NOBODY quite knows how or why the phenomenon started.

After all, the Germans do not share our darting heritage. They are not blessed with our innate instinct for the arrers.

6 German fans have flooded Alexandra Palace for the Darts World Championships this year Credit: Lawrence Lustig

They cannot remember Jocky on the oche, nor the silver-tongued Sid Waddell likening Eric Bristow to Alexander the Great.

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They can’t recall the milk-drinking rank-outsider Keith Deller winning the world title, nor Phil Taylor’s rise to global supremacy.

Ask a German about the time ex-world champion Bob Anderson walked on stage at the Circus Tavern accompanied by an actual thoroughbred racehorse and he’ll look at you blankly.

But chant ‘Stand Up If You Love The Darts’ to a room full of Germans and they will stand.

Play them ‘Chase The Sun’ by an Italian techno act called Planet Funk and they will recognise it as the universal theme to ‘The Darts’, then sing ‘Oi! Oi! Oi!’ as surely as you or your English maiden aunt would do.

They love the darts, the Germans. And they are here in their thousands at London’s Ally Pally this year to prove it.

6 Their obsession with chanting and beer has helped fuel their love for the sport Credit: Lawrence Lustig

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The Dutch have long since relieved Britain’s stranglehold on darting glory thanks to Raymond van Barneveld and world No 1 Michael van Gerwen.

But the Germans are coming. They may lack world-class players just yet, but they will be bettering us at nine-dart checkouts as well as penalty shootouts before long.

Due to a strange combination of the World Darts Championship’s Oktoberfest atmosphere, the sporting desert of the Bundesliga’s month-long winter break and Germany’s national passion for large glasses of beers and raucous sing-songs, Ally Pally is the des res for discerning German sports fans.

So when Germany’s best player, the 20-year-old former world youth champion Max Hopp, was led to the stage by a lingerie model spilling out of her blazer, high-fiving men dressed as penguins and Lego figures as he went, the crowd roared as one: “Deutschland! Deutschland!”

6 Young Max Hopp is Germany's brightest darts prospect Credit: PA:Press Association

Bus-loads had travelled from Germany just to be here, scores of them sang football chants in perfect English while heading for the German sausage stand in the fan zone, including Klaus Wiening from Warendorf, who had identified this as the perfect place to celebrate his 50th birthday.

Back home, between one and two million watch the darts on the Sport1 TV channel each day. More than ten per cent of the 66,000 tickets sold for this championship were sold in Germany.

Around five per cent went to Holland, whose sports minister and UK ambassador were both here on the Oranjeboom this week.

This event’s glorious mayhem, which satisfies our national thirst for festive sport and binge-drinking, is expanding all the time.

A decade ago, the darts moved from the Circus Tavern, a strip joint near a petrol station in the rear end of Essex, to Alexandra Palace — a Victorian pleasure venue named after the bride of the future King Edward VII.

His Majesty’s great-great-great grandson Prince Harry has since been here twice to underline his credentials as the people’s royal, because Harry loves the darts as well.

6 Ten per cent of tickets were sold in Germany Credit: Lawrence Lustig

Soon the PDC will move from the 3,000-capacity West Hall into the venue’s Grand Hall. But more significantly, they intend to spread the darting word across the planet.

Players from 22 nations are competing here. None is under more pressure than Hopp, who is struggling to carry German hopes on his young shoulders.

Hopp was sploshed 4-0 by Belgium’s Kim Huybrechts, missing out on a red-letter date with Taylor in the last 16 tonight.

He said: “This event is similar to a football match. People like to go out, have a few beers and sing. There’s no Bundesliga right now — so we deliver them proper sport.

“I know there is pressure on me because I am the person in the position to make it a bigger sport in Germany.

“But to walk out at Alexandra Palace and hear them shouting ‘Deutschland, Deutschland!’ was amazing.”

6 Kim Huybrechts celebrated after thrashing Hopp Credit: PA:Press Association

Matt Porter, the seven-foot-tall man who runs the darts on behalf of Matchroom supremo Barry Hearn, has helped develop a European tour based around Germany to tap into the Teutonic taste for tungsten-tossing.

PDC chief executive Porter is now sitting at a Risk board, hoping the likes of Hopp and Australia’s current world youth champion Corey Cadby can drive the sport’s globalisation.

He said: “We have a really strong German TV partner and we’ve developed our European tour there and in Austria, where they have the singing, the fancy dress and it feels like being at the World Championship.

6 The sausage stand is a hit amongst German supporters Credit: Lawrence Lustig

“Culturally they’re very similar to us — this is like Oktoberfest.”

It certainly felt more like Munich than Muswell Hill here yesterday.

“Steh auf, wenn du die Darts liebst,” as they sing in Germany. Stand up if you love The Darts.

We must fight them on the oches.