How Luke Littler mania turned darts into UK’s hottest ticket… where huge stars queue up to cheer on a car salesman
DRESSED as sunflowers in yellow petals and green tutus, the six Dutchmen had been boozing since 5.30am in preparation for their Ally Pally initiation.
Now, 3,500 bladdered darts fans — also in fancy dress — were bellowing at them: “Have you seen a flower down a pint?”
Bottoms up went the beers, with Rotterdam corn trader Willem Alderliesten, 29, telling me: “It’s crazy here. We love it!”
Amid the dark, gloomy days of winter a shining star has reappeared in the sporting firmament — the World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace.
Long a hallowed British institution, darts was propelled into a different league last Christmas with the emergence of a bona fide superstar, Runcorn teenager Luke Littler.
Now a bucket-list event, all 90,000 tickets for this year’s tournament sold out within 15 minutes in July.
Even Prince Harry has been to the arrows — although that was back in 2014 when he was fun.
Ed Sheeran (the real one, not a fancy dress stooge) came the week before Christmas, downing a pint when the crowd demanded it.
The Tractor Boys fan was also serenaded with a raucous: “Ipswich get battered everywhere they go.”
Organisers the Professional Darts Corporation tweeted: “Multi-platinum award-winning artist Ed Sheeran in the house — and he’s watching a window clean- er take on a caravan salesman. You can’t beat the darts.”
So, dressed as a Christmas tree, clutching a 180 scorecard and giant foam hand, I trekked to Ally Pally to see if they’re right.
Frothy lager
Emerging from Wood Green Tube station at 11am, I joined the sloshed and surreal comet’s tail of humanity on the mile-long climb to the Palace.
Lord Nelson, Donald Trump, the Toy Story cast, hordes of Mario Brothers, two Harry Potters and some Santas wove unsteadily through the genteel North London streets.
With 90 minutes still to go before the darts afternoon session began, most seemed to have indulged in a morning session of their own.
Opened as the “Palace of the People” in 1873, Ally Pally was once home to the BBC and hosted 1967’s 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, headlined by Pink Floyd.
The LSD-soaked hippies watching must have thought they had witnessed the most far-out scenes ever seen on this North London hill.
But that was before the darts. Entering the Palace’s Great Hall, I was greeted by a cacophonous Technicolor dream of my own.
Thousands in the most ludicrous fancy dress and brandishing pitchers of frothy lager were belting out: “Stand up if you love the darts.” Everybody does.
And then we all sing it again every few minutes throughout the session. It’s as if 500 stag and hen dos converged at a giant pub with quality darts a few feet away.
The occasion is a potent mix of that most endearing of British traits — not taking ourselves too seriously — and our propensity for a roistering alcohol binge.
Organisers expect as many as 250,000 pints to be sunk over the course of the 16-day tournament, which finishes on January 3.
I’ve come as Captain Kirk for my 60th. What better way to celebrate your birthday?
Retired City trader Rob Elston
It’s now a firmly entrenched part of the festive calendar, and I met many family groups celebrating there.
Retired City trader Rob Elston, from Orpington, Kent, and his children Richard, 31, Georgia, 28, Rianna, 23, and Sasha, 19, were all decked out in Star Trek costumes.
Millwall fan Rob said: “I’ve come as Captain Kirk for my 60th. What better way to celebrate your birthday?”
Inside the hall, there was a distinct fans’ hierarchy.
Those people in the cheaper stands (around £55 a seat) continuously bantered with others who had managed to snaffle table seats (about £65 each).
“Boring, boring tables,” was countered with “Feed the stands, let them know it’s Christmas, too” to the tune of Band Aid.
Then there was the VIP seating area where, bizarrely, fancy dress is banned.
Hospitality packages there begin at just under £400 a head.
Two Michelin-starred chefs have conceived three-course meals and you can sip Taittinger champagne while listening to the banter in the cheap seats.
When I visited, the only person ejected for misbehaviour was from the VIP seating.
A security guard told me: “He was having a row with another table, then had a pop at our guys and got himself removed. What a waste of £400.”
The table and stands — for once with one voice — serenaded the miscreant with chants of “W****r! W****r! W****r!”
Then the hall echoed with another perennial darts singalong about the two footballing Toure brothers from the Ivory Coast, who played for Manchester City together.
No one I spoke to at Ally Pally seemed to know why this footballing ditty has become part of the darts experience.
