Darts is a game of names and numbers. Steve Beaton - "the Bronze Adonis" - throws a 23g Nickel Tungsten B&W, is ranked eighth in the world, is aged 37 and wears the first three buttons on his shirt open. He is definitely the best darts-throwing driving instructor on the planet.
Shane "the Bulldog" Burgess has plummeted from third in the world to 10th.
Ian "the Fall Guy" Cullingworth is the very definition of plummet, the only circuit player to have fallen from a moving team coach on to a motorway. The Neston-on-the-Wirral man spent four years refining his damaged throwing hand and makes his TV debut here at the Paddy Power World Grand Prix Championship.
Phil Taylor MBE averages a world title to every Jeffrey Archer novel; the 41-year-old has nine under his belt and looks as dedicated as ever.
Peter Manley, Cumbria's finest, and the number one seed this week, has become the Lonely Planet authority on darts venues, globetrotting in search of flight-and-cork meets with his partner, ladies world number one Chrissy Howatt.
John Lowe is a three times world champion. He is also 56, now ranked 19th in the world and if they ever make a film about him, Pete Postlethwaite is a shoo-in for the screen tests. Lowe is one of the game's old-school heroes, a survivor from the smoky, glory days of the 1980s, when late-night TV darts was somehow important, a bawdy, colourful streak of provincial defiance in the midst of Thatcherite greyness.
Darts was sort of cool. The players were sort of cool. Jocky Wilson, the laconic Scot, inspired maybe the best tabloid headline ever: "He Yells 4 Letter Word at Betty, 71". It all comes down to names and numbers.
Eric Bristow, who works as a commentator for Sky television this week, was beyond cool, the Fonzie of the Oche.
Lowe is of that vintage and yesterday at Citywest, he was one of the first players on the oche, trying to shake off a maudlin streak of first-round exits against his "best pal in the game", Big Cliff Lazarenko.
"This fella I played so many times - last time we played in a final was in Oldham around 15 years ago," Lowe smiles later. "Most of the players now weren't around 15 years ago. He's a great, great fella."
It turns into a good afternoon for the Chesterfield man. Lowe is at odds with the archetypal darting image, polished and angular with a surgical blue-eyed game stare.
"Old Stoneface" they call him, but, after his two sets to one victory, he is anything but.
"Nice to be in the second round again - makes me a little more money and a few more points. I won the bullseye in practice - that was important because it meant I got first shot at the double. And I started well but couldn't finish - I think I should have won the first set except that I couldn't finish."
He finished when it mattered though. In the last leg of set two, Lowe fired 180 and 140 before closing out on a double eight. That set him up for a near flawless closing set, when he came close to emulating his 1984 feat of achieving a perfect nine-dart game. "I'll tell you, if I had done it again, I would have said, Cliffie, let's go down to the bar for a good drink. I'd love to do it one more time just to hold two fingers up - the right way round."
In general, Lowe is not best fond of early noon matches. Darts is, at heart, a nocturnal pursuit and he reckons he and Lazarenko were given an early billing to draw the punters in. The World Grand Prix, he reckons, will gather momentum as the weekend approaches. "They'll come from Saggart and the other villages and out from Dublin. And that's what we want because darts players live on adrenaline."
Watford's Alex Roy came from behind to book his place in the second round at the expense of Steve Brown. Beaton and Baxter duelled for the right to meet Lowe in the second round.
"Ronnie Baxter is a fabulous darts player. The Adonis is more of a sporadic talent. That would be my reading of it," grins Lowe, giddy at the thought of returning to the threshold of darting glamour, with Sid Waddell warbling his mathematical poetry.
"Yeah, I still love it," says Lowe.
