"It's a big step for me to take," Andy Fordham says quietly as he looks over at a dartboard tucked away in a corner of the Belfry Social Club.
On an otherwise ordinary Friday morning in south-east London, just off the bleak stretch of Plumstead High Street, where the pubs begin to fill with the caved-in faces of seriously hard drinkers after 11.30am, Fordham cradles a small bottle of water.
The shake in his right hand, caused by the stroke he suffered earlier this year, makes the plastic container jiggle and twitch while the former world champion explains how difficult it will be for him to eventually throw a set of darts again.
"Hopefully I'll do it soon, in the next few months, but it's going to be hard. Once I feel I can walk properly and get my breathing right then I'll try to build up my muscles again. The stroke was on the right side of the brain, which affected the left side of my body, and I still slur a little bit, here and there, but nowhere near as much.
My walking is a lot better and sitting here I feel OK - but normally my head would be echoing like mad." Fordham shakes his huge head slowly, as if to check that the echo has gone. "Yesterday it didn't start until one o'clock. It's horrible.
I think I'm shouting all the time but people can't hear what I'm saying because I'm actually whispering. They're leaning forward to hear what I'm saying." The calm way in which Fordham recounts his distressing story gives hope that the amiable and generous darts player might yet overcome the problems which emerged with such severity less than five months ago.
Fordham collapsed as he prepared for his opening match in the British Darts Organisation's world championship in late January.
His massive frame was laid out on a stretcher, with an oxygen mask strapped over his face, and Fordham was rushed to hospital. After the kind of outrageous drinking which saw him sink between 25 and 30 bottles of Holsten Pils a day it is little wonder that Fordham's memory of his fall is so blurred. "I can't remember much but before it happened I would walk about 20 feet and have to sit down.
But I felt OK - apart from the breathing and the walking." There are moments in Fordham's company when the tendency to laugh with the big man reels past. But this is a story framed by darkness - and so the chuckling does not last long. "As the day progressed I tried to go over to the venue and I was starting, stopping, starting, stopping.
Once I got there I looked at the officials and said 'I don't think I can do this.' I remember going outside and next thing I knew two ambulances turned up - which was a bit cheeky - and I ended up in hospital.
" Phil Taylor, the world's greatest and most dedicated performer on the oche, who plays for the rival Professional Darts Players' Association, warned Fordham that his excessive drinking and weight problems had become life-threatening. Three years ago, in a six-figure showdown between the two champions, Fordham had retired midway through their match after an asthma attack. His disintegration this year was far more troubling.
"I didn't realise how bad I was. The doctors said my lung was squashed up into nothing - and people were leaving the hospital in tears. It was painful lying down, and that's when they told me I had so much fluid on my lungs.
"They tried to get a needle in my back so that they could drain it off but because of my size they didn't have one long enough. So the next day I had to have a tube put in, with a bag below, and when the doctor took a proper look he said, 'Oh my God, we've got to empty this now.
'" While initial reports suggested that Fordham had eight litres drained from his lungs he says that the actual figure was 18 litres. "On the second night, once it had almost gone, I felt so much more comfortable.
" Last month, however, his recovery went badly awry. "They had to put another tube in at the hospital but when I came home my stomach just swelled. Jenny, my missus, said 'That doesn't look right'. The doctor did a scan and the fluid was round my liver so I had to go on the water tablets. It's a lovely thing - you don't stop going to the toilet. But I lost 4½ stone in two weeks." Fordham's answer is blunt when asked to explain the reason for the build-up of fluid.
"My liver's finished ... well, not finished but I can't drink again - ever. Not with this liver anyway." When did he last have a drink? "January 8 at 5.45 and eight seconds," Fordham says wryly. "At first, because I was in hospital, I couldn't get near it and that helped a great deal. I suppose over four months you could count on one hand when I've had a bad day, but it's been a while since I had the hump about [not drinking].
" He discusses his staggering past intake so casually that 30 bottles-a-day seems almost normal for a man whose waistline stretched to the 60-inch mark. Having been engaged to Jenny for 19 years, he drank more than 60 bottles of Pils in celebration of their first wedding anniversary in 2001. "It was around 62," he says, "and I had a few spirits as well.
" Fordham must scoff at the claim that David Boon, the Australian cricketer, drank 52 cans of lager during a long-haul flight?
"Yeah - I heard they were only small cans. But I'm learning you can enjoy yourself without having a drink. I've got no choice. It's either that or kill yourself." Fordham often felt he needed to be "half-cut" to withstand the mental pressures of professional darts. "You're walking out in front of a few thousand people.
There are television cameras and you don't want to make yourself look like an idiot. It just took away the edge of nervousness. But now I have to see if I can do it without a drink - touch wood, again, I'm sure I can." Yet there are physical ailments and psychological demons to be overcome first.
"The last time I picked up the darts was two months ago. There's a dartboard in our bedroom, and one day I stood there and threw the first dart. I'm aiming for the treble 20, and it's gone just underneath the bullseye.
I thought, 'What's happened here?' I kept playing for a couple of days and felt it coming back. But it's Catch-22, you play darts on your own and get bored. But I don't want to play against other people yet." After he won his world championship in 2004, beating Raymond van Barneveld and Mervyn King, Fordham was unsettled by his sudden celebrity.
"It's not me. A lot of it was very difficult. There are some people you see on the telly and you think you'd like to meet them and then you wish you hadn't. Some of them are so far up their own arses." If he now wishes that he had turned down "at least half the rubbish", he defends his involvement in ITV's tawdry Celebrity Fit Club.
"In a way that did me good because I didn't realise how big I was. I went to see the doctor before the show and the scale wouldn't go up to my weight. He estimated I was about 25 stone. But when I stood on this giant set of scales on the show and he said '30 stone' I couldn't believe it. Since then I've got tired of all the comments because people can be quite rude.
" The challenge for Fordham - apart from avoiding alcohol and living healthily - remains strikingly clear.
His fragile self-esteem will be boosted immeasurably if he could return to the darts circuit and start winning matches amid his new-found sobriety. "I've got to get over that hurdle. People are phoning up to offer exhibitions but they pay you for those and if your game's shit then you're letting them down.
I want to try a competition instead because then it's only me who suffers. But it would be nice to win a first-round match." After the interview, while I go over to the bar to buy Fordham a Diet Coke, he is encouraged by the photographer to approach the dartboard.
The 45-year-old man they call The Viking looks decidedly worried. He shuffles over to tell me that a tiny camera has been placed above the board and that he has been asked to throw a few darts in its direction. Reassured that he does not need to do anything that makes him uncomfortable he calls for his darts from behind the bar.
"Let's give it a whirl . . ." In a poignant moment he soon looks down at the arrows in his hand. He positions himself carefully and then, taking aim, his first dart lurches through the air. It hits the lower half of the board.
His next dart makes him groan. It misses the board completely and clatters into the wall.
The Belfry seems quieter than ever as Fordham lines up his third throw. His hand rocks back and forth before his wrist cocks forward and, in a blurring rush, his fingers open.
The dart almost fizzes with intent as it smacks into the board, just below his chosen treble 20. "Who knows?" Fordham says with a shy grin. "Maybe the comeback starts here."
BBC Sport reports:
