We are living in the age of indifference and the working class is dead, argued Andrew O'Hagan in a thoughtful and provocative piece in the GUARDIAN last weekend. Railing against our modern culture of indolence and celebrity he bemoans the 'individualistic' Englishman's slide into atrophy where work and pride once went hand in hand.
Being a Scot he can't resist contrasting this with the Celtic people, 'a definite community, innately together and full of songs and speeches about ourselves', although how this isn't as much of a cliche and caricature as the 18th-century English view of 'the Scots and the Irish as drunken, hopeless, arse-kissing louts' he finds so detestable I'm not sure.
When I lived in Scotland I was regularly accused of personally stealing North Sea oil by drunken loners, and Scotland's working communities can be soul-destroying and violent places as much as England's. London has recently woken up to a knife problem that has wounded the estates of Glasgow for decades.
Thank God for the world darts championship then. If ever a sport was about working class community this is it. The Lakeside hosts a weeklong party that brings in people from across the globe (well, mainly Holland) and we get to watch colossal encounters between titans, whose bellies hang pendulously over elastic waistbands.
For what else is the gymnasium the local pub? What other sport can claim a world champion like Ted 'The Count' Hankey who arrives onstage wearing a comedy cape with plastic bats, and who attributes his recent return to form to cutting down his pre-match drinking from ten pints to three?
It might not cure the laziness of the non-working man by filling up the TV schedules with compelling, beery entertainment, but at least a sport born in the working men's clubs is thriving...
