Steve Davis

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 10:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1983.

Speaker 10:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

On our desert island this week is the snooker champion, Steve Davies. Steve, are you any relation of the late Joe Davis?

Steve Davis0:37

Joe Davis? No, probably one of my most asked questions, and unless Joe or Fred was a milkman, that's my usual reply. I'm not, no.

Presenter0:46

And of course you're too young to have seen him in action.

Steve Davis0:48

Unfortunately the only time I've ever seen Joe Davis i in person was in the toilet at the Benson Hedges Championships and that was the only time I was in the same room as him. The only time I've actually seen him play is the recent film that they've dug out of the archives and a bit disappointing really. And I was also unfortunate I didn't actually get a chance to play in front of him, which would have been very nice.

Presenter1:04

Yeah.

Presenter1:10

Apart from Snooker, what are your interests? What about music?

Steve Davis1:13

I'm a very great music lover. I've got a lot of records at home, which I listen to whenever I'm at home, which isn't too often. And I I have to make do with cassettes in the car. And they're always being nicked, but um I I do enjoy listening. It keeps the speed down as well'cause I've been caught by the police uh a bit bit too often for speeding so now I I'm I'm going into things that are a lot quieter so I have to keep the revs down.

Presenter1:34

Yes, only slow tempo cassettes.

Steve Davis1:36

Yeah.

Presenter1:39

I read somewhere that you've just bought yourself a piano.

Steve Davis1:41

Yes, I have. I I've got quite a large piano. We had to re redesign the house round it. It was quite funny. It caused a bit of a stir in the house. But um I'm at div level at the moment and I am useless. But I'm looking for a long term

Steve Davis1:53

project really about ten years I might become

Presenter1:55

Are you taking

Steve Davis1:56

Lessons or teaching yourself by a printed tutor? Most of my work's still done with with a tutor, but I'm getting guidance as well. And it's paying off very slowly. It's very difficult, but very it's very satisfying. Have you got in your collection?

Presenter2:10

New link.

Steve Davis2:11

Yeah.

Presenter2:11

About three hundred, I think.

Steve Davis2:16

Yes, tremendously. But uh the records I've chosen are the ones I think I would be very happy to have a c cross section of. And also it's turned out that not only are they favourite albums, but most of the tracks we're playing today are fairly favorite as well.

Presenter2:28

What's the first one? What's on top of the pile?

Steve Davis2:30

Is an album by narrator Michael Warden who's been around for quite a long time called Confidence. It's the latest album he's done. It's a very slow track, it's it's a late-night one.

Speaker 42:43

Good night.

Speaker 42:48

Always gets

Speaker 42:57

Oh, that's your

Presenter3:09

Blue Side of Midnight by Narada Michael Walden

Presenter3:13

Steve, you are a Londoner, I know. Which part of London?

Steve Davis3:16

Uh, South East. Do you have brothers and sisters? Yeah, I've got one brother, Keith. He's, um, eighteen now.

Presenter3:20

There's a story that you were given a toy snooker table when you were about three years old.

Steve Davis3:25

That's right. My mum bought me a a Christmas present. Um I don't really know if it was for me so much as for my father to mess about on, even though it was only three foot long.

Presenter3:32

Yeah, he plays.

Steve Davis3:32

He plays yes uh loves the game as much as I do. But um we had a photograph of me playing in my dressing gown.

Steve Davis3:40

at a very young age, but unfortunately it got um lost, otherwise it would have ended up somewhere.

Presenter3:45

Yeah. Did you see your father playing? Well, I mean, he presumably played at his club. Did you sometimes go in and see him at it?

Steve Davis3:50

Sometimes going

Steve Davis3:52

I remember going along when I was only just able to see over the table and watch my father play and um up until the age of about fifteen, sixteen I thought he was a very good player. But it's amazing how uh how uh you look look back and and you realize there's lots and lots of club players all over the place who are fairly good. But he's he's a fair player.

Presenter4:09

Do you remember the first time you played? I mean, was that in your father's club? Did he give you the queue and

Steve Davis4:14

The first time I actually played on a full-size table was in um a holiday camp, St Mary's Bay, near Dymchurch.

Presenter4:21

Yes.

Steve Davis4:21

The actual table's overlooking the mini railway there that that runs along there. We went on to a holiday camp for a for a week and never moved out of the snooker room and that's the first time I played on a full size table and um I've been on one ever since.

