By Elliott West
Introduction
The BBC’s programme Pot Black has been cited as being the springboard that rejuvenated snooker. A game that in the late 1960s had frankly fallen out of fashion with the British general public and was slowly dying a slow death. Snooker had become elitist with the snooker governing body famously rejecting Ray Reardon Reardon and John Spencer when they tried to join, only to reverse their decision when the pair threatened to set up a breakaway association. The fact was the likes of Spencer and Reardon were a breath of fresh air. Players that were brilliant and a clear threat to the peeling wallpaper that snooker had become. A brand of player that one thing on their minds, winning and scooping up titles.
The Dawn of a New Age
In the now-defunct Pebble Mill Studios, a place that I have fond childhood memories of with it famously staging Pebble Mill at One here for many years with the likes of Bob Langley and Marian Foster as its various presenters. A brand of television that set the standard for the future of daytime television. The studios would also be famous for the birth of Pot Black to the backdrop of the dawn of colour television, a test card for the invention and a welcome fizz to BBC2 that had launched in 1964.
Launched in 1969, Pot Black was a scramble to create and it fell to Ted Lowe to persuade the eight players to take part in something that could have easily have fallen flat on its face. Highly edited, this one frame, half-hour programme had the illusion that it was broadcast live but wasn’t. All editions were recorded in mass batches with a high degree of perfection. This went down to the handshake of the players at the end of the frame with the occurrence having to take place at the baulk end of the table and the faces of both players in the master shot. If it didn’t happen, the shot was redone except for one occasion when the former professional player and resident referee, Sydney Lee made a faux pas.
Anyone taking part in this groundbreaking programme certainly didn’t earn a fortune. Clive Everton was employed for the first series to judge the shot of the week. A task that he was paid the princely sum of £15 per week for 15 weeks, a salary that broke down to a paltry sum of £1 per episode. It was short-lived and shelved after the first series, blamed ironically on budgetary constraints!
Under the Spotlight
Players complain in the modern era of the glare of the television lighting but nothing compares to these early days of Pot Black. The glare and heat from the lights were so bad that they dazzled not only the players but bounced off the top of the balls making it extremely difficult conditions for those involved. It was an especially bad detriment for players of the bespectacled kind with the likes of John Pulman constantly worried that he would miss a ball because he literally couldn’t see due to the lightning glare.
A Much Needed Opportunity
This may have been budget television, produced on a shoestring but it was crucial in a time when snooker was rapidly becoming an extinct dinosaur. Those involved had managed to scramble out of and survive the dark days of the game, relying on relentless visits to holiday camps such as Butlin’s and Pontins to play exhibition matches to top up their minuscule incomes. Philip Lewis who had produced snooker in its black and white days on Grandstand and who was responsible for providing moving wallpaper between the horse racing at courses such as Kempton Park and Newbury came up with the title Pot Black and it was him who asked Ted Lowe to make the programme happen.
It was a brainchild that quickly came to fruition with Pot Black rocketing in the viewing figures, becoming the second most viewed BBC2 show to Morecambe and Wise. Its success opened a new market, an audience that had frankly never watched snooker before. An audience that deemed the game as one that was played in smoke-filled dens of iniquities that no one should venture into. So this was a refreshing contrast and smashed this long-held myth. These players were smartly dressed and immaculately behaved, sporting tuxedos and a far cry from the description of the Sunday Telegraph and television critic, Philip Purser who once wrote that players were “the hysterical pooves of the football field”.
The Legacy
Pot Black ran from 1969-to 1986 and then in various formats throughout the early 1990s. As it came into fashion, it went out of fashion as the game lost its extreme popularity of the 1980s and no longer fitted the face of the evening television schedule. The event was briefly brought back as a tournament on the snooker calendar for three years between 2005-2007, s tournament won by Matthew Stevens, Mark Williams and Ken Doherty at Royal Automobile Club in London but sadly it was shelved and the format has been returned to the back burner despite repeated cries to bring it back. With an impressive roll call of past winners including multiple champions, Eddie Charlton Ray Reardon, John Spencer, Graham Miles and Steve Davis, the show will always be remembered by snooker fans and I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t resurface in a new format in future years.
