A lifesize statue of an ancient Egyptian princess turns out, in fact, to be a lamp. Alongside her on the living-room wall is an enormous, all-singing, all-dancing cuckoo clock. The effect is not to everybody's taste, but then nor is darts.Taylor does not worry about the snobbery towards darts, a snobbery embodied by the BBC which chose not to invite him to its Sports Review of the Year.Why should he? In the circles he moves in, he is not cold-shouldered Quite the opposite. The traditional British support for the underdog has never applied in his case. The more he wins, the more he is revered.During this summer's World Matchplay event in Blackpool, six bouncers were detailed to protect him from his adoring public.

"But about 200 people all rushed forward at once and knocked us all over," he recalls. "The bouncers grabbed me like a battering ram, and ran me straight through the crowd."Taylor chuckles. He is an immensely likeable character, warm and genial, the faintly intimidating impact of his tattoos (a tiger on his right arm, a wizard on his left, and quite a few others all over, apparently) undone by his doe-like brown eyes. It is hard to imagine him considering suicide, as he admits to having done following his conviction for indecently assaulting two female fans.The two 23-year-old women accused him of groping them in his motorhome, after an exhibition match in Fife in October 1999. He denied the charge but at Dunfermline Sheriff Court in May this year was fined £2,000, and afterwards lay awake all night wondering whether a good dose of exhaust fumes in a parked car might make things better "Everything goes through your mind, everything," he says "But I haven't had any stick. I've been all over the world and nobody believes a word of it."We leave the matter there, not least because his wife Yvonne is within earshot and it must have been incredibly painful for her, as well as their four children.

So back to darts, which Taylor played as a child but did not take up seriously until 1988.In 1985 he and Yvonne dropped in for a drink at The Crafty Cockney, the pub owned by the then world champion Eric Bristow and his Potteries-born wife Maureen."I was 26 at the time, and we'd moved into a little terraced house in Burslem The Crafty Cockney was about a mile away. I don't know why we went there that night, but I'm glad we did. We watched Eric and Maureen playing darts, and then about six months later, out of the blue, like, the wife bought me some darts for my birthday. I started playing once a week, and then in 1987 I joined the super league. In 1988 I was picked for the county, which is when Eric started sponsoring me and I gave up my job as a ceramic engineer. By 1990 I was world champion."Fittingly, Taylor beat his benefactor Bristow in the 1990 final, outcrafting the crafty Cockney with the help of a spectacular 170 finish – treble 20, treble 20, bull.

The odds against him becoming world champion were 125-1, so his victory made a lot of people very happy."The wife had £20 on me, my dad had £20, my father-in-law had £20, and that's two-and-a-half grand back We broke the bank. The local Ladbrokes couldn't pay out, because everyone in Burslem had money on me I remember a little old woman stopping me in the street. She was in tears, like, because she'd had her last fiver on me and she'd won £750. To her that was like a million pounds, because her pension was probably only £50 a week. People kept coming up saying 'you bought me a new carpet' or 'you bought me a new washer'." Taylor has never bet on himself. "I get a good payday as it is," he says.Indeed, his manager, Barry Hearn, expects his earnings next year to top £300,000. "I'm hoping to make enough money in the next four or five years to retire," he says.