Allison Fisher - Part 2 (Early World Snooker Titles)

So before we get back to some of your accomplishments and record, let's have you talk a little bit about your folks, your father, Peter, your mother, Christine, what did your dad do?
Oh, that's a loaded question.
For a living.
Yeah, I know. Well, it's a little loaded, and we can do what we want with this, but I don't lie about anything. So he started out, he was in the Marines when he was a young man of 17, I think he joined the Marines.
So he was a Royal Marine, and then when he came out of the Royal Marines at around 20 years old, I think it was, not 100 percent sure, but he became a police officer, and he worked for the Metropolitan Police Force in London, and he was a detective,
and he used to catch robbers and burglars, and then he got promoted to the Pawn Squad, Scotland Yard, Pawn Squad. And unfortunately, at a certain time in that era, they were accepting bribes, and at that point, my dad was in that era of accepting
bribes, and got caught and went to prison. And he went to prison for about, he had got a three-year sentence, he wouldn't tell on his co-workers, and he got a three-year sentence, and it was all in the front newspapers and television.
So, my mum became the boss of the family, and she did a great job raising three of us.
So, my dad was sentenced to three years, and he did 18 months, and then he came back, which is where the course of life changed for me because we moved to Sussex for a new start.
Obviously, he was no longer in the police force, and he ended up, he worked, my mum taught in bookkeeping, and he worked for my uncle in a factory.
And then later in life, my uncle got rid of him because he, I think he ended up employing another relative. And then my dad worked for a local newspaper, delivering newspapers for the rest of his life. So, it was interesting.
What's interesting about that? My dad wasn't very vocal. You know, he was about certain things, but kind of quiet and pessimistic sometimes, but really good with me.
He tried to make me, I can tell you a few stories actually, but I think he lived through me a bit. And I was probably very single minded, probably because of him. You know, he was an only child growing up.
I wasn't an only child, but I just think his life with the work that he did and his commitment early on, it was probably similar to my road in some ways.
And if that hadn't have happened to him, I wouldn't have got the chance that I did because the fact that we moved created my chance. So that's how I got into playing snooker. And I think he lived through me a little bit like that.
You know, I was a little tomboy, so we played football together. I used to kick a ball against a wall for hours on end when I was younger. It was, you know, I was learning, you know, to ball control and things like that.
I used to love it. And my dad played a lot of games. We played tether ball together in the back garden, and I'd get red in the face, you know, because I was wanting to win at everything that I did.
I can't imagine that.
But it was, again, that part was a turning point for me.
And I think he put a lot into my success in some ways. And we had this report, you know, he used to take me to tournaments I might lose in the first round. We'd drive home in silence.
He knew, he learned me not to talk until I was ready to talk. You know, don't criticize me till, you know, I was a teenager growing up and typical teenager. Now I'm going through it with my kids.
But yeah, it was just an interesting thing that happened. My mum, so my mum worked at the Milk Marketing Board in England. She always worked and she was probably a bookkeeper there.
And then when we moved to Sassix, was a bookkeeper again, accountant, worked for a few different companies. But again, they gave their time and their money to me. And my dad, you know, was getting by at that point.
And my mum had lost, obviously my dad's pension, everything was gone. So it became a bit of a different world, I think. And I think my dad, in the beginning of that, when I was a teenager, was struggling with it a little bit.
Because I imagine that his identity changed, you know, from a proud Marine police officer to then, you know, what happened to him. It was hard probably being a father too, because the respect changes. You know, he's been away from us for 18 months.
He can't just come back in and rule the roost either. So everything changed. But again, I benefited in a lot of ways.
Well, you mentioned one thing that you thought you took from your father.
Can you think of other personal traits that you either took from your mom or your dad?
I'm a mix of them both. I think my mom, my mom's personality, I think of how she gets on with people. And she's so positive, you know, she's such a positive person, as is my brother, Dave.
And then my dad was always pessimistic in a way that he didn't want to... It wouldn't, nothing would be upsetting, I think, if he was pessimistic.
Yeah.
