The metamorphosis has happened with dizzying speed. Table tennis, a sport that has traditionally suffered from an image of parochialism and downright geekiness is, for the moment at least, the sexiest sport on the planet. Well, almost.

The revolution started in central Manhattan. Table tennis has long commanded a fringe following of hip media types and fashionistas in Greenwich Village, but the sport was thrust into the epicentre of New York’s high life last summer with the opening of the world’s first ping-pong nightclub on the corner of Park Avenue and East 23rd.

SPiN, as it is aptly called, is cool, mellifluous and swanky. The idea is to hold a fizzing Bellini in one hand and to whack a ball with the other. The dance floor is taken up with ping-pong tables, with a long bar at one end and a VIP room with a mirrored table and abstract paintings at the other.

The first time that I entered SPiN I thought I had arrived in Heaven. The women whacking balls were from the pages of Vogue; the chaps — many wearing sunglasses, despite the dim lighting — were young, talented and preposterously handsome. I played an exhibition match with the local hot-shot and shared cocktails with the actress Susan Sarandon, who is a co-owner of the club and a self-confessed addict of the game. “Tell me about that forehand,” she said, brown eyes earnest. “The way you scoop it from off the floor is something else.”

The ping-pong buzz has not been limited to the Big Apple. A number of clubs have sprouted in fashionable bars in Shoreditch and Camden. Karmarama, a London advertising agency, has a section of its website devoted to the sport. Rockstar Games — inventor of Grand Theft Auto — has a table in the middle of its office on Kings Road in Chelsea, across which staff conduct brainstorming meetings, bats in hand.

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