It's darts o'clock at Alexandra Palace, North London, where the Ladbrokes.com World Championship, the PDC's annual gift to the yuletide season, is under way. Sing “i-o, i-o, i-o”. Or, as it happens, “oi, oi, oi”.

Worries that a ruined economy would effectively soak the peanuts at this great sporting party have proved cheeringly unfounded. As the global financial crisis bites and sponsors across sport consider their positions, what a pleasure it is to report that Chris Sedgeman Scaffolding Ltd, of Penzance, continues to see the value of its investment in Peter “One Dart” Manley.

Then again, One Dart went out in the first round to Mensur Suljovic, the “dangerous” Austrian, and given that the building industry has been hit as hard as any recently, it would be understandable if Chris Sedgeman Scaffolding Ltd, of Penzance, was even now reviewing its commitment to that patch on One Dart's unashamedly pink smock.

Let's hope the company keeps its nerve. The last thing darts needs is the exit of a top-line sponsor. Which is why, in a move designed to bolster confidence, we promise Chris Sedgeman Scaffolding Ltd, of Penzance, a further two entirely gratuitous mentions in this column. It's not much, we appreciate. But if it's something we can do to sustain the cashflow through darts, then it feels like a duty.

One Dart joined John “Darth Maple” Part on the early train home. The ruminative defending champion had been tipping himself to duplicate his slightly surprising run of last year but ended up lying down in front of the first hurdle. What happened? He looked absolutely ruminative.

Meanwhile, the entire crowd rose to hymn Bill Davis, from Philadelphia, Part's vanquisher. Incredible scenes. To think that a black man from relatively humble beginnings in America would one day rise and cause a first-round upset on the biggest stage in world darts. Change has come to the PDC.

And as if that wasn't enough social revolution, enter Anastasia Dobromyslova, the women's world champion, now busily “tearing down the tungsten curtain” and fighting for an equal share of the men's oche.

Views on her participation ranged from Helen Chamberlain, the Sky Sports presenter, who called it “a phenomenal achievement”, across to Eric Bristow, whose opinion seemed to be that the Russian was taking up a perfectly decent place that could have gone to a man. We will wait a long time, probably, for change to come to Bristow.

Would this darting suffragette, one wondered, turn convention on its head and be accompanied to the stage by walk-on men? In fact, two women accompanied her, but carrying placards. A darts dolly in a microskirt holding a sign reading “Women Rule” ... we'll be unpicking the dizzying tangle of conflicting sexual-political messages encoded in this scene for many years.

Dobromyslova lost, but not before Sid Waddell thought he had spotted “the hungry eyes of a Siberian sea eagle” and, with practice, further exposure and the wind beneath her wings, the Russian freedom-seeker may yet climb to heights undreamt of even by Chris Sedgeman Scaffolding Ltd, of Penzance.

This year the darts are coming at us in high definition for the first time, creating an almost steamy intimacy with Adrian “Jackpot” Lewis that many of us never imagined we would know. These unsparingly pin-sharp images may count as “too much information” in the case of one or two competitors who have not spent the weeks before the tournament closing their pores with expensive male grooming products. But there is surely no faulting the broadcasting innovation that brings you near enough to Andy “The Hammer” Hamilton to evaluate the carat-rating of his jewellery.

As for the contest itself, Phil “The Power” Taylor is already alight, Raymond van Barneveld looks interested in darts for the first time this year and Wayne “Hawaii 501” Mardle has crushed David Fatum, who would have offered an easy joke in the old days, but whom we must be content to pass over in what are, in so many ways, leaner times.

On the special, festive edition of All Star Mr & Mrs on ITV, Terry Venables and his wife, Yvette, were sunk by a two-pronged marital attack from Tamzin Outhwaite and Ronan Keating and their respective partners. Well, nobody ever said that the show's fabled soundproof booth was an easy place from which to come away with a victory.

Still, chuffed though the former England manager must have been to share with the nation that Yvette finds his legs funnier than any other part of his body, the defeat must have rankled, especially against two sides who have been in the marriage game a considerably shorter time.

At the end, as Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton broke the final scores, El Tel smiled gamely. But you knew that, deep down inside, he was a man in need of support - perhaps from Chris Sedgeman Scaffolding Ltd, of Penzance.