I think he would used to hide behind, if he was watching me play, hide behind, I would kind of glimpse him sometimes, but he was... No, I wouldn't always see him, but I've got a funny story. Mark and Mike, I'm going to fast forward a little bit.
I'm playing Stephen Hendry. You know, Stephen Hendry is one of the greatest players of all time.
Oh, yes.
Dominated the nineties of Snooker as a seven-time world champion and one of the best in the world ever. And I'm playing him and I'm four nil down at the interval.
So we take a break and my dad, I don't know what got into him, but he's like, I'm going to use an expletive. Well, we can beep it out, can't we?
Yeah, we can do whatever you want.
He said, you're playing f**king crap. Right? So I turned around to him and I said, here's the f**king cue, you go out and do it.
But he got me so rolled up that I went back out there with a, you know, and I made a 133 break clearance. And I looked over at my dad, you know, all stubborn. I have some of that.
Oh, and I could see a little tear rolling down his cheek. And that was, that's how he got me going. He used to try and treat me like a guy, I suppose, because, you know, sometimes you're a girl and being all, oh, I can't do it.
You know, I want to give up. And he used to try and push me into being more mentally strong. Let's just put it that way.
So he brought out some of the good things. But I'm a mix of them both, definitely. I can be quiet and have my quiet time like my dad.
You know, he was a little quiet. I wish he was a bit more. I wish I'd asked him more and I wish he'd answered more.
Because he didn't talk about his past. You know, but I think you can learn from a lot of things like that.
Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about your record. And we'll combine some of the Snooker Pool, just for numbers for our listeners, 91 professional wins, including 80 national titles and 15 world titles, four of which were in doubles, I believe.
I believe you turned snooker professional in 1985 at age 17. Is that correct?
Do you want me to elaborate on that?
So what's involved in turning professional? We asked that question of Mark the other day.
Well, to me, it's making a living from something. At the time, I used to play in the Pro-Am Tour around London and other tournaments, obviously, throughout the country on the women's tour as well.
And there was a guy, a tournament who came up to myself and my dad at the time, and he said, I'd like to sponsor you. His son played snooker. And we said, okay, well, I would talk about that.
So he came over to the house and he was a partner in a computer company in Welling in Kent, which was about an hour and a half away. And they offered me, I think it was 100 pounds a week, a car and I think probably my entry fees for tournaments.
So it was a good sponsorship at the time. And that allowed me to play full-time. So that was me playing full-time.
I think I went to college two days a week through youth training scheme when I left school. And that was just to earn, I think, you got about 20 pounds. It covered my driving lesson.
So I was using that to learn how to drive. And they gave me a sponsored car. And so I used to travel up to Kent, probably two or three days a week to play in a snooker club for however many hours, six hours and then go home.
And then practice at home on the other days. And then playing tournaments at weekends. So that allowed me the ability to be a full-time player at that point.
Yeah.
So snooker, 18 titles. You'll have to...
80. That's written wrong. 18 on your thing.
Over 80.
Over 18?
80. 80.
Oh, no. I was just talking about snooker titles. Was it 80 snooker titles?
Yeah.
Well, I need to do my homework.
That's all right.
It's just you found it somewhere that's not written correctly.
Well, maybe. So I'm not even going to give these numbers. I'm going to ask you for the numbers.
You had X number of individual World Championships in snooker.
I had seven individual World Ladies Championships. I had four mixed doubles, one with Stacey Hilliard, sorry, one female doubles and then three with Steve Davis. I had the pleasure of partnering Steve Davis.
Yeah.
Yeah. So we're going to go through every one of those 80 plus titles. We probably won't.
We'll have to batch a few of them together. But at some point, and I don't know when this was in your career, you have to tell us. I think you signed on with Barry Hearn and Matchroom Sports for a period of time.
Is that right?
Yes, I did. So I thought it would be an opportunity. It was good and bad.
It wasn't as good as I expected it to be, but it was great in so many other ways. So I got a lot of notoriety. He put me in as the, we call it the warm up act before the pros.
So they had the Matchroom League. You get the top professionals in Snooker playing the Matchroom League. I think they still have a league to this day.
But anyway, Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, Jimmy White, John Parrott, Mike Hallett of the day, Neil Folds and a couple of others, Donnie Trego. Anyway, all these top players and I would be the warm up act.
So what I would do, I would be the female who came along as obviously a World Women's Champ playing the local amateur champion, which was always a man, one game warm up, one game of Snooker.
So I got in front of hundreds and sometimes maybe several hundred people because they come to watch the pro players as an audience. So I got used to being in front of an audience at a young age. That was tremendous for me.
So I would do the warm up act and some days I would make some, there was one day, Mark, where I hit a hundred break in my one game.
Jimmy White was playing Hendry that night and he said, if I win the highest break, I'll give you the Magnum of Champagne that I get. Well, of course, Hendry won the highest break. But he had eight games to play in.
Anyway, that was kind of funny, but I'm like, damn, if one time he doesn't win it and I don't get it. So the following year, Matt Trume invited me to be one of those pro players, which was enormous.
So you've got points for winning, drawing, and obviously didn't get anything to be lost. I ended up about middle of the league. I ended up taking Jimmy White to 4-4.
I lost to Hendry, but I still knocked in 100 break. I lost to Parrott, but I still knocked in 100 break, which is a massive thing to do. I beat Neil Fold, who was one of the top players at the time.
I beat Mike Hallett, one of the top players at the time, and I beat Tony Drago, who you know went into pool as well. And they did not like it one bit. The chauvinism in the sport was unbelievable.
They really didn't take it very well at all. Fold's better, but Hallett did not take that well. And then Drago was like, that must have been the best you've ever played in your life.
You get both sides of the coin. A man might find it hard to play a woman, but a woman finds it hard to play a guy too. It's not a one-way street, because you know at the end of the day, there's going to be a load of excuses, win or lose.
Well, you think about the role of gender in sports and where else were women competing against men?
Not many make places, right?
Not really. There's not many places you can, I don't think. I mean, if I liken myself to anyone, it would have been when Annika Sorensten played, didn't she play in an open tournament?
She did.
Yep, she sure did.
And that was me, really. That's what I was doing at the time. And some things were good and some things were bad.
And psychologically, it wasn't easy either. Either way, I don't think it's easy for the men or the women. But I wanted to be as good a player as I could be.
And I was the top of the women's game and I just wanted to play. You know, when I was that kid playing, I didn't think about gender. I was playing the best in the Central Club.
My granddad used to say, you'll never be better than Richard Barrett, who was the best player in the local pub at the time. And I said to him, well, why not? And he couldn't answer me.
Of course, I became better than Richard Barrett, but my granddad even at the time, you know. But one thing I will say is my parents were never like that.
You know, when I was saying I want to be a professional snooker player, they didn't say you can't or there's nobody doing that. There's no female doing that. I was watching the men on TV and I said, that's what I want to do.
So, in my careers education class at school, I was asked, what do you want to do when you leave school? And I said, I want to be a professional snooker player. And the teacher said, yeah, but what do you really want to do?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, one thing...
That's all good, but what do you really want to do?
This all speaks to the internal grit that you have, because for most people, if your father said in the middle of a crucial match that you're playing crap, people would back off, reject it, not have the fight to persist and just wilt at that point,
especially coming from your father. So it really speaks to what makes Allison Fisher there, is that determination and that, like you said, there'll be a little bit of stubbornness too.
Yeah. You're definitely right, because I mean, there are times when you do wilt. I'm not going to say I've never done that either, but you're definitely right there.
If you look back, I was stubborn, and I did have a lot of grit, and I did want to win and prove it. I wanted to prove him wrong.
No, you're a special person. Most people don't have that.
Yeah. Thank you.
Let's come back to Matchroom a little bit. Couple things. One, Barry Hearn, founder of Matchroom Sports, you now have Matchroom Pool.
Tell us a little bit about Matchroom, how instrumental they were in promoting sport back then.
Well, they had one of the best players of all time. Barry Hearn was a former accountant, I believe, and owned a snooker club, and he stumbled upon Steve Davis one day as I think 16, 17, 18-year-old.
