Appendix: Darts, language and snobbery all tied up in a Stephen Fry-shaped bow

This may well have been in some recess of my mind egging me on as I wrote the previous post (watch from about 5:45). Just because Stephen Fry says something is so doesn't necessarily make it so, of course. But on this occasion, it certainly is so. Oh, it's so so (but definitely not so-so).

Fry has also written a wonderful, meandering essay about language, including a glorious attack on grammar-and-punctuation pedants ("Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind."). Read it or, better still, listen to him read it for you.

Returning to darts, go here to see that rare creature: a nine-dart finish at a world championship. It's remarkably disconcerting how an achievement which would cause most people to instantly vaporise with sheer excitement is treated like no big deal by Raymond van Barneveld. Contrast his reaction to that of the only other man to accomplish the feat, Paul Lim: