An attempt by The Sun to piggyback on the remarkable success of 16-year-old darts sensation Luke Littler has spectacularly backfired.
The Runcorn-born teenager stormed through to the PDC World Darts Championship semi-finals with a 5-1 victory over Northern Ireland’s Brendan Dolan.
Littler is now favourite for the trophy after Michael van Gerwen was beaten 5-3 by England’s Scott Williams.
Earlier this week, The Sun sent a reporter to interview Littler on his success so far.
At the end of the chat, the journalist handed Littler a doner kebab (his favourite post-match meal) and got him to say “thanks to The Sun for my kebab and let’s take it all the way”.
The Sun then published an article saying Littler was a Sun reader and loved the paper, but this has caused a huge stir as Littler is from Runcorn, outside Liverpool where the sale of the tabloid is practically forbidden.
Taking to social media after the post was published, Littler wrote:
“Today a photograph of me holding up a newspaper has been published in the media.
“The media attention I have been getting is very new to me and I didn’t fully understand at the time what I was being asked to do.
“In no way do I endorse that newspaper or the headline which accompanied the article and I sincerely apologise for any offence this has caused”.
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