TOM UTLEY: I do not begrudge Luke Littler his success

The late, nice Auberon Waugh adored Diana, Princess of Wales, however he had one severe reservation about her: he felt that she set a rotten instance to the nation’s schoolgirls.

As he defined, this was as a result of he was perpetually telling his daughters that until they did their homework and studied onerous for his or her exams, they might by no means develop as much as be wealthy and marry good-looking princes.

Yet there was Diana Spencer, after leaving faculty at 16 and having failed her O-Levels twice, gliding up the aisle at St Paul’s Cathedral to get hitched to our future king! How, puzzled Waugh, have been the mother and father of Britain ever to steer their daughters to do a stroke of schoolwork once more?

I really feel a lot the identical about Luke ‘the Nuke’ Littler.

For the data of readers who’ve been marooned on desert islands these previous few days, Luke is a 16-year-old darts prodigy who obtained by means of to Wednesday evening’s remaining of the World Championship.

After a tense match throughout which a lot of the nation — together with me — have been rooting for him, he sadly needed to make do with the runner-up’s prize.

But let’s face it, at £200,000, this wasn’t a foul payday for a lad of his age, with solely a single GCSE — and that within the less-than-demanding topic of sport (bodily schooling).

I consider my very own 4 sons — one journalist, two lecturers and one social employee — all of whom labored onerous at college, incomes strings of As and A-stars of their exams and glittering levels from Russell Group universities.

Though all are actually of their 30s, every must work for a number of years to build up something like Luke’s reward this week alone for his success in throwing darts at a board.

What’s extra, as sponsors line as much as shovel cash his approach, {the teenager} is broadly predicted to turn into a millionaire earlier than his 18th birthday, whereas incomes extra in a couple of months than most of us might hope to make in a lifetime of fifty‑hour weeks.

It does not even appear that he has needed to work significantly onerous at his ‘sport’, as he insists on calling it (although I consider it extra as a pub sport).

In one interview this week, he described his coaching regime thus: ‘Wake up, play on my Xbox, have some meals, have a chuck on the board, go to mattress. That’s it.’

He has additionally stated he has no plans to alter his pre-match routine, which includes sleeping till noon, consuming a ham and cheese omelette, travelling to the venue and having a pizza earlier than warming up on the apply board.

As for the way lengthy he spends practising when he is not competing, studies differ. Some say he places in as many as 4 hours a day, though he stated in August final yr, shortly after qualifying for the World Championship: ‘At the second I do not practise a lot. I normally do half-hour to an hour a day.’

Whatever the reality, it’s certainly protected to say that he does not topic himself to the punishing coaching routines endured by most world-class tennis gamers, long-distance runners, rowers and the like, of their efforts to remain on the prime of their sport.

However, no one can deny that Luke has a exceptional knack of throwing a dart exactly the place he desires it to pierce the board. It is a present with which he has apparently been blessed since his earliest childhood, when he began taking part in on the age of 18 months.

At six, he scored his first 180, and at 14 he gained his first seniors title, within the Irish Open. It can solely be a matter of time, certainly, earlier than he wins the world title that so narrowly eluded him this week (and Luke, who turns 17 later this month, nonetheless has seven years left through which to beat the document set by Michael van Gerwen, the youngest winner of the Professional Darts Corporation model of the title when he gained it in 2014, on the age of 24.)

People appear to agree, too, that he is a likeable younger man, untemperamental, down-to-earth and, to date, unspoilt by his success. He is broadly stated to have a good-humoured appeal about him — a ‘everlasting, wide-eyed look of boyish shock’ that reminded the Mail’s personal Robert Hardman of the Bolton comedy genius Peter Kay in his youthful days.

Not for Luke, apparently, any football-star ambition to personal fleets of Lamborghinis or floating gin-palaces. No, he likes to have fun his victories with a kebab and to spend his winnings on Under Armour tracksuits and Fifa factors for his Xbox.

Certainly, he desires a automotive when he is sufficiently old to drive, however solely in order to spare his taxi-driver dad the chore of driving him round all over the place.

All in all, then, he appears a pleasant lad, who has given an amazing increase to public enthusiasm for his sport (if that is what we should name it). And let’s face it, darts matches would hardly be probably the most gripping of spectacles with no contact of added curiosity to liven them up.

After all, how many individuals would willingly half with between £1,000 and £3,000 for a black-market ticket, as some are stated to have executed to see the ultimate this week, simply to look at a few males with beer guts chucking darts at a goal for hour after hour, and endlessly scoring ‘one-hundred-and-ayyyyyyy-tees’?

No marvel the organisers wish to cheer these events up by encouraging fancy costume and a boozy, carnival environment.

As for televised darts, its chief curiosity for me has all the time lain much less within the gamers’ efficiency on the oche than within the commentators’ determined efforts to make this most unspectacular of video games sound fascinating.

Indeed, what commentator on any sport has ever provide you with a line as immortal because the late Sid Waddell’s comparability of Eric Bristow with Alexander the Great, when the cockney gained a world darts title within the Eighties? ‘When Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears as a result of there have been no extra worlds to overcome. . . [dramatic pause]. . . Bristow is barely 27!’

Now alongside comes the boy marvel, Luke, together with his story of toddler precocity, to provide the fashionable sport that spark of human curiosity it so sorely wants.

Still, I suppose we mustn’t begrudge the lad his success, regardless of his having achieved it on the expenditure of so little obvious effort. To be honest, I must also acknowledge that he is a lot better at maths than I’ll ever be, with my lifelong number-blindness.

For instance, it might have taken me an age to work out that for a 136 end, I’d want two bulls and a double 18. In one among his legs this week, he did this psychological arithmetic in a split-second. Indeed, I discovered this virtually as spectacular as the truth that it was precisely the place he managed to position his three darts.

My solely fear is that by raking in such a fortune at 16, whereas seeming to do nothing extra strenuous than strolling to the kebab store, he could additional undermine the connection between effort and reward within the minds of the younger.

Inspired by Luke, what number of kids are even now plaguing their mother and father to purchase them units of darts, within the deluded perception that they provide a solution to make thousands and thousands with out even making an attempt?

Heaven is aware of, there are already fairly sufficient teenagers who assume they do not have to fret about exams, satisfied as they’re that they will be snapped up by Manchester City, or a supermodel company, or get wealthy fast from a lifetime of idle luxurious as an ‘web influencer’. Do they actually need one other function mannequin to make them assume faculty is a waste of time?

Ah, nicely, I want all my readers a affluent new yr. But I concern that, in contrast to Luke, most of you’ll have to work for it.