In the bar area, sisters Lisa and Kairen Sotheron, from Colchester, Essex, gave me a rendition.
In their Ninja Turtle outfits, they first chanted Yaya Toure’s name with their hands in the air, then as his brother Kolo’s name got an airing, their hands reached for the floor.
Nurse Lisa, 44, told me: “I just love the atmosphere and the buzz. I’ve got a jug of beer and Kairen’s got a jug of vodka. And I actually like watching the darts.”
Oh, yes, the darts. Sometimes it does feel like a giant beano with a sports event attached, rather than the other way round.
I just love the atmosphere and the buzz
Nurse Lisa
I was once lucky enough to interview the late commentator Sid Waddell — a bard of darts, who did much to increase its popularity.
He told me Ally Pally is “a cross between the Munich Beer Festival and Rome’s Colosseum when the Christians were on the menu.
The crowd here are rock ’n’ roll. They are more important to the whole experience than any other sport.
“Darts players need to be extroverts and big-headed. It’s a very aggressive and flashy sport.”
Each match begins with a boxing-style walk-on, with players glad-handing their devoted fans.
A good walk-on tune with some exuberant fist bumps and perhaps some provocative bottom-wiggling can win over the Pally.
Nathan Aspinall’s walk-on to The Killers’ Mr Brightside is a sure-fire singalong, as is Joe Cullen’s Don’t Look Back In Anger by Oasis.
With his long locks flowing, Ryan “Heavy Metal” Searle’s entrance to Black Sabbath’s Paranoid normally unleashes a few air guitarists in the crowd.
Once on stage, the players are greeted by an incredible wall of noise, even when on the oche.
There’s no Wimbledon-style “Quiet, please”. Each throw can be punctuated by roars and boos, the Toure song and banter between stands and tables.
The best players seem to enter a Zen-like state, poker-faced. Then the crowd’s screams disappear, replaced by the regular thud of an arrow hitting the treble 20. Yet even the best pros can get the jitters.
On his opening match at the Pally this year, Luke Littler admitted: “In the hours before the game, I was perfectly fine — then it was game on, and the bottom’s gone. It fell out. I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
The players’ powers of arithmetic — charting routes to the favoured double 16 in nanoseconds — are astonishing and seemingly innate.
Roars and boos
Darts has come a long way since the first world championship in 1978 was televised on the BBC. Players sank pints and smoked on the oche, reflecting the sport’s birth in pubs and working men’s clubs.
Killjoy governing body the British Darts Organisation banned booze in 1989, and the game drifted towards oblivion.
Then, when top players engineered a breakaway from the BDO in 1992, the Professional Darts Corporation was born, with wily boxing and snooker promoter Barry Hearn eventually becoming chair.
He ramped up the razzmatazz and in 2007 moved the championship, initially held at the Circus Tavern near the Dartford flyover in Kent, to the Ally Pally.
So why is darts now more popular than ever?
Dressed as a banana, Tom Arnold, 50, from West Malling, Kent, who works in sales, said: “It’s the Luke Littler effect — he’s given the whole thing a new lease of life and made it accessible to a new generation.”
Littler, 17 — pipped by Luke Humphries in the final last year — is the reason thousands of kids unwrapped pristine dartboards on Christmas morning.
It’s the Luke Littler effect — he’s given the whole thing a new lease of life and made it accessible to a new generation
Tom Arnold
Only the Princess of Wales and Donald Trump had more Google searches in the UK in 2024.
Littler is the spearhead of a sport going global. This year’s world championship began with dart players from 28 nations, including India, Japan, the Bahamas, South Africa and the Philippines.
England had the most representatives with 26, followed by the Netherlands with 16.
And Ally Pally is now a regular pilgrimage for darts fans from Germany, Belgium and Netherlands.
Dressed in a blazer in the colours of the Dutch flag, Tom Beumer, 36, from Arnhem, told me: “We love the party, the beer and the fancy dress. The British create a crazy atmosphere but the Dutch are crazy, too.”
There is even talk that the Saudis are interested in snaffling this most drunken of occasions.
PDC supremo Barry Hearn said recently: “The Saudis asked me for darts and I asked them a simple question — ‘Can we have alcohol?’.
“And they said no. I said, ‘Well then you can’t have the darts’.”
This festive cocktail of elite sport and British silliness is safe for now.