Darts

Friday

Catherine Lafferty

Catherine Lafferty, Michael Simmons, Paul Wood, Philip Hensher, Isabel Hardman and Damian Thompson

39 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Catherine Lafferty argues that the drive to reduce teenage pregnancies enabled grooming gangs (1:27); following Luke Littler’s world championship victory, Michael Simmons says that Gen Z is ruining darts (6:32); Paul Wood looks at the return of Isis, and America’s unlikely ally in its fight against the terrorist group (10:35); Philip Hensher reviews a new biography of the Brothers Grimm by Ann Schmiesing, and looks at how words can be as dangerous as war (17:57); Isabel Hardman highlights the new garden now open at the Natural History Museum (26:57); and, Damian Thompson reveals he watched videos of plane crashes to distract himself from the US

Thursday

Michael Simmons

Luke Littler’s bland entourage

Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler, born two weeks after the first iPhone was unveiled, stormed the Professional Darts Corporation world championships last week to become, at 17, the sport’s youngest ever world champion. How Littler behaved after his win shows how different young sports stars are today. Littler didn’t celebrate by going out drinking; no hotel rooms were trashed. Instead, within hours of his quarter- and semi-final victories, he was on the video-game streaming website Twitch via phone call to his red-headed gaming friend Morgan Burtwistle – known online as ‘AngryGinge’. Streaming is the new drinking for semi-celebs and it’s not something they grow out of AngryGinge, 23, is one of

Tuesday

Steerpike

Watch: darts fans jeer Johnson

Oh dear. It appears that Boris Johnson’s love-in with the great British public appears to have well and truly concluded. Let’s hope that in the wake of ‘Partygate’, Omicron and various scandals, our under-fire Prime Minister didn’t turn on the darts last night for some much-needed respite. For there, on primetime television, the crowd at London’s Alexandra Palace burst into loud and sustained chants of ‘Stand up if you hate Boris’ that echoed around the 2022 Darts World Championship arena. Others held up signs saying ‘All round to Boris’s for afters’ and with pictures of cheese and wine, branded ‘This is a business meeting.’ It’s not the first time a