Stephen Bunting reveals his feet are SHRINKING with darts star ‘walking around like PC Plot for 12 months’

Stephen Bunting reveals his feet are SHRINKING — with darts star ‘walking around like PC Plod for 12 months’

Stephen Bunting has credited a rather unexpected secret weapon for his Premier League revival — a change of shoes.

‘The Bullet’ stunned the darts world on Night Four in Belfast after losing every match across the opening three weeks of the 2026 Premier League campaign. He produced one of the performances of the season to beat Luke Humphries, sweep aside Jonny Clayton 6-0 in the semi-final, and then demolish Gian van Veen 6-2 in the final — a result that moved him off the bottom of the table and prompted an emotional post-match interview that went viral across social media.

But speaking on the Double Tops podcast in the days that followed, Bunting let slip that his pre-Belfast preparation had included something rather more prosaic: buying a new pair of shoes.

It turns out the 40-year-old had been playing in trainers that were a size too large — and had been doing so for the best part of a year without realising.

“Yeah, size 11. My feet are shrinking,” Bunting said with a laugh. “I think I bought the wrong size when I first bought them and I’ve been walking around like PC Plod for 12 months.”

The reference will be lost on no one who has ever watched Bunting perform at the oche — where his spiky footwear has become almost as much of a trademark as the Titanium walk-on. The idea that he had been stomping around in comically oversized trainers throughout an entire season gave even his most devoted fans pause for thought.

Having finally gone down a size and bought shoes that actually fit, Bunting said he immediately felt the benefit. “Happy that I’ve got shoes that fit me now and they’ve paid off. So I might treat myself to another pair,” he added.

The foot revelation is, in all likelihood, a side effect of the significant weight loss Bunting has undergone in recent years. The Liverpudlian had previously revealed that he was diagnosed with sleep apnoea, a condition that left him chronically exhausted and struggling to perform at his best. The diagnosis led to a major lifestyle overhaul, and the physical transformation has been one of the more visible storylines of his career resurgence. It is medically well established that weight loss can cause foot size to reduce, as ligaments and tendons decompress following the reduction in body mass bearing down on them.

Whether it is the shoes, the hypnotherapy Bunting revealed he had on the morning of Night Four, his decision to come off social media, or simply the form of a 40-year-old who still counts himself among the game’s hardest men to beat — something is clearly working. He narrowly missed out on a second consecutive night win in Cardiff last week, losing 6-5 to Gerwyn Price after missing match darts, and now faces Josh Rock in Nottingham this Thursday as he looks to keep climbing the Premier League table.