And so, on the opening Friday night of the 2024 World Darts Championship, here I am in the biggest pub in London, squinting through a colourful, throbbing sea of fancy dress and a blurry haze of pints to soak in a scene that has become such an integral part of the festive season. The number of contries in the healthcare spendings dataset over time: Notice how the number has more than doubled from 21 in 1971 to 53 in 2017. Illustration: David Humphries for the Guardian While darts is increasingly fashionable, there is something reassuring in the way that its stars remain anything but. The aforementioned experience of actually watching the night’s action didn’t seem like much of an improvement on watching the Premier League at home on TV, where I could at least listen to John Part’s exquisite commentary. Given Barry Hearn's innate feel for razzmatazz how long before players are hooked up to heart-rate monitors during play?

One could of course question the validity of this data depending on the country, as part of a propaganda scheme, but with the countries that are members of the OECD I do not consider this a realistic issue. There was a chant in an early match, I seriously couldn't believe it, something like "who the f*k are you, who the f**kin' hell are you", plain as day. The first round of the BDO world championship – yes, it is preposterous that darts has two world championships – was shown live on BBC1. It's more noticeable at the Ally Pally that there are a few idiots towards the back but if you look properly you'll see the majority are watching the darts.But sometimes this requires adding additional sheets which can become a problem if your table has more rows than can fit in the view and scrolling is necessary. And racing bar charts are a great way to build excitement and engagement by making the reader guess who will “win”. As others have said, tt is only a matter of time though until we see something similar in this country, and it will not be at the Lakeside.

Isn't the "boring boring tables" chant response to the tables chanting at the stands with the usual repertoire of, "feed the stands", "sit down in your plastic seats", "we pay your benefits", it's annoying when theres a good game going on the crowd are more bothered chanting at each other than watching the game.Going to sound like a darts snob here,but the PL and defo the worlds(you have to go once,and that was enough) is darts for people who don't really follow the game and just want a good piss up.