For a moment in the mid-1980s snooker ruled the world. The 1985 World Championship final between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor is usually seen as the high watermark, with 18 million viewers rapt by its black ball denouement. But the sport had already grown beyond belief in the preceding years.
Colour TV helped, then the BBC’s Pot Black competition which launched in 1969 as a means to promote the new technology. The tournament was the brainchild of then-BBC 2 controller David Attenborough and helped to propel snooker from amateur roots into the nation’s living rooms.
The emergence of Alex “Hurricane” Higgins, and his fairytale Worlds win on debut in 1972, jolted the sport into modernity.