Forty years have passed but Dennis Taylor is still reminded of it every day. ‘I was in the commentary box today and there must have been three people who looked in and raised an imaginary cue above their head,’ says the 76-year-old, relaxing with a glass of Coke after his afternoon’s work at the Masters.
‘Still to his day, they always do it. They will raise their hands, turn their glasses upside down for a photo or wag their finger. You never get fed up of it.’
One man who would have every right to be fed up of it is Steve Davis, who joins his old rival and colleague back stage at Alexandra Palace fresh from his stint in the BBC studio. The Nugget was reduced to tears that famous night at the Crucible in April 1985, when Taylor clinched his first World Championship title on the final black following a 68-minute deciding frame which finished at 12.23am and gripped the nation.
‘At some stage in my life, I should be allowed to forget that I missed that black,’ laughs the 67-year-old, who jokingly strangles Taylor as the Northern Irishman replicates his iconic cue-above-head celebration for the purpose of Mail Sport’s pictures. ‘If I had not won another World Championship after that, it may have been a different story, I may have refused all interviews to do with it.
‘But over the years, we have done loads of exhibitions and talked about it and realised it was a good laugh. We have both embraced what we went through in that final and it has been a joy. We have bonded because we know how much fun we can have entertaining others.’
Indeed, Taylor and Davis will be entertaining snooker fans up and down the country together this year, touring theatres with a show to mark the 40th anniversary of their thrilling final, in which they will recreate the deciding frame.
Snooker legends Steve Davis (left) and Dennis Taylor (right) teamed up to relive their Crucible final in 1985
Dennis won his first and only world championship when he beat Davis 40 years ago
18 million viewers tuned in to watch tuned in as Dennis overcome Davis on the black
‘It will be great fun, especially the fact that I get to pot the black every night!’ smirks Taylor ahead of Monday’s opening show in Runcorn. ‘I just love working with Steve. He is very funny.’
Right on cue, a deadpan Davis adds: ‘The 50-year celebration will have to be done in a care home. We don’t know which one yet, it depends on Dennis’ kids and how nice he has been to them. But fingers crossed we make it, then maybe we can do a care home tour.’
The Black Ball Final was snooker’s zenith. A post-midnight record TV audience of 18.5million tuned in to BBC Two to watch what is not only considered the greatest snooker match in history, but one of the most memorable sporting moments of all time.
‘Nobody ever envisaged that 40 years later we would still be talking about it,’ says Taylor. ‘Especially because at one stage, the BBC, the sponsors, everyone thought it was going to be the worst final ever.’
That is because Davis, the dominant world No1 who was bidding to win his third straight world title and fourth altogether, raced into an 8-0 lead. However, a missed green in the ninth frame let Taylor back in, a shot Davis looks back on as the turning point.
‘If you were going to try and turn the clock back and say, “Which shot would you play again?”, it wouldn’t necessarily be the last black,’ says Davis. ‘I’d like to know what would happen in an alternative universe if I just played a safety shot on that green.’
Taylor was the 11th seed and huge underdog going into the final. A popular figure on the circuit, he was a runner-up at the Crucible in 1979, but was better known for his upside-down glasses, specially designed to correct his astigmatism.
That season, though, Taylor was inspired by the memory of his late mother Annie, who died of a heart attack aged 62, six months before the Crucible. ‘I was devastated, I wasn’t interested in snooker, but the family said, “Go back and play for your mum”,’ says Taylor.
The Nugget (right) was reduced to tears on that famous night at the Crucible in April 1985
‘That is what I did and I carried that on to the World Championship. When you are sitting there and watching Steve play, especially when you are 8-0 behind, it did help thinking about her.’
Taylor was often seen muttering to his mum while sat in his chair and he won the final six frames on the first day of the final to cut Davis’ lead down to 9-7. ‘That night I had a couple of glasses of champagne to help me sleep better,’ he recalls. ‘But I was always going to have a better night’s sleep than Steve because he must have had nightmares after losing his 8-0 lead.’
The next day, Taylor first pulled level at 11-11 but was never able to get ahead of Davis, who held a 13-11 advantage going into the evening session. Davis also led 15-12 and 17-15, at which point tournament officials wrote his name on the winner’s cheque for £60,000.
Taylor, though, clawed his way back to 17-17 to take the best-of-35 final into a decider, before which he took himself off for a ‘toilet break’. ‘My friend Trevor East had a brandy waiting for me in the dressing room, which I thought would probably help a little bit in the deciding frame,’ says Taylor. ‘I don’t even like brandy!’
That final frame was torture – not just for the mentally-drained players, but the nervous Crucible crowd and the millions watching on the edge of their sofas at home. ‘The tension had got to both of us pretty badly in that frame,’ admits Davis. ‘Neither of us could string too many balls together.’
Taylor says: ‘Some of the safety shots were brilliant, but when we got a chance we were twitching all over the place. It was destined to go to the colours.’
