Darting dilemma Turning Littler into a celebrity or brand is the least interesting thing you can do

Luke Littler is sitting alone in the green room of the Jonathan Ross Show. By this point we have already heard: Liam Gallagher talking about his dog; Raye recounting her 6am trip to McDonalds after winning six Brit Awards; Millie Bobby Brown from Stranger Things on her future wedding; the comedian Rob Beckett on his new quiz show. Gallagher and John Squire have played their new single. The chat is flowing. Famous people are laughing with polished, performative loudness.

- Jonathan Liew

There are about 10 minutes left when Littler is finally summoned to the famous brown sofa. He gets on exactly as you would expect of a 17-year-old with virtually zero experience of the celebrity milieu. Everything here is diffidence and shrugs, short even words delivered in a short even tone, not so much recalcitrance as a basic teenage refusal. He doesn't hate your question. He doesn't love your question. He doesn't really think anything about your question at all. It's just there, hanging, and he's learned by now that if he says a few words the question will go away, a car is going to come and take him home and then he's going to play on his Xbox.

Ross is an old hand at interviewing young stars, reassuring and disarming and enthusiastic and relatable in all the right places, no way he's 63 and all that. The questions are not so much posed as lobbed. How did you start throwing darts? How much do you practise? At one point we see a picture of the palm tree trophy he won in Bahrain and Beckett blurts out: "He's bought that from H&M Home." At another Ross asks Littler how he would check out 81. Littler replies "57, 24" and everyone gives him a round of applause.