If talking was an Olympic sport, not only would Barry Hearn win the gold medal, he would sell the finals to a satellite channel for enough money to rescue Northern Rock. The boy from Dagenham turned snooker into a sport that could draw 18 million viewers. He helped Chris Eubank from the gym to the top of the boxing world. He has taken darts from the pubs to venues that routinely sell out 6000 tickets. He has even sold fishing to a satellite audience.

And for his next trick? "Premier league bowls, coming in June," says Hearn with the smile of the seller with a queue at his door. And what is he going to do to make bowls the next big thing? "I don't know yet. It's exciting, innit?"

It might be. It will certainly be successful. Hearn rarely does failure. He has been involved in promoting sport since 1974. He has not starved.

"I tend to go into niche sports that I like myself," he says as he takes a break from talking up the boxing bill he is promoting with Tommy Gilmour at the Kelvin Hall on Friday. "I don't do a sport that I don't feel passionate about. You can't go to the chemist and buy a tub of enthusiasm. You either have it or you don't. I am not enthusiastic about motor sport or tennis so I don't concern myself with these sports. You can't just do it for the money. That would be like going to work."

Hearn's golden touch is based on one element. "There is no secret to it," he says. "I start every event with this question: What will I like to watch as punter?' "

When Hearn asks that question, sportsmen and broadcasters are both eager to provide the solution. "I want value for money, I want entertainment," he exclaims. One almost expects Hearn to issue a loud cry of "roll up, roll up" and he admits with a cheerful candour that it all resembles the running of a circus.

This does not make him uncomfortable. "My wife says to me: You are the same as the working-class git I met 38 years ago'. I am. I may have a slightly better suit but I still enjoy having a few beers after a game of darts and stopping for a curry on the way home. These are all the things I have being doing 40 years," he says.

He is an uncommon man, though. He can spot a business opening under the wing of an under-developed gnat at the distance of a mile while wearing a patch over one eye.

He does not want to buy in at the top of the market in sports such as football or rugby. He looks for a "niche" sport, such as fishing, darts, or ten-pin bowling. His acquisition of premier league bowls shows his working method.

"I watched the world championships," he says. "I arrived there by helicopter and I saw 1000 people watching bowls at 11 o'clock in the morning. I thought, oh, I like this'.

"The average age of the crowd was 60-odd, the average age of the players was 20-odd. That's a funny mix. I liked that, too. I thought: I can make this a bit more fun, a bit more lively'."

He will also make it pay for the players. And for himself. He says of the bowlers: "You can see it in the players' eyes. They want to go somewhere with this."

They will have a travelling companion who will make demands but will also make them rich if the darts route is followed. "Phil Taylor and Barney Raymond van Barneveld will make £1m a year. The rest will be on about £400,000. The prize fund for the league is £345,000 this season and it will be half a million next year."

It is a lesson that Hearn took from his highly successful snooker days. "I sat down with all the players and gave them roles, Steve Davis was Mr Boring, Jimmy White was the Artful Dodger etc. It was like a cross between Coronation Street and Reservoir Dogs. Everyone had their role, everyone was Mr Somethingorother. We were the first reality television in a sporting sense and the punters loved it."

Hearn is still involved in snooker, supplying Sky with the premier league tournament. However, he made a ricket, in Dagenham parlance, with the sport. "I make a lot of mistakes," he says, "and usually I keep them quiet. I got a bit complacent with snooker and I gave it back to the governing body." He will not repeat the error. "My fist is so tight on darts that you can see my knuckles are white," he says.

The man who appears to make money out of everything has a close relationship with Tommy Gilmour. They have combined to present a top-class bill at the Kelvin Hall on Friday which is headlined by the Kevin Anderson v Kevin McIntyre re-match at welterweight.

It should be another nice earner for Hearns, the entrepreneur with the almost infallible touch for making money out of sport. He has just the one major failure. Why are Leyton Orient, the club he owns, not in the Champions League?

"Because they're useless and the chairman's a tight bastard," he says, with a guffaw. But he has serious doubts about the game and where it is going.

"This game should have redistribution of money," says Hearn. "It is obscene the wages they are playing average players in the Premiership. I am not talking about the top boys. They are due everything. But there's huge money going into mediocre players. I am not talking about overpaying by a shilling, I am talking about guys on £50,000 a week that are not worth eight. What these Premiership bosses are thinking, I don't know. They have all this money coming in from telly, feel they have to spend it. Frankly, they don't need to."

There is a pause, but only briefly. "I have never been in favour of government intervention but there should be rules brought in to curb the spending," he says.

So the greatest advocate of the free market is proposing redistribution and a restriction on free enterprise? It leaves me speechless. "Yeah," says Hearn. "I can't believe it myself." He is still talking.