The laid-back 17-year-old who brought millions of young fans to darts has been shortlisted for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award

In a puritanical age of wellness, non-alcoholic drinks and going to the gym, an unlikely sport is thriving: darts. On Sunday the World Darts Championship returns to Alexandra Palace in north London, and in its wake throngs of young people dressed as gnomes and traffic cones drinking beer and breaking into song. And at the very centre of this culture stands a kebab-loving hero for our times – Luke “the Nuke” Littler.

Littler has had an extraordinary year. In January, as a barely known 16-year-old, he was runner-up in the world championship. As the Warrington teenager progressed through the heats, huge numbers of fans began to watch, eventually reaching a record high of 3.7 million viewers for the final. Barry Hearn, the president of the Professional Darts Corporation, coined a new term: Littlermania.