Spectator Sport | 9 January 2010

New Year starter for ten: who said this? ‘When you hear people on TV talking about you in the same breath as people like Steven Gerrard or Freddie Flintoff, you look at it as if they’re talking about someone else. It’s weird. It’s very humbling and gives you a lump in your throat.’ No, not some brand new novice champion, but the great and charmingly self-effacing Phil Taylor, after winning his 15th World Darts Championship in breathtaking style.

Someone should give The Power a deal puffing ludicrously expensive watches, or standing in for Thierry or Tiger as one of Gillette’s poster boys, earning squillions. It’s 20 years since he took his first world darts title and with the latest he banked well over £200 grand, as he shyly, but with evident pleasure, told Radio 5. And why not? And for those who say that the art of the oche doesn’t constitute a sport, I refer to the wisdom of legendary commentator Sid Waddell, who once declared Taylor to be ‘a better all-round athlete than Ryan Giggs’.