Darts is the last truly working-class sport and Luke Littler is ruining it

OH, Luke Littler, what have you done? The boy genius didn't merely get to the final of the World Darts Championship and pocket £200,000, he also inspired an explosion of interest from the world's worst fans.

- George Chesterton

The same appalling people who almost ruined football 30 years ago have come to ruin the only truly working-class sport left.

If you ask most Londoners which part of town will be the last to resist gentrification, the answer will invariably be Tottenham. Darts is the Tottenham of sport. But now even darts is under threat from the chattering classes entranced by the success of a 16-yearold who looks old enough to be his own father. Every Tom, Dick and Tristan will be chanting that bloody awful song they play in the ad breaks.

Darts' unique appeal is precise because it was the final redoubt of the untouchable caste. It's a Rorke's Drift of proletarian culture. It didn't need to reach out to new audiences - it was popular enough until now, albeit with the "wrong" type of people. It made no apologies and did not ask for approval.

So excited about Littler was the Guardian yesterday that it asked its readers: "Tell us, have you recently become a darts fan?"- an invitation so cringeworthy that it did not so much make your flesh creep as give you the sensation of being flayed alive by a set of Wüsthof kitchen knives. This morning The Times was craven enough to offer a guide on "how to talk darts". Seriously, if you don't know by now don't bother.