Boy, what a find that was because he ended up sponsoring him, and then Steve became one of the best players ever to play the game in the 80s. That made Barry wealthy in his own right, but not only that, Barry opened the doors.
He had that charisma and that confidence to do anything. So here he had this best player of all time, the beginning of his career, and Barry was a businessman. He just was natural, naturally gifted.
Whatever he touched turned to gold, so he created matchroom. He eventually got into boxing, darts, and every other sport that there is now, at the matchroom, they re a production company.
You know, they re not solely, he also probably part owns World Snooker. They had him back after years of running it because they were failing miserably, and Barry Hearn came back and made it golden again, you know, created a good tour for everyone.
And if he demands something, he usually gets it. So he just is that Midas touch. And a lot of these sports should be very thankful that they have somebody like that, the helm of the ship.
He's still to this day, he may have, you know, pulled back a little because he's, I don't know how old he is at this point. I know he's 70s, I don't know if he's late 70s or what, but he's still a very fit, enthusiastic, enigmatic personality.
He's just, to be around him is incredible. The energy that you get from him, he walks into a room, you know he's there, and he demands the room in a lot of ways. He's a center of the room person.
That's what you need, running the sport.
Don't you both think we'll end up talking about matchroom sports and matchroom pool as we continue with these interviews?
I think so. They're definitely there for sure.
And perhaps even have Barry Hearn on. I had a note to myself, Allie, and I don't remember where I heard this from, but my note is, Mike, ask Allie about Robbo.
Robbo used to be Steve Davis' driver. So he, probably on the side, he was betting on Steve.
I'm sure all these guys around Steve Davis at the beginning were betting on him because they could see what, Steve was known as the nugget, you know, among all his friends and these people around him in this club that he played at, the matchroom
club, in Essex, and that Barry Hearn owned, I believe. And yeah, Robbo was Steve's sidekick. He took him everywhere. He was always by his side.
Did you, you met him, didn't you, Mark?
I didn't, but I've read a lot about him and I heard a lot of great stories. He was a scoundrel, kind of a guy, that would, you know, no, a rounder, that would go and bet on horses and things like that.
And he saw a talent, Steve, Steve won the experience and Robbo won the income. So he would take him and bet in various clubs on matches. And then that kind of led him into a driver's job with Mattroom and taking Steve around.
He became Steve's chauffeur.
So he was always with him 24-7. Yeah. But he was a great personality.
I remember him with his London accent, you know, Cockney accent.
Right.
And a nice guy, really nice guy.
One of the things that I remember about Allison Fisher was that I used to study snooker because I'm always fascinated by the how pristine it is. And it was very drawn to it. We just don't have snooker tables here.
But I think I would have gone into snooker had I had the opportunity. And I used to read snooker magazines.
And so at some point, I don't know, you must have been pretty young, but Allison had a manager and there was an ad in the magazine that said that Allison would come to your club and then they had a fee.
But if your house pro beats her, then they either cut the fee in half or waive the fee, right?
Wouldn't that be it? Yeah, well, it was a challenge. It was because Mandy Fish used it out.
So, well, my dad at some point managed me for a little bit. Poor guy. And we used to charge 500 pounds if I beat the club.
So it would be nine games of snooker. And I had to win obviously five or more games. And if I won, I got the 500 pounds.
And if I lost, I think I got 250. So it's half the fee. And I won everything.
I won everything that I did. So that was good. That was successful.
But it was a good way to promote.
Oh, I loved it when I read it. I thought, what an innovative idea.
I mean, I would say it's more difficult to do in pool. And snooker, you make the points, you win. There's so much luck involved in pool.
That's not an easy task, I don't think, unless you're playing tons of games where it comes in your favor. But to play nine games of pool against somebody, well, that's a lot quicker. You know, snooker is a lot slower.
I think it's more difficult.
So you never gave up a pound in that challenge?
No, I kept my poons in my pocket.
That's great. Well, let's go on if we can, because we've got a lot to cover. Let's go on to Women's World Snooker Championship number two.
It was only the following year in 1986. You win two in a row. This was also the same place Breaks Snooker Club in England over a Canadian lady.
And I'll butcher her name, but I'll try.
