The 2024 PDC World Darts Championship was unforgettable and the TV ratings were extraordinary. Eddie Hearn confirmed that Wednesday's final between Lukes Littler and Humphries was the most watched non-football sporting event in the history of Sky Sports.
And while there are many people dreaming about being the next Luke Littler, we'd like to remind you that a career as a professional darts player was not always as glamourous as it is today.
A story from former world champion Richie Burnett captures the darker side of darts quite perfectly.
The Welshman won the BDO World Championship at the Lakeside back in 1995, very shortly after the split in darts. Sky Sports snobs should be made aware that this does not mean he won a substandard competition. Very far from it. In the direct aftermath of the split, the BDO division was packed with promising up-and-comers. Burnett did, after all, beat Raymond Barneveld in the final. His predecessor as champion, John Part, won the first ever post-split BDO final in 1994 and went onto win two PDC world titles in the noughties.
Read about the split in darts here.
After losing two more BDO finals (to Steve Beaton in 1996 and Barneveld in 1998) Burnett switched to the Professional Darts Corporation at the turn of the century.
His career in the PDC has been more chequered though he did reach two successive World championship quarter-finals (2002 and 2003) and did reach the final of the World Matchplay in 2001, losing to Phil Taylor.
Incredible Richie Burnett pot noodle story
In the late noughties he fell on hard times. 2008 represented his nadir. He told a nice story to the Daily Mirror a few years ago which illustrated the extent of his financial problems in those years.
When times were hard and I had no money, I was in Wigan for a tournament and bought myself a Pot Noodle for my tea. But I didn't have a kettle to boil water for it. The only thing I could do was drain the radiator from my room and use the hot water from that.
It was all soily and brown but it worked and the Pot Noodle went down OK. But I'd used a pair of nail scissors to open up the valve and it wouldn't shut again, so hot, brown water was leaking out.
All I could was put a tray underneath it to catch it all. I didn't get much sleep because I had to get up every hour to tip the water down the sink.
Ingenious. Also, "soily and brown" is a quite beautiful - almost poetic - description of radiator water. Richie bounced back in the early part of this decade, winning a PDC Pro Tour title in 2011 and posting impressive performances in the World Championship.
However, an 18-month ban following a positive test for cocaine has rather knocked him back on his arse. He returned to competition in late 2016 and lost to Adam Gawlas in the first round of the 2023 World Darts Championship. He also reached the quarterfinals of last year's UK Open.
But if he ever quits the darts, there could be a career in becoming a Hunter S Thompson-like chronicler of the hard living lifestyle.
Originally written by Conor Neville in 2017