Presenter4:33

So right at the beginning you felt you you had an aptitude for the game. Um it took possession of you.

Steve Davis4:38

I wouldn't say that I I had an instant uh ability straightaway. Not anything really, really special, but um I fell in love with it and I fell in love with it so much and I think that was the important thing. And uh I did have the aptitude as it turned out in the end. And then after the holiday count where did you play? I then went to um play when I was tall enough and old enough which was at fourteen, fifteen in the local working men's club in the area of Plumdy Common and uh fortunately they weren't too strict on the rules of under eighteen playing on the table and it helped that my father was in the team because he was one of the team members so he had a bit of swing in the snooker room.

Presenter4:50

Yeah.

Presenter5:13

And right at the beginning you went out and bought yourself a rather handsome queue. You you didn't want to take one of those tarred old ones in the rack.

Steve Davis5:19

No. The nice thing about having having your own queue is that you'll look after it. And some of the queues that that you see in the in the racks, in the clubs, they might be okay, but you you can get people abusing them. So for any snooker player who's serious, it's advisable to get your own one. How much does a game depend on the queue?

Steve Davis5:35

It's it's very psychological really, uh um the same way as a putter would affect a golfer's putting ability on the green. But um it's not so much the cue as the tip at the end of it. I could be playing my cue and if I had to put a new tip on, if my tip fell off the day before a big competition, I would feel a bit uneasy because um they take a bit of knocking in. But i i it's it's very much in the mind as well. But it is very nice to have a piece of wood in your hand that you know and recognise the grain of. Familiar. Yes.

Presenter5:40

But she on the

Steve Davis6:04

Who coached you? Your father? Yeah, my father, totally. I owe all my ability really down to him in as far as the technique side of it. We've worked together on it so much so. There's been sort of right heartaches and arguments over it and and and everything. But um since I started at fourteen, fourteen and a half, up until the present day, he still is my number one coach and um

Steve Davis6:27

It's very nice to come back home sometimes and and uh check on the the technique the same as a golfer would.

Presenter6:32

Now you were spending all this time at the table. How were you doing at school?

Steve Davis6:36

Well, I was fair at school. I I wasn't misspending my youth. When when I was taking my O levels, I never played any hookie or truant at all. I went up during the night times to play and at the weekends. But I ended up uh leaving school with five O levels and completely ruined the O levels because I was getting very serious about snooker then.

Presenter6:54

Your mother, of course, was a teacher, so she would have kept you at it.

Steve Davis6:57

That's right, yes. Uh she was a bit dubious, um, especially after I left school, that um I stayed for a year just playing snooker and didn't go to work. But by that time I'd I'd reached a stage at snooker where lots of people all around the country were saying that I was gonna be very good. And my father

Presenter7:11

Uh

Steve Davis7:12

Decided to keep me for a year.

Presenter7:13

There was nothing really you wanted to do apart from that. You didn't want to become a a manager or run a shop or anything at all.

Steve Davis7:16

One of the camera

Steve Davis7:19

Or anything at all? No, it it was it was strange. Lots of people were getting ideas at school about what they wanted to do when they left. But there was only one thing I wanted to do all the time and and and my French lessons became very much uh what did you do at the weekend? And it was uh jeju or snooker and and and technical drawing became drawing snooker tables. It was all all very much snooker even though I

Steve Davis7:38

Other sports interest?

Presenter7:39

Yeah.

Steve Davis7:39

I used to play football for the junior team but then all of a sudden at around the age of thirteen, fourteen the rest of the kids in the school started developing muscles and somehow in the blueprint stage I didn't get too many of them so I started getting a bit bullied off the ball so I didn't actually make the first team at the the older school but I still maintained an interest in football although Snooker took over as soon as I started playing.

Presenter8:02

Let's have your second record. What's that?

Steve Davis8:03

It's Ravel's Belero, which I think is um a great piece of music. I don't like that much classical music, but this is one of the things that I do like. It always conjures up feelings of our armies coming home and it's a very sort of chest out proud job for me. And um it's a bit like the Rocky Films as well. I mean it all comes into it. And um there are lots of different uh conductors who have done this piece and I don't really know many of them but the the one that I've got is by Leonard Bernstein.

Speaker 48:17

Uh

Presenter9:31

An excerpt from Ravel's Bolero, Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic.

Presenter9:37

No, you'd left school.

Presenter9:39

I suppose professional snooker hadn't really started or it didn't exist in the way it does since it's had the big television build-up.

