A mildly-alarming six days have gone by since my last post…during which time I've been busy a) dosing myself up with drugs to soothe the pain of a fucked back, and, b) renewing (with a vengeance) my love affair with the game of snooker.
Enjoyable snooker compilations on Video or DVD are fairly thin on the ground, but Clive Everton's (rather unimaginatively named) History of Snooker is a pretty decent overview of the sport (by one of its most articulate voices). After rewatching all 2 ½ hours of that I dug out an old VHS recording of the BBC's When Snooker Ruled the World…which, while perfectly entertaining, suffers slightly from a rather facile, "I Love Nineteen-Eighty-Something" approach1 (unsurprising given the involvement of regular, nostalgia-fest head Stuart Maconie).
The program does, however, remind us of how snooker's mainstream popularity and Barry Hearn's typically 1980s entrepreneurial zeal came together (during that money-grabbin' decade) to produce the most unlikely of spin-offs and side projects: including Chas 'n' Dave penned pop songs, and (most hilariously) "Matchroom Aftershave".
Ah yes, in the giddy hubris-filled years of snooker's ratings dominance Hearn even tried to convince an indifferent male public that smelling like a snooker player was the way to a young lady's heart. Johnny Vegas nailed the folly of the exercise rather brilliantly when he said (and I paraphrase):
Would you really want to go out wearing 'Scent of Steve Davis'? I think I'd rather smear myself in faeces…
Quite.
Anyway, this year's championship rolls along entertainingly enough (despite Jimmy White's early exit to David 'The Mighty Atom' Gray) with our own Ken Doherty looking like a strong contender for his second title. Speaking of Ken, is it just me or does anyone else cringe every time Ray Stubbs or Willie Thorne calls him 'Ken DoCHerty'? What's that about?
Of course, the BBC coverage of the championship wouldn't be same without a number of odd, ill-judged, or just downright weird segments featuring some of the contestants. This afternoon's broadcast (for example) had a particularly bizarre bit about Graeme 'The Pocket Dynamo' Dott (a.k.a. 'Dotty too Hotty') revisiting his old secondary school with a forlorn look on his face. The school was totally deserted and we got to see Graeme mooch about the empty halls and classrooms before playing basketball (by himself) in an empty gym. It was like a kind of dour, snooker-based episode of The Twilight Zone (co-written by John 'Where's the white going?' Virgo and Richard Matheson) with Mr. Dott the sole survivor of a global apocalypse.
Oh and shame on you BBC for cutting away from the closing stages of Ronnie O'Sullivan's match with Ryan Day this evening. We were forced to turn over to Eurosport and endure a continuous soundtrack of nasal, 'whistly' breathing from its sickly-sounding commentary team. It was madly distracting…not to mention quite creepy. Do the BBC boys have some kind of filters over the mikes to deaden the sound of all the inhaling and exhaling? If so could they send a few over to Europsort HQ a.s.a.p.? Either that or an asthma inhaler and some Vicks…
Speaking of Ronnie, I went looking for a clip of his 5 minute and 20 second '147′ (the fastest ever), complied against Mick Price (he of the Dennis Taylor specs) in the Crucible back in 1997. YouTube came up trumps so enjoy….it's the 'Mozart of Snooker' at his prodigious best.
- Does anyone really want to know what Julia Carling thinks about the game? [back]
My enjoyment of the O’Sullivan/Day match last night was definitely marred by that nasal breathing on Eurosport - we spent half our time trying to find a sound level at which we could hear what they were saying (not much in the end) but not hear the scary whistling noise.
April 25th, 2006 at 8:50 amMind you - anything was better than the BBC’s obsessive chat about Ronnie’s ‘tip’.
Yes indeed, the whole “Tipgate” saga was beginning to wear a bit thin after the boys had mentioned if for the 100,000th time. The best bit was the close up of a replacement tip in someone’s hand backstage before the camera panned back to reveal it was none other than Ray ‘Dracula’ Reardon. The drama!
April 25th, 2006 at 11:22 amThat’s weird.
After my post yesterday about how my Ronnie O’Sullivan crush was distracting me from work, my brother emailed me the very same youtube footage of Ronnie’s 147.
Peter Ebdon had a great chance of a 147 earlier on but messed it up. 147 or not, he’s as boring as hell to watch.
Hope Ken can finish off Fu.
April 25th, 2006 at 8:21 pmEbdon has sort of stepped into the shoes of those grinders of yore (Cliff Thorburn, Eddie Charlton etc) who would finish their matches at 4 a.m. in front of 2 semi-conscious spectators.
He tends to win by sucking all life and hope out of his opponents…but if it works…
Ken Doherty remains the only player I know who’s missed the final black for a 147! I’ve never seen the footage and don’t think I could bear to watch it…
April 25th, 2006 at 9:29 pmFustar,
That paragraph about Dott’s trip to his secondary school was one of the funniest I’ve read in recent weeks. Good piece altogther.
The snooker really hasn’t been the same since Dott knocked out Bond, who is a brilliantly adorable, if slightly lobotimised, player. When he’s sitting down, looking on as his opponent clears the table, I just can’t help but feel sorry for him. And his wife must have it pretty rough too, being married to Peter Bond and all.
April 26th, 2006 at 2:03 pmThis post is making me incredibly sad as there would be nothing finer than being at home stuck in front of, as our American cousins call it, snucker. Alas, it is not meant to be so I’m just going to have to suck it up and quit whingeing.
My fondest snooker memory has to be when Dennis “bingo glasses” Taylor beat Steve Davis on the final black to claim the world title. It was his instinctive two hands on the cue two feet in the air lep combo that I remember most vividly. Fair play to him.
April 26th, 2006 at 2:10 pmRonnie’s on top form today, but where’s Ken’s match?
April 26th, 2006 at 3:03 pmIt’s very frustrating to be at work and see the promising words on the BBC website “Live uninterrupted BBC Television coverage of the the snooker World Championship from Sheffield”. Got very excited only to see the words “This stream is available to UK users only.” But I AM from the UK - I just happen to live in Ireland! Grrr…
April 26th, 2006 at 3:10 pmChrist, frame 19 is amazing. As Terry Griffiths just said, “It’s got everything!”
April 26th, 2006 at 3:43 pmSome great ’snucker’ today altogether. Ken crashed out alas…just couldn’t reproduce the superb form he showed against Matthew Stevens. Fair play to Marco Fu…although I wonder what he makes of the nickname “Cueman Fu” that has been bestowed on him? Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu was, after all, a grotesque ‘oriental’ stereotype, combining all the inscrutable cunning and cruelty our friends in the East were once thought to possess:
Fu did, admittedly, hit the pink with his cue during one of tonight’s frames and failed to call it, as snooker etiquette demands (the ref didn’t see it)., but that hardly qualifies him to be compared (albeit ‘punningly’) to a man with a “face like Satan�…
April 26th, 2006 at 9:54 pm