Sula Mesh.
Yeah, Sula Mesh. There you go. Very well done.
I knew her name was going to come up, because I think that was a couple of years before that I'd lost to her, because I didn't know her.
You know, sometimes psychologically, if you don't know a player or you've never heard of them, there can be a little bit of fear because you're not really sure. And I think my coach at that time had said, oh, she's a fair player.
And I think that got in my head before I even started. But I played her again and then I one-handedly, I think, was it 5-0?
It was 5-0.
5-0.
Yeah.
Yeah, I became a much better player, a lot stronger player, a lot more consistent.
High run of 84. And Mark, you'll appreciate this. I think at this point, Allison had not lost to a woman player in two years.
Remarkable.
Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, she's a talent then. There's a reason she's the feature of our show.
Well, Allison and I, I don't know if it's true in Snooker or Pool, you both can answer this, as it would be in golf.
We've done, as I've mentioned before, 107 of these interviews with great golfers on one of the podcasts. And invariably, we talk about not just the first win, but we talk about validating that first win, right?
So here you are validating with a second World Championship. How important is that in your sport?
Well, to me, it's very, very important because it's easy, not easy, but once you've won one, to retain a title shows the metal, I think, in somebody. You don't want to be a one hit wonder, so to speak.
So I think to retain titles was my goal after that, of course. Once you win something, it's great to win it, but to retain it is you've got the target on your back all the time then, haven't you?
So the retaining is more important than the winning sometimes.
Yeah. So you go back to back. You lost in the semifinal, I think, the following year in the Isle of White.
Anything you'd want to say about that one?
I lost to Anne-Marie Farron, I think, right?
I got to take your word for it.
Yeah, I think so. I don't know. I remember the place and I remember we had a hurricane that year.
As we left there, all the trees were fallen over. I've won something else in that place, but I lost in that and I was probably gutted to lose that. But Anne-Marie was a good player too.
She was one of the strong contenders and I don't know. I don't really recollect much about the feeling of it, but I'm sure it's very disappointed.
Well, Mark, just for the record, she goes win-win. Loses to Anne-Marie, as she recalls. So what does she do the next two years?
And beating this same lady in the finals? Win-win.
It's one thing to get to the top. It's quite another thing to stay at the top. So you got to have some grit for that.
Yeah.
So 88, 89. So now by 89, she's got four individual championships in five years. A 6-1 win over Anne-Marie and then a 6-5 win over Anne-Marie.
So you got back at her, huh?
Oh yeah. That one where we went on the final game was a tough one, wasn't it? I think I remember that one.
I don't remember much about being in the match, but you know, the relief at the end I think, when you've won on that final game. I remember my parents always there.
Did you ever play at the Crucible?
No, I didn't. I went to the Crucible, but I never played. Really gutted because I think the year after I left, they took it to the Crucible.
I see.
Talk about a few of the venues that you got to play in that were historic or fun or interesting.
Well, I think any snooker club in England back then was amazing because you would walk in and you might... Willie Thorne Snooker Centre was always magical to me.
We had usually, I think, the UK Championships there and Willie Thorne was a great snooker player and he would often turn up at these events. He was the guy who made the most 147s.
He used to break the balls and go for 147s at the maximum break all the time. A great character Willie was. He passed away a couple of years ago.
He was also a commentator and unfortunately, he was an addicted gambler too. I think he won a lot of money and lost a lot of money in his time. His brother Malcolm Thorne ran the snooker club, but it was always magical walking in there.
I remember just the counter on the left, a sitting area on the right, and then you'd walk around the corner and you'd had a room full of snooker tables which to me was always magical to walk into a snooker club. It didn't matter what the club was.
When you saw all those tables laid out, Mark, it was like heaven.
Oh yeah, I can imagine.
Mostly kept up back in those days too. I don't know what it is now because I haven't walked into one for years, but absolutely brilliant.
Just the feeling that that that connell rooms in Worthing that I went to for the kids club, it had a certain smell to it that I can remember to this day.
I remembered it from that and then walking up the stairs, it had like a spiral staircase and you walked up to another snooker room and in