Steve Davis9:47

No, um there's always been professionals around since the time of Joe Davis before. The game has only really become massive box office stuff since it's been at Sheffield with the Crucible on television. And when I got into the game, the game was just starting to get bigger and the snooker players were becoming household names in a big way. And I was very, very fortunate that they're coming on at the right time as well.

Presenter9:50

Yeah.

Steve Davis10:10

And uh there there wasn't really that much when I was an amateur. I wasn't really thinking about turning professional until it actually happened.

Presenter10:17

Yeah. But um you were spending most of your spare time at it.

Steve Davis10:18

Use

Steve Davis10:20

Oh oh, all the time. W the year I left school I was playing eight hours a day and um that's when I really started to make the improvement and started winning amateur competitions and

Presenter10:28

Yeah somebody said you spent so much time playing snooker that you were lopsided.

Steve Davis10:32

I am, yes. Unfortunately, you can't see on radio, but my left shoulder is much, much higher than my right shoulder and uh my tailor has headaches, so I I walk in with a packet of aspirins as well as uh the measurements. That's a

Steve Davis10:46

Yes, and I think it is the continual stretching and I can actually reach a ceiling with my left hand.

Presenter10:51

Yeah.

Steve Davis10:51

Uh that I wouldn't be able to reach from the right hand.

Presenter10:53

Now you got your sentry when you were only seventeen.

Steve Davis10:56

That was my first one and that's always quite a proud moment for any snooker player to to achieve a sentry break. Lots of players well the majority of players don't get anywhere near that and um it was very nice that I achieved it fairly early because sometimes you could have perhaps a mental block over it. And it's a nice thing to do for a snooker player.

Presenter11:13

And as a very young player you went for the English

Steve Davis11:16

Amateur Championship, how did you do? The English Amateur Championship is one of the things that you can you can guarantee to turn professional once you've won it. And uh unfortunately my last attempt at it ended in failure when I lost to Mike Darrington and uh that was one of my biggest disappointments up to then. And uh it just makes you work harder really if you make if you if you lose you work harder. If you win you can become complacent.

Presenter11:35

Yeah.

Presenter11:37

But quite soon you won a championship organized by a chain of snooker halls. Did that produce money? Was there a money pro?

Steve Davis11:44

Prize for that. Probably the biggest thing I ever did was to go to uh the Romford Lucania Club, which was chairman by my now manager and friend Barry Hearn. And he'd just taken over the clubs and decided to organise a competition for the seventeen or eighteen clubs in the London area. And I got into the final and did very well in that. Then the next year won it. And that was the start really of my relationship with Romford, even though I don't live there. And so so much so I've played all the big professionals as an amateur there and made my name there. And it it was the graveyard of professionals at one stage, Romford. And it it was a stepping stone really for me. I was very fortunate to meet my manager Barry Hearn and together we've uh had a lot of fun out of Snooker in that respect.

Presenter11:46

Yeah.

Presenter12:26

As a result of your association with Barry, you were offered a a sponsored tour.

Steve Davis12:32

That's right, yeah.

Presenter12:33

Did you enjoy that?

Steve Davis12:33

That was great fun. That was my first ever experience of travelling around the country. Also my first experience of black pudding, which I didn't get on too well with. I've been told there's better, but I'm not going to go anywhere near it ever in my life again. I've got no interest in it.

Presenter12:44

Yeah.

Steve Davis12:45

Yeah.

Presenter12:45

Better stick to the size.

Steve Davis12:46

That's right. It was it was very it was a very interesting journey because the car went wrong and it was a taste of um what I'm doing now every day of the week and uh it was nice to be on the road for about two weeks. Makes me more independent perhaps.

Presenter12:56

Yes.

Presenter12:58

Had you achieved your maximum break yet, a hundred and forty seven?

Steve Davis13:02

I hadn't at that time, no. Um the maximum break came a little bit later, just before I was ready to turn professional. How frequently does it happen? It's not too often.

Steve Davis13:11

Most players don't ever get anywhere near it and some of the top professionals haven't made maximum breaks. Uh just to name one who's uh won the UK Championships, Terry Griffiths, hasn't made a one four seven. So really that's how important it is. It doesn't really matter how many I've made five. Have you? Yes, but more important than that the one I made on television was the one that um I've got a videotape of and it's got me in the Guinness Book of Record, so I'm I'm very proud of my little bit, my eleven minutes and nine seconds worth.

