Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
A BOOM ERA GAVE BIRTH TO LEGENDS
SHAUN MURPHY and Mark Selby are locked in battle in the final of the Betfred World Championship that will reach its climax tonight.
But even the rows over gamesmanship, slow-play and fist-pumping that clouded their semi-final wins in Sheffield pale by comparison with the wild antics witnessed in snooker’s boom era.
A new three-part BBC2 documentary, starting on Sunday night, examines how the sport exploded into popular UK culture in the 1980s, when Steve Davis (below) ruled.
It was an era when Alex Higgins saw protégé and friend Jimmy White take over his mantle as crowdpleasing entertainer and party-goer. White said: “I loved watching Alex perform and cause havoc. He knew how to keep the party going in his way. I just thought it was normal.”
White’s former manager Harvey Lisberg said: “Jimmy White was the same kind of wild thing. He was the Rolling Stones.”
But White is frank about a crazy period of his life.
He said: “I had loads of drug dealers. Cocaine had come into my life, I must have spent hundreds of thousands on it.
“Snooker pulled me back because I wanted to win the World Championship.”
At the Crucible yesterday Murphy won the first session of the final 5-3 and called for shot-clocks to be introduced to end slow play.
Selby was warned for slow play in his semi-final and Murphy said: “We are in an entertainment industry. There is a responsibility on the players to make it a show. There should be a shot-clock, obviously longer than 20 seconds.
“If it’s too slow, punters will put Netflix on.”
But Selby was defiant, saying: “What’s the point of going out there just to entertain the crowd if you keep losing? If I’m boring, watch Coronation Street.”