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What I’m Reading: Pocket Money by Gordon Burn

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I hadn’t read any sports books for a while, and looking through a list of classic examples of sports journalism, I had my eye caught by Gordon Burn’s Pocket Money. I read his book on the Yorkshire Ripper for my (soon finished) PhD, and liked the look of his behind-the-scenes take on the 1985/6 snooker season. And what a brilliant read it was.

This was a time when snooker, aided by colour TV and a growing circuit of high-profile tournaments mainly broadcast on the BBC, had gone from pub game to major national entertainment in a little over a decade. Burn got an extraordinary level of access to catalogue the ups and downs of a wide variety of characters, as veteran players like Alex Higgins, more at home in the smoke-filled clubs of traditional snooker, bumped up against characters like super-promoter Barry Hearn and, towards the end of the book, the emerging talent of clean-living, future megastar Stephen Hendry.

The book itself is the story of Hearn and his own protege, Steve Davis, as much as anything. Beginning in the aftermath of his infamous final ball defeat to Dennis Taylor in the 1985 world final (an event that I am obliged to mention attracted more than 18m viewers to BBC2 after midnight, both records that will never be broken), the story covers action on and off the table over the following year, with the latter probably more interesting. Snooker was so big that Hearn’s decision to launch an aftershave endorsed by his stars at a tournament held in Stoke (“use this and smell like Terry Griffiths” as the slogan sadly didn’t go) was not even the most surprising thing that happened during the season.

The popularity of snooker had by now raised the interest of Fleet Street, and the tribulations of Higgins and Tony Knowles featured regularly on the front pages during the year, along with those of Kirk Stevens, accused of being high on drugs when losing the previous season’s British Open final to Silvino Francisco (just the 15m viewers on ITV), and about to begin a career decline hastened by a cocaine addiction. By the late 90s, Francisco had ended up working in a chip shop and doing three years for trying to smuggle drugs through Dover. Snooker also went into a more gradual dip in the public’s affections, although, with Hearn now running the sport, it retains a notable place in the sporting landscape, and still rates relatively well on the BBC.

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Burn also takes the time to track some of the lesser-known players of the era, including those trying to make it onto the professional tour. But his misfortune was, having built up a variety of characters, to (quite understandably) fail to spot the surprising name who would emerge to win the 1986 World Championship. Joe Johnson of Bradford had never won a tournament on the professional circuit, and, the Scottish Masters invitation event in 1987 apart, never would again. Burn captures Hearn’s amazement at the modest Johnson’s refusal to capitalise commercially on his success, having seen how Taylor, exhausted from a year of Hearn-brokered endorsements, exhibitions and even an ITV Christmas special, had lost in the first round. Today, Johnson himself can still be heard regularly as a commentator on Eurosport, often covering the same matches Taylor does for the BBC. The importance of TV to snooker is one thing that has endured.


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