We head to the darts at Ally Pally, armed with a film camera and notebook. It’s time to witness live one of Britain’s most beloved sporting events.
Before we could proceed to the main event, though, we were accosted by a group of German men dressed as Teletubbies (yes, I didn’t know they had Teletubbies in Germany either). We soberly continued our march to the home of darts beneath the majestic Victorian entrance.
Echoes of Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’ had already become relentless as we waded through what initially felt like a heavily inebriated version of Comic Con. As we nattered away to a group of bananas in pyjamas about whether our seats were any good, it became astonishingly clear we were the odd ones out – we had no costume. After a short queue, we arrived in the Ally Pally (Alexandra Palace’s affectionate nickname) fan’s village – a giant room full of beers, food stalls and bookies. Little did I know I would later fall in love with this minimalistic, beer-swashing concrete paradise.
For the first five minutes, I just stood there as a perpetual stream of phoney pop culture icons meandered around my almost unknown presence. There were: X-Men, Pac-Men, Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and countless Ali G doubles. It was wildly accurate to my 12-year TV viewership, filling me with seasonal warmth and anticipation for the night ahead.
It was the PDC 2021 World Championship, the world’s most competitive and prestigious darts competition. This annual event started in 1994 and is a typical fixture for the Christmas period. As a kid, I would channel flick across to the televised event from time to time. Now, I gazed out nostalgically at the heaving merch stall, recalling past legends such as Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor and Raymond Van Barneveld.
The typical image of a darts player is often joked about, a reddish, overweight, bald male in their late 40s who clasps a half-drunk pint of lager as they launch their dart into a triple 20. But something was very different in the alcohol-tinged air. Competing now, we had a viral superstar, ‘Queen of the Palace’, Fallon Sherrock. A coy, petite 25-year-old, a bleach blonde mother from Milton Keynes. She had just come off the back of the first-ever female PDC victory – a story that had gone global for all the right reasons. We were fortunate enough to witness this fairy tale continuing to unfold.
Out of nowhere, Ally Pally’s darts DJ Lee screamed into his mic that the first game would take place in just under five minutes. Neon and reflective costumes frantically danced around me in reaction to the announcement. Pitchers of pints were being tossed into the air, sausages were swallowed whole, and once sober, groups of smurfs started to pile into their seats at the Mecca of the darts at Ally Pally, the PDC main arena.
I thought I had seen it all until I walked up the security-lined steps of the main arena. I was instantly plunged into an ocean of shifting colour and severe vibrancy as the costumes I had previously gazed upon merged into an animated, unified mass.
Chants were effortlessly booming out from every pocket of the arena as darts fans danced arm-in-arm under the purple and yellow spotlights. I’m no stranger to a sporting spectacle, but this caught me off guard. There was just something so genuinely carefree and joyous about the darts.
As the first darts were thrown, it was obvious that the atmosphere was permanent, with never a slight hint of fatigue or lethargy from the jovial groups of aliens, Dragon Ball Z characters and nuns.Â
As every 180 sunk into the dartboard cork, we rose to our feet clutching our compulsory ‘180’ laminated cards, hoping our reactions would make the live broadcast.
Between each game, the fans would pour back out to the now familiar fan’s village in need of another beer, another fag, another piss or another sausage. Simplicity was key to the management of the event as the fans became rapidly more raucous.
We sat down again on our plastic chairs with our plastic pitchers in hand as Katy Perry’s ‘Friday Night’ reverberated around the arena. Suddenly, a small Fallon Sherrock delicately shuffled down the aisle to a horde of hungry fans.
As the male-dominated crowd struggled to warble along to the Perry song, the fans abruptly chanted over it with the Christmas classic ‘Walking in Winter Wonderland’ that they swiftly adapted to ‘Walking in a Sherrock Wonderland’, which was then bellowed out by every drunken dart devotee for the entirety of the game. It was magical.
Sherrock played world number 11, Mensur Suljovic, and the game had everything a classic sporting moment desired. I shall spare the details of the breakdown of the game, but Sherrock ended up smashing Suljovic to once again break the records. As the game ended, we started to chat with a group of mothers and daughters sitting behind us.
With tears in the corners of her eyes, one of the mothers said, ‘Thank f**k our husbands couldn’t make it tonight. We’re coming every year by ourselves now.’ And that second thought was exactly mine as I left the rapidly emptying palace; I’ll be coming to the darts at Ally Pally every year.
