The time for talking has stopped. It is time for darts to take its rightful place at the Olympic Games.

A fortnight ago, Raymond van Barneveld's epic win over 13-times champion Phil Taylor in the PDC final was hailed as the best ever battle of the oche.

Then on Sunday, five million people tuned in as two 50-year-old veterans slugged it out in the BDO version and trumped it for pure drama.

England darts captain and top seed Martin ‘Wolfie’ Adams stormed into a 6-0 lead over Phill Nixon as the players went into the break, needing just one more set to clinch a resounding whitewash.

This was car crash TV.

Qualifier Nixon, who had played earlier in the week with the admirable abandon of a man just pleased to be there, was broken.

For 20 years, he had tried to make the Lakeside stage. He’d finally done it, travelled down by bus from Durham and was now in the final - and having a nightmare on national television

He went to the practice board, lit up a cigarette and stabbed himself in the leg with his darts.

Nixon repeated to himself: “You can’t be disgraced like this, you can’t be disgraced.”

We stayed tuned, just hoping, praying even, that the jobless father-of-eight would not be disgraced and could salvage some pride by taking at least one set.

Staring down the tungsten barrel of humiliation, he threw caution to the wind and staged a comeback Lazarus would have admired.

He took his first set, bagged another, and sent the capacity crowd into raptures as – incredibly, unbelievably – he brought the match level at 6-6 and forced a deciding set.

Nixon, barely a household name in his own home, was gripping parts of the nation.

He doesn't even have a nickname, although Nixy seems to suffice. And we'd been spelling Phill with one 'l' all week, and that was one hell of a mistake.

Meanwhile, Wolfie's beloved Sharon bore the look of a wife who had seen her hapless husband commit some hideous DIY disaster.

"Oh, no, what have you done now?" you could almost hear her saying.

She was in tears. She could not watch any more, and headed for the ladies, sobbing.

Wolfie has been labelled a choker, and here he was choking on the biggest stage of all.

It bore haunting echoes of golfer Greg Norman’s heart-breaking Masters collapse against Nick Faldo, when he squandered a six-shot lead on the final day.

On the internet betting exchanges, the online equivalent of gambling carnage was taking place.

Nixon had drifted to a 400-1 chance in this two-horse race when 6-0 down, but now he was odds-on favourite to triumph.

He didn't. Somehow, the Wolfman put his howler behind him, and took the decider to spark an emotional hug from Sharon and general pandemonium at Frimley Green.

Maybe it was just as well Nixon didn’t complete the fairytale - I'm not sure the 26-stone former champion Andy 'The Viking' Fordham could have taken the strain as he watched from his hospital bed after collapsing earlier in the week with a serious chest infection.

No matter. Adams and Dixon had left the lager-swilling crowd spellbound, and in the process, stated an intoxicating case for darts to feature in the Olympics.

Of course, there are snooty sport snobs who dismiss it as a pub pastime played by beer-bellied chavs.

Yet darts was recognised as a sport by the UK Sports Council two years ago. The days of players downing booze on stage are long gone.

The governing body has introduced anti-doping measures, and members of the International Olympic Committee have visited the Lakeside.

Research indicates almost a third of all youngsters in the UK either play darts or are interested in it.

And when Adams wore a pedometer during practice and matchplay at the 2005 tournament, he clocked up 25 kilometres (15.5miles).

In the 21st century, darts is more relevant to many ordinary people than a host of Olympic sports – fencing and synchronised swimming spring to mind.

And while the disciplines for the 2012 Olympics are already decided, it could still be made an invitational or exhibition sport.

It should certainly be on the agenda for inclusion in 2016.

Sports minister Richard Caborn, an instrumental figure in London’s successful 2012 bid, took on Lakeside legend Bobby George in a leg of darts on Thursday evening.

Caborn hopes the rival PDC, broadcast by Sky, and the BBC-backed BDO camps can stage some kind of unification event.

And while the competing titles would still exist, that would be first throw on the road to giving darts the respect it has earned.