The highest break of the frame came from Davis, a measly 25, and he was crawling towards glory with a 62-44 lead and only the last four colours remaining. But Taylor then potted a long brown – ‘one of the best shots of my career’ – before sinking the blue and pink to leave him needing just the black for the title.
Before he attempted to double the black into the middle pocket, Taylor walked over to kiss the Greek shepherdess figurine which sits on top of the trophy. ‘I don’t know why I did that,’ he admits. ‘I think I was saying, “I’m going to win you with this shot or lose you”.’
Dennis says fans still approach him and wag their finger in a repeat of his celebration
He missed the double and four further shots were played – two safeties by Davis, two more misses by Taylor – before Davis was presented with a chance to cut the black into the top pocket.
‘Under pressure, you hit that shot thick, so my brain was saying, “Don’t hit it thick” – and I hit it too thin,’ says Davis, who put his hand to his head and walked away as white as a ghost.
It gifted Taylor an easier opportunity to pot the black in the same pocket, and he overcame his nerves to sink it and seal an 18-17 win, prompting those wild celebrations when he pumped his cue above his head.
‘It was just a reaction,’ he says. ‘You don’t know how you are going to react. You’d spent 13 years trying to become world champion and all of a sudden you do it against, at the time, the greatest player that had picked a cue up.
‘You just couldn’t envisage it finishing up on the last ball after 17 days at the Crucible. You couldn’t have written a script like that. They wouldn’t believe it.’
Taylor also memorably wagged his finger towards his friend East, the head of ITV Sport, telling him, ‘I told you I’d do it’, while a distraught Davis looked on in horror, before giving two one-word answers in his post-match interview with David Vine.
‘I remember the emotion of the moment, going back to the dressing room and just bursting into tears,’ he says. ‘You are inconsolable for that moment of time.
‘I also remember getting absolutely smashed that night and headbutting a journalist, which was hilarious fun! It was only in jest, but he didn’t know about the jesting part. He took his glasses off ready to have a fight, but I was so drunk it wouldn’t have been a fair fight!
Davis was the dominant world No1 who was bidding to win his third straight world title and fourth altogether and raced into an 8-0 lead
‘The way I felt in the months after, was probably the worst I’ve felt, dwelling on it, replaying shots. I remember having a bath and I started reminiscing about the shots and before I knew it, the bath water had gone cold.’
In contrast, Taylor was having the time of his life. ‘I didn’t get to bed until about 6am after the final and then I just partied for about 18 months!’ he says. ‘Everywhere I went, it was crazy.’
That included his hometown of Coalisland, where he was paraded through streets lined with 10,000 people on the back of a Land Rover.
‘It was like the Pope-mobile!’ grins Taylor. ‘It was incredible to have my little town jammed with so many people from all denominations. The Troubles were pretty bad at the time, but everybody turned up from all over Ireland to celebrate with me. And they made me mayor for the day!
‘A couple of weeks later I was back over in Northern Ireland for an exhibition. This fella had a baby in his arms in a nappy and he said, “What does Dennis Taylor do?” and this baby raised his hands! I could not believe it.
‘When I got knocked out of the World Championship the following year, I went to Blackburn for an exhibition and this fella said to me, “When you potted the black last year, I collapsed with a heart attack!”. Thankfully he had recovered.
‘Another fella said, “You owe me a shelf. I was lying on the bed watching the snooker and when you knocked the black in, I leapt up and shattered the glass shelf that was above me!”.’
Even those who were not even alive in ’85 now have footage of that final burned on their brains, something Taylor discovered some 30 years later when he went to India to film a travel documentary.
‘I thought nobody would know me there,’ he says. ‘But I got into a tuk-tuk and the driver, who was about 22 years old, did an impersonation of commentator Ted Lowe!’
More recently, it was Taylor impersonating Davis when he went to watch his friend DJ in York. ‘He didn’t know I was coming and I turned up in a Steve Davis mask!’ he reveals.
Davis’ second coming as a DJ has seen him play at Glastonbury and support Blur at Wembley. But he is still stopped by strangers in the street to talk about the final that he lost 40 years, despite winning six world titles in total.
‘I see it as a back-handed honour,’ he says. ‘I have no problem with that. I’m sure I would have liked to have potted the black, but that could have changed the course of history. As a result of me potting the black and Dennis not, you might not be here!’
Taylor and Davis will be entertaining snooker fans up and down the country together this year
And Davis might not have become quite so popular. Before he lost to Taylor, the winning machine of the 80s was viewed as dull and robotic and had not endeared himself to the British public.
But in defeat, the nation saw his human side and they warmed to the man later given the ironic nickname of ‘Interesting’ on the satirical TV puppet show, Spitting Image. ‘I was proud to be on that programme, it felt like the ultimate accolade,’ adds Davis.
‘We know full well that the modern-day players probably go, “Why on earth are we still talking about this incident that happened in another generation?”. But they don’t know what it was like to be well known back then as a snooker player. We felt like pop stars.
‘We had to pinch ourselves that we were minor superstars in the UK based on just a game of knocking balls in a hole with a stick. We count ourselves very lucky. It was an honour to be a part of that storyline.’