Presenter13:25

How many of you have to do it?

Presenter13:39

That was a very handy one to make. Let's have your third record.

Steve Davis13:42

This is by Stevie Wonder off off of the uh original Musicarium album and I think uh I'd I'd be lost without some Stevie Wonder records around. And it's my greatest sing-along record in the bath at the moment and it it makes the tiles fall off the wall unfortunately and it's called Rippin' in the Sky.

Speaker 414:00

Oh, it will be you and I.

Speaker 414:06

And I'm ripping in the sky

Speaker 414:10

Rimming in the sky I ripping in the sky for all of the

Presenter14:29

Stevie Wonder. So after that first sponsored tour you were firmly resolved, I presume, to be a professional?

Steve Davis14:35

Yes, I think it was in my blood and um I was thinking more like a professional and I actually bought a dress suit. I remember that was quite funny. Went down the road and bought my first dress suit.

Presenter14:45

Yeah.

Steve Davis14:45

which uh had all the old fashioned braiding round the side of it and it was it was great fun actually. And uh then we had some photographs taken with the dress suit on and

Steve Davis14:54

When I turned professional it was photographing the Q World magazine and said Steve Davis has arrived.

Presenter15:00

Your first international appearances for England against Scotland and against Wales was that as an amateur still?

Steve Davis15:05

Yeah, they was amateurs, yeah, and that was all good stepping stones really to turning professional. It was part of a team the same as has been shown on the recent State Express Championships on television. Much lower level, but even so tremendous amount of good players at the amateur level.

Presenter15:12

Yeah.

Steve Davis15:21

How sharp is the dividing line?

Steve Davis15:23

At one stage there was quite a big difference between the top professionals and the amateurs, but now what's happened is that the professional body have loosened their rules of entry and uh there's a lot of players that would probably not have gotten a lot uh earlier. And so we've got about three grades of professionals now, I think you could say, and the professionals go down a lot further.

Speaker 115:33

Yeah.

Steve Davis15:45

The worst professionals are probably not much better than the top amateurs. Yeah. It's a nicer way of doing it really. There's not so much of a dividing line.

Presenter15:52

You won a tournament which brought you in fifteen hundred pounds in cash. Now, for a beginner that was a lot of money. I suppose that was the point of no return, was it?

Steve Davis16:00

That was right. To make things clear, you can be a professional in the tax man's eyes at Snooka, but not be accepted as a professional in the governing body's eyes. So when I won the Pontins Pro-Am competition and picked up the one and a half thousand pounds first prize check, I was still six months off being a professional. But by then we decided that I was going to turn professional.

Presenter16:22

There's a lot of betting on Professional Snooker. How does that operate? Are the bookies in the hall? Yes, Carl.

Steve Davis16:28

Yeah.

Presenter16:28

Was that

Steve Davis16:28

actually go to all the top line events and offer prices on individual matches all the time.

Presenter16:34

So there's a man in the hall chalking up the prices on a board and is it just like a race track?

Steve Davis16:37

Well they no they actually it's it's quite classy actually. They build a whole shop inside in the foyer and um it it's very c obvious obviously you can have a bet on the races as well, but uh they don't actually go into um who's gonna pop the yellow first in a frame. They they keep to uh who's gonna win the match because it gets a bit difficult. And if you're shrewd enough, there's a lot of games that you can uh bet quite cleverly on really because it's a two horse race.

Presenter16:59

What was the first occasion when you played abroad?

Steve Davis17:02

My first time abroad was in Canada.

Steve Davis17:04

There was a tournament out there run inside the National Canadian Exhibition and it's in a big fairground and we played in a building in the fairground and anybody who came in to go to the fair could come along and watch the snooker so you got some right loonies about and they didn't really take too much care of it if he was on a shot and walking past you and all that. But it was my first taste of being well away from home and I had the camera on the plane and taking photographs of the clouds and everything. A big event. Another big event.

Speaker 417:22

Uh

Presenter17:29

Another big event must have been when you beat Ray Reardon, the reigning champion.

Steve Davis17:33

That's right. Well I I played him uh as as an amateur a couple of times and I was he was the player around at that time and the player I most admired and actually getting the chance to play him in the first place was tremendous for me. And I raised my game, which was a good sign that that I did raise my game. And I I I did very well against him as an amateur. And then when I turned professional, one of my first games was against Ray and um I managed to lose 4-0 I think.

Steve Davis18:02

So I still had a long way to go.

