Nathan Aspinall probably thinks he just took part in a game of darts. And look, his name was definitely on the scoreboard, and you may have glimpsed him on your television grinning away in the background, and in a few days’ time there will be a hefty bank transfer from the Professional Darts Corporation confirming he did, indeed, participate.
But while Aspinall may have been here corporeally, in a very real sense he wasn’t actually here at all. He was essentially a tower of pixels, a mannequin, an uncredited extra, the silent letter in the middle of a word. He was one of those characters in a noughties video game who walks into a wall and disappears. He was the latest player to stand between Luke Littler and world domination, and that turned out exactly the way you might expect.
