
London at Christmas and New Year is mostly eerily quiet
Londoners tend to escape the capital as soon as they can before the festive period kicks in and so, whilst it isn’t exactly a ghost town or like that scene on Westminster Bridge from 28 Days Later, you can actually drive around without your blood pressure spiking 99% of the time and the relative lack of pedestrians affords you the chance to look around you at some of the stunning but less heralded architecture - both old and new - in the City.
But then there’s Alexandra Palace.
Nothing can ever be considered eerily quiet at Ally Pally from mid-December through to early January…except maybe for the moment just before Damon Heta threw his 9th dart at double 12 to seal a perfect leg…and that quiet only lasted a fraction of a second before complete and utter bedlam.
Describing the PDC World Darts Championships to the uninitiated can take a very long time indeed. Even darts fans who’ve yet to experience the place look incredulously at you when you explain the setup, the noise, the madness…and the SMELL! There’s an aroma that hits your nostrils from about Day 7 onwards that is unmistakably Ally Pally Darts - it’s a heady mixture of stale beer, disinfectant, vomit and - well - boys, generally.
Not that this is a boys own club, of course - far from it. The fairer sex is well represented at each session and there’s also a wide diversity of countries that attend - mostly from continental Europe with the Germans and the Dutch more eager than most to snap up tickets to see their heroes. And tickets have been as difficult to obtain as ever for this year’s jamboree, as they were sold out minutes after going on general sale earlier this year. The VIP area has also been a hot ticket - those are the “boring, boring tables” referred to in song by general ticket holders during sessions. The spike in interest has quite an obvious source…that of Luke Littler’s rapid ascent to fame by reaching last year’s final on debut at the tender age of 16.
He’s not the only show in town but it’s hard for the narrative not to centre around him - at last year’s final against Luke Humphries, the press room was 3 or 4 times busier than I’ve ever known it to be in our years doing Darts On The Radio. BBC News, ITV News & Sky TV all had teams there doing live hits into their evening bulletins, and Sky even roped me and Paul Nicholson into a live chat about ‘The Littler Effect’.
And as the reigning champion Humphries bowed out early doors this year, Littler suddenly became a very short priced favourite, although at first, he didn’t quite match the consistency to get past his first 2 or 3 opponents. Didn’t seem to matter to the odds compilers though.
The ‘Darts On The Radio’ team has been set in stone for a good few years now - and what a stellar team it is. After the first couple of years trying out various combinations of commentators/presenters, the current foursome of myself, Mark Wilson, Chris Mason and Paul Nicholson have been the mainstay, aided by Abigail Davies, Chris Murphy and others along the way. Matt Gubbins, our onsite producer, ties everything and everyone together and we’ve developed a very natural camaraderie between us all that I believe is a massive part of our winning an award for last years Worlds coverage at the Sports Journalism Awards (SJA’s) back in the summer. Over the years, we’ve honed our craft at describing the action with the knowledge that is required combined with a sense of humour that tries not to stray into the self indulgent but rather just adds a bit of fun to proceedings
And we all LOVE the sport, which must come across I’m sure - judging by the numbers of views that we got on our new talkSPORT Darts YouTube channel, loads of you love this sport too. As I type this, we have already garnered 5.6k subscribers and received over 3 million views of our content - that’s especially pleasing as we only really did a kind of ‘soft launch’ of the channel in the early days of the tournament, building up the interview content for a bit before making reference to it during our live broadcasts. I want to extend a particular thank you to all those who have subscribed and viewed what we’ve been doing over these championships…it is very much appreciated.
Just on the odd occasion, an endorsement for what we do with Darts On The Radio comes completely out of left field to surprise and delight us. Last year it was Tim Vine expressing his admiration for our coverage and it was a real thrill for me to meet him in person later in that tournament and subsequently get to work with him at an event!
About a week or so into this year’s jamboree I got a message on my socials saying something to the effect of “That was nice, what Chris McCausland said about you guys at the arrers, wasn’t it?” Bemused, I googled Chris’ name with the word darts and lo and behold, up came an interview he gave on Chris Evans’ Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio where he gave us such a glowing compliment that I just had to tweet/X him and thank him for being so fulsome in his praise! He was already a bit of a hero to me having clearly shown his love of KISS during his Strictly journey, so this just added to his legend!! Again, thank you Chris
As usual with me, the darts does become a little intertwined with football over the 16 days of action, which meant Boxing Day at Derby and the Sunday in the middle at Tottenham, so I didn’t attend every session - I also managed to fit a gig in on NYE, as I popped the old Catman makeup for the first time in about a decade to perform with KISS tribute Hotter Than Hell in Bradford before driving back south through awful weather to be back in Muswell Hill for the darts quarter finals the next day. A mad 24/48 hours and no mistake !
As I type this, the dust is settling on Luke Littler’s extraordinary performance in winning a maiden world title at just 17 years of age and the questions are already flooding in as to how many world titles he can go on to win…that’s a question I’m not particularly interested in at this point. Luke is only just at the start of his professional career and no one - not even he - knows how long his motivation to win majors will persist for. Let’s have a look at where he is 5 years from now, and IF he’s added to his Ally Pally triumph more than once in that time, then that’s a conversation I will happily indulge in.
For now, I just want to enjoy this prodigious talent for what it is, taking out 70 by going Bull, D10 or having 2 darts in his hand on 30 and going 10 D10 rather than D15! It’s precocious, it’s unusual and it’s fascinating to see how Humphries, van Gerwen, Price et al respond once the 2025 pro tour and Premier League get underway soon. Hopefully Darts On The Radio will have a bigger part to play as this year progresses if the capacity is there on talkSPORT & talkSPORT 2 to accommodate us around the plethora of live sporting events we already bring to you. The team is ready, I can assure you of that!!!
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