Presenter18:04

Yes. Another big event, of course, your your first appearance on the VBC's pot black.

Steve Davis18:09

That's right. That was a giant stepping stone for me really, because that was just after I turned professional. And you need a break. You need to be able to get on T V as soon as possible because that's the only way that the majority of people are gonna gonna see you. And fortunately, Pop Black is recorded just after Christmas before the New Year. And I turned professional in September. So it it just came right. I was very fortunate that I had a name Davis, which I think must have helped a little bit because my first game was against Fred Davis and that's always nice to sort of talk about.

Presenter18:38

And you're tall and you got a friendly grin, so you were right and

Steve Davis18:40

I acquitted myself fairly well on the tournament and it was great fun and it's the only competition that the players wear make up on.

Steve Davis18:47

'Cause Pop Black is a television tournament and uh it revolves around the television. Some of the other ones they come along as an OB unit. But uh we actually go along to the studios, so it's all good love. There's a nice feeling of show business about it. It is, yes, yes, that's right. Well, you actually have to put makeup on, it's a bit uh I hate it, it's diabolical. I can't stand it, but um at least you know you're on television. Right. Record number four. This is by a group called Magma, which very few people know and I don't think I'd have known about them if I hadn't have gone along to a concert once at the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm to watch another group and they happened to be supporting. And uh I I fell in love with them. If if I had to be on my own for a long time I wouldn't be able to survive without this'cause it's a great chanting sing-along record and um

Presenter19:11

I don't know which

Steve Davis19:32

Well I just chose a little bit that's not too way out and then you can judge for yourselves.

Presenter20:08

A great chanting sing-along by Magna

Presenter20:11

Now Steve, nineteen seventy nine, only four years ago, but things happened quickly in Snooka, you played in your first World Championship. Now in fact, in Snooker it's a pretty small world. There aren't many countries that compete.

Steve Davis20:25

No, it's getting bigger. And we're doing various visits to the Far East this year. And um the the game is getting bigger, but most of the players do come from England. Yes. Uh Ireland. Um there are quite a lot of Canadian players.

Steve Davis20:39

A few Australian players and a few South African players, but really the majority of players come from England.

Presenter20:44

How did you dough in that first?

Steve Davis20:46

My first World Championships I won through a couple of preliminary rounds and I lost to Dennis Taylor in the first round proper at Sheffield but I at least I managed to get to the Crucible Theatre at Sheffield where I was to win later on. The thing that sticks in my mind from that whole match was that Dennis and I were having a right old tussle and the only people that that we were sort of interested in was a referee and the crowd could sort of go to hell at that stage because we were really into it. And the games were going on quite a long time because it is very serious stuff in the World Championships. And it was getting to about three o'clock and the afternoon session should have started but we had one more frame to do and they came and said is there anything you want? And I said I'd like a ham sandwich.

Presenter20:46

Welcome.

Steve Davis21:26

'Cause I hadn't eaten since breakfast. And uh so I was munching a ham sandwich during the last frame. And then in the papers the next day they they slagged me off for bringing the game into disrepute. I think I should have used margarine instead of butter. I'm not too sure. It was it was it was quite interesting. At least I got my name in the papers. All all publicity was all publicity's public stuff.

Presenter21:39

That's a little bit harder.

Presenter21:42

All publicity stuff. All good stuff. Although you were a a young professional, and there was enough work to keep you going steadily.

Steve Davis21:49

Yes, oh yes, there's there's um lots of small competitions around.

Presenter21:52

Exhibition games.

Steve Davis21:54

That's right, yeah.

Presenter21:55

Most professionals have an act, trick shots, entertaining at the table, that sort of thing. Do you have one?

Steve Davis22:00

Yes. My first exhibition was in a club very close to where I live, where I I actually got twenty pounds for it. I was probably only about eighteen at the time, perhaps seventeen. And I decided for the week beforehand that I should practice a routine of trick shots to finish up the the night because I'd seen the professionals do it when I got along to watch exhibitions beforehand. So there I was practicing my masse shots and all machine gun shots and um when I did them on the night they all went wrong. But um it it it's it's quite interesting. This the trick shot part of it is is much more like show business than anything else in the game. Um when you go along and play an exhibition you'll play seven frames of snooker then then some trick shots. The actual frames of snooker are played not too seriously but at least you know what you're doing. Then you have to come to the trick shots and if they start going wrong you've you mustn't be lost for words otherwise they all start talking. So you it's it's you become a little bit more of an entertainer when you're doing those and it's good fun.

Presenter22:49

So you'd be

Presenter22:53

You've had some adventures. You've been snowbound, for example.

Steve Davis22:55

I've been stuck in the hollow in Batley. Didn't think I'd ever get out. Got back home at eight o'clock in the morning. I was stuck in the snow drifts at Sedgefield.

Presenter22:55

Yeah.

Steve Davis23:03

and got taken in by all the the lovely people out there in Sedgefield and um that they they turned their community hall into a disaster area and there's all sort of lorry drivers having uh cheese sandwiches and everything. It was great fun. Every time snow comes it just ha so happens that I'm on the road somewhere and I've got to get somewhere quick. But fortunately I haven't had any accidents yet. You had a tour in India, that must have been interesting. Yes, that was. Um that was my first time in a different culture place. It it was completely different to Canada or anywhere else I'd been. And we were told not to drink the water or anything like that. It was quite funny. And so for the first couple of days, very strict not drinking any of the water. Then we started ordering bottles of water at the swimming pool, but with ice. Which is quite less really. And then we was uh ordering uh milkshakes with uh so in the end we all got the bug. But it was it was very nice playing in in front of people that have never seen you play before and uh a a different excitement. And I'm looking forward to next year. Um we're going to uh

Speaker 123:45

It's really weird.

Speaker 123:53

Mm-hmm.

Steve Davis24:00

Thailand again and uh and alto also to the Far East and and someti to the Middle East to play in places that are fairly new into snooker. And it probably builds up the excitement more from my point of view, playing in places where they haven't seen you before. So it's spreading pretty fast. It's it's catching on. Unfortunately, America hasn't got the game

Presenter24:13

Meal.

Steve Davis24:19

Really is I don't think it'll ever get hold of in America as as much as it has in England.

Presenter24:23

Why? I mean, they shoot polar, as they call it, quite a lot, but

Steve Davis24:25

Well, Paul in in America is a fast game and uh that it might not be fast enough for them uh for the initial sort of uh introduction. But it would be nice if it did get'cause it's a great game, Snooker.

Presenter24:37

Where have we got to? Record five. What's that?

Steve Davis24:39

Earl Clugh uh uh and Bob James are uh are favourites of mine anyway, and they've just teamed up together and produced an L P called Two of a Kind and uh the first track on the album's called Falcon, which is very, very nice.

Presenter25:53

Bob James and Earl Klug, The Falcon.

Presenter25:57

Now, Steve, your television reputation, growing very rapidly, nineteen eighty, United Kingdom champion. Then suddenly there was a lot of money about, wasn't there? You began doing exceedingly well.

Steve Davis26:09

That's right. I've I've uh made quite a lot of money out of Snooker, which is down to the sponsors who've put a lot of money into the game because they feel that it's great and the people watch it.

Presenter26:16

Looking at a few cuttings, I saw that you've got twenty five thousand pounds for announcing that you used a certain kind of cue.

Steve Davis26:24

Yes. Well, i i it all stems from anything that in sport that's uh big television viewing figures that that the game becomes bigger. And uh that's down to color television, I think.

Steve Davis26:34

What would a challenge match fetch you?

Steve Davis26:37

Challenge match

Steve Davis26:38

We don't really play challenge match so much. Is it I think my my fee at the moment for playing the exhibition is is

Steve Davis26:44

A couple of thousand, but I'm not too sure. I don't really want to talk about the money.

Presenter26:47

Well then in 1981 you were world champion and that really meant a whole lot more than all the excitement. It was rolling in.

Steve Davis26:53

Yeah.

Steve Davis26:55

That's right. I I won I think that was twenty thousand pounds, but I've become very successful in in in snooker and I think uh obviously the the top players do earn the most money. You were builders written

Presenter27:03

You were billed as Britain's most highly paid sportsman.

Steve Davis27:06

That's right. But the one thing that overrides all that is that, um, I've had loads and loads of fun and also winning the cups.

Steve Davis27:13

is more important. It might not seem more important to people who who haven't got a few quid, but

Steve Davis27:18

The money can only do certain things, but you can't you can't put a price on actually walking out in front of people and you can't put a price on actually being able to hold the cup up at the end. And regardless of all that, I've had a great time, I can I've I've got a very nice car and I've bought a house with parents, but um it still boils down to the fun and excitement you get out of competing. It is the big kick and the drug. Are you superstitious?

Presenter27:37

Yes, please go to

Steve Davis27:40

No, I'm not at all superstitious, although I go through the mental games that everybody plays, but I would never blame anything for anything afterwards.

Presenter27:49

I mean, you don't go about covered in mascots and wearing certain socks or whatever.

Steve Davis27:51

No, I haven't got a type in in my cue case and I've also got a

Steve Davis27:58

Bell.

Steve Davis27:59

But they're both functional actually, as well as being mementos. Um the typing acts as a to get the glue free for the super glue'cause it gets stuck up a lot.

Presenter28:07

Mm.

Steve Davis28:08

And also the the bell.

Steve Davis28:10

But that was given quite a long time ago in Canada, also acts as a burglar alarm if I have my queue behind me.

Steve Davis28:16

I've got it here actually. If anybody moves my cue case, it rattles. Good precaution.

Presenter28:21

Uh

Steve Davis28:22

And I sleep with McQueue because um th that's how much it is to m means to me, I think, really.

Steve Davis28:28

What?

Presenter28:28

But

Steve Davis28:29

Uh

Presenter28:29

The

Steve Davis28:29

Record six? Well, I think one of my favorite artists is George Duke, who's been around for Yonks. And this is one of his earlier records called Liberated Fantasies. And the track is I Can Hear That.

Presenter29:41

George Duke I can hear that.

Presenter29:43

Now, last year, 1982, top of the world, and things seemed to go a bit wrong.

Steve Davis29:48

That's right. Yes, it's it's quite a talking point at the moment. It's quite fun watching everybody uh write bits in the paper. Um I lost the World Championships quite heavily, although uh I did manage to win one frame against Tony Knowles. I was quite pleased at that one frame. But um I've lost at a couple of the major tournaments recently. It's down to a bit of lack of form. Was it the pressure? Do you think we were overdoing it? Not from a pressure point of view of being worried about losing or anything like that. Trying to track it down is like trying to find the needle in the haystack bit really. It's taken a long time to work out. Basically it's down to technique really and probably the fact that I didn't have that much time to practice.

Speaker 130:16

But this

Steve Davis30:23

And so letting the technique slip. But it's great. I'm enjoying it quite a lot, even though it might sound masochistic. The fact that I haven't done so well in the recent tournaments has probably made me enjoy the game a little bit more and I'm fighting to get back there again.

Presenter30:38

You're gonna keep fighting. I'm not thinking of taking a holiday to rethink it and then then go back and start again.

Steve Davis30:43

Oh no, no, the only way you can get out of bad form is to practice. It doesn't matter what anybody tells you. People who say that you should leave it alone and then start again is just wrong. You you've just got to keep on at it. Now you've published a couple of books? Yes, I I was very very pleased when um Arthur Barker came up and said they'd like for me to do my life story book and it was very very hard work that the final product was very very pleased with. I then did uh a book called Successful Snooker which was about

Presenter30:43

Yeah.

Presenter30:46

Uh

Steve Davis31:08

how to play the game. Nothing to do with uh what's been going on in my life, it's just how to play the game, which I was also very pleased about because every player's got his own views on the game and it was nice to be able to put them down in print and sort of at the end of it have a a copy of a book that was all about how you think about the game. And this year, the latest one called Frame and Fortune,

Speaker 131:09

Yeah.

Speaker 431:09

Uh

Speaker 131:09

I think

Speaker 131:23

Yeah.

Steve Davis31:26

incorporates all the things I did in the the year as a world champion. And not only that, but goes into great detail about the one, four, seven break. And had a tremendous amount of fun actually

Speaker 131:34

Yeah.

Steve Davis31:38

looking at the videotape and trying to put the balls in the right place on the page.

Steve Davis31:43

That took a long time to do, but uh we got them all in the right place in the end.

Presenter31:46

What's the next big event?

Steve Davis31:48

Well at the moment we're playing the Lada Classic, which is where I won a Lada car last year for making the one four seven. Mm-hmm. And um I think their advertising says something like well will you get another one? I'll settle for the forty seven and win and win the frame. Right. Required number seven.

Steve Davis32:04

Magma and Gentle Giant are my two favourite groups for going to watch and both of them now don't really play so much in this country. I don't think Gentle Giant uh are around, I might be corrected. But um I had great fun during my school days going along uh and listening to both groups and Gentle Giant I've got more records of them than the other and I think if I had to take one of their records I'd take the the live album record and this is just an excerpt from that live album.

Presenter33:31

Gentle giant. Steve, you've traveled a lot in the last few years. You haven't yet visited a desert island.

Steve Davis33:37

Yeah.

Presenter33:37

Yeah.

Steve Davis33:37

No, no. I was thinking of going a holiday on one, but uh I ended up going to Dawlish, where there's a go-kart track.

Steve Davis33:43

Much more exciting. Well, it was at the time because I was banned from driving. So it ended up the only way I could drive. I see.

Steve Davis33:50

Yeah. Uh

Presenter33:50

You've been to the tropics, of course. You can visualize the problems. Could you look after yourself?

Steve Davis33:54

Yeah.

Presenter33:55

Not at all.

Steve Davis33:55

Yeah.

Presenter33:56

Yeah.

Steve Davis33:56

I'd be useless. I I yes, I'd I'd

Presenter33:57

Ready?

Steve Davis33:59

I think I've missed my mum a lot.

Steve Davis34:01

Be quite honest, I mean You couldn't improvise somewhere to live. No, be I'm very impractical really. I'm very practical when it comes to snooker. But as far as um making myself uh self-sufficient, I would find it very difficult, I think. Done any fishing?

Steve Davis34:17

I'm absolutely useless at fishing. The lo the last time I went to river fishing I um Got my line tangled up very, very disastrously and there was all bubbles coming up just below me and I thought hello it's a fish because I chucked a lot of maggots there a little while ago and I was about twenty minutes sorting the line out and I think I must have had a fish took took pity on me because it was still there and after the third strike it it decided to catch onto the hook and that's the only thing I've ever caught.

Presenter34:43

Hmm.

Steve Davis34:44

I did catch um a congareel sea fishing, but um that's just where you happen to be really. I think it's down to the skill of the the boatsman. Do you know anything about boats, navigation? I used to uh like astronomy quite a bit. That's a great help. Well it it is, but uh if you've got a boat.

Presenter34:58

If you got a b

Steve Davis35:03

I think I would just live off the desert island and hopefully there'll be sort of berries around or something like that. Be careful of that.

Presenter35:09

Be careful of those berries. Some of them uh aren't all that good.

Steve Davis35:12

Well, I know. I just have to take a chance. I'm very trusting.

Presenter35:14

Your last record.

Steve Davis35:17

My last uh album I think I would have to take is probably my favourite one and and it's called Brazilian Love Affair by George Duke. Again, I think he's probably my favourite artist. And the track from it I think I would listen to quite like it's r very romantic bit. I'm fairly romantic I suppose, a little bit. I do cry at rocky films if if I get a chance to watch them. It's called I Need You Now.

Speaker 435:38

Earls I've never seen

Speaker 435:42

Uh

Speaker 435:43

In all the places I have been

Speaker 435:47

I've never been out such a love

Speaker 435:53

For me

Speaker 435:58

Such a night

Presenter36:07

George Duke, I need you now. If you could take only one disc out of the eight, would it be that one which you said was a favorite?

Steve Davis36:13

Yes, I think I'd have to say that one, although it's it's very close between Magma and Mechanic Destructive Commando, which is uh the the title of that one, mouthful. But I think o overall um it's a tremendously strong album all round.

Presenter36:21

Mouthful

Presenter36:27

And if you could take one luxury, one object of no practical use which you would like to have around, what would it be?

Steve Davis36:32

I think I'd have to take to see me through the years, I'd take a snooker table because it's been it's been the love of my life for so long.

Presenter36:40

All right, but you'll have to promise not to live under it.

Steve Davis36:43

Done. Right. Done.

Presenter36:43

Good. And one book. You've got the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Steve Davis36:44

I wonder.

Steve Davis36:46

Both

Steve Davis36:50

Well, I I'd have to go for something completely different. Um my favourite author, and I wish for this particular bit he'd he'd put them all in one book, is is Tom Sharpe. And um if I could have the complete works of Tom Sharp instead of Shakespeare, I would do.

Presenter37:04

I don't think we can give you the complete works because he's written, what, eight or nine books, but we'll we'll bind two or three together.

Steve Davis37:06

'Cause he's written what, eight or nine books. But we'll we'll b

Steve Davis37:10

But I I definitely have the throwback and I definitely have wilt.

Presenter37:14

Right, we'll bind those two together for you. And thank you, Steve Davis, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Steve Davis37:19

Thanks very much.

Presenter37:20

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 137:46

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.