Drink plus darts equals delirium and that heady mix was savoured by a thousand or so spectators in the Royal Highland Centre at Ingliston last night.

Twice as many - close to capacity - are expected for both tonight's quarter-finals and finals night at the Coral Masters event tomorrow.

They will do well, though, to improve on the atmosphere generated as Scotland's Robert Thornton came back from 4-3 down in his 11-leg first-round match to defeat Andy Hamilton and bring about the night's first upset.

The Englishman had ensured his status as the night's pantomime villain when turning to the audience and cupping his ears after shutting out the jeers to win the second leg, and for those of us sampling it live for the first time the occasion offered a vivid demonstration of both the greatest strength and greatest weakness of this sport/pub game/pastime (delete according to personal preference/prejudice/taste).

The sneeriness with which many involved in more athletically-oriented pursuits regard darts may never go away, yet by current standards it can claim to have all the requirements for Olympic status.

Last night's action was taking place near Edinburgh where, a day earlier, eight shooters were named in Scotland's Commonwealth Games team. Good on them but the respective levels of athleticism, fitness, stamina and mental strength are surely very similar, suggesting there may be rather more to the image issue that afflicts darts than the nature of the game itself.

In comparative terms, a study of a combination of demographic background and environment in which these two sports have evolved is well worth considering. Somehow, for all the horrible atrocities committed with guns, the shooting community has never been subjected to the sort of contempt generated by a comedy programme when Not The Nine O'Clock News took darts apart 30 years ago.

On the one hand it is apt that a television show encapsulated the sport's image since it is one that can only be properly be watched on a screen, even by those attending the event, but how the sport must regret that it was that one which stuck in the public consciousness.

The fictional contest between Dai "Fat Belly" Gutbucket and Tommy "Even Fatter Belly" Belcher was a classic of its kind. The grotesques created by Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, with Jim Carter, Downton Abbey's butler no less, calling the shots as they reached for double brandies and triple Bacardis in bidding to be first to get 501 milligrammes of alcohol on board - meanwhile throwing darts to stay loose between drinks - embarrassed the game horribly.

Several years elapsed before the introduction of an on-stage drinking ban but urban mythology still views that as the turning point which forced darts authorities to clean up their act and their successors must surely be utterly sick of newcomers to darts tournaments bringing that sketch up, so to speak. Yet, in terms of profile, the heights reached in those booze-soaked days have never been regained and it is almost tempting to wonder whether the ban was the right decision.

Admittedly, as suggested by the case of the inevitably late Bill Werbeniuk - whose doctors prescribed him lager to prevent his shakes from ruining his snooker career, making the cost tax deductible - it was probably the right call in competitive terms since alcohol must obviously be considered a performance-enhancing drug.

However, among the perverse joys of watching World Championship darts back in the 1970s and 80s was calculating the capacity of rival players to handle their intake.

We may have been very wrong but my friends and I used to reckon that Jocky Wilson, another who has sadly now left us, would always struggle in the first couple of legs and even sets until he had downed a couple of nerve-settlers. Once becalmed he could be untouchable for a good hour or so, but if the opponent could hang in, the fear always lurked that a tipping point loomed around set six and pint six. All of which is possibly grossly unfair to the legacy of a wonderfully memorable world champion, but it is how we tend to perceive darts' golden era.

Consequently the names of Wilson, Eric Bristow, John Lowe, Bobby George, even Keith Deller tend to be more readily associated with the game by casual viewers, than those of the current generation except, of course, Phil "The Power" Taylor.

Others are recognisable, notably Raymond "Barney" Van Barneveld and - whisper it if you are around Ingliston over the weekend - Andy "The Viking" Fordham and Ted "The Count" Hankey who compete under the auspices of the rival British Darts Organisation. Aficionados, meanwhile, reckon that had Gary Anderson, something of a people's champion, qualified to join his fellow Scots Robert Thornton and Peter Wright in the 16-man draw, Ingliston might have been packed throughout. As the only multiple winner of both BDO and Professional Darts Corporation titles Taylor, a 16-time champion in all, can lay claim to greater feats than any Olympic gold medal-winning shooter.

That he has achieved them while bedlam surrounds him, every call of "one hundred and eighty" and leg-ending double strike generating near mayhem, makes his career all the more remarkable.

Is it of an Olympian level, though? That is essentially a matter of personal taste, but as sporting entertainment goes give me an evening in a convivial room focused on a stage and a big screen as against sitting in a field with a pair of binoculars waiting for dots to appear on a target any day.

Of course, some may feel that observation unmasks a prejudiced view certainly worth discussing . . . preferably over a lukewarm pint.