yorkshire Television programme called The Indoor League which started in 1972 and featured pub games like pool, bar billiards, bar skittles, table football and arm wrestling, plus, of course, darts and shove ha’penny.

The producer of the programme was Sid Waddell, the legendary darts commentator whose first love was shove ha'penny. He became acquainted with the game when he worked at Durham university in the early 1960s.

Sid said: “Shove ha’penny demands more concentration than darts, but the touch must be as light as a butterfly’s eyelash.

“A darts player gets better after two or three pints, but the opposite happens in shove ha’penny, because the booze doesn’t help you concentrate.

“Shove ha’penny is more difficult to play at the top level than darts, because it is less to do with talent and is all about concentration.”

The Indoor League sparked more interest in all of the old pub games and the Evening Despatch, the Echo's former sister paper, decided to climb aboard the bandwagon in the early 1980s. It organised the Pub Olympics, which ran for at least two years: 1983 and 1984.

There's a packet of pictures in the Echo archive featuring the teams that entered the Pub Olympics and it is clear that this was a big event in south Durham which culminated in a final, played perhaps at Darlington's Central Hall.

What events featured in the Olympics is difficult to say, but there are pictures of high level darts and doms taking place, and hints at other major sporting battles, like who get can the most cigarette butts in a single ashtray – although this was only held in the 1980s, it was a different world when there were still community boozers on most street corners in which everyone smoked.

Here, in the first of two pictures spreads, are some of the images from the Pub Olympics packet. If you can tell us anything about the competition, or about any of the competitors in our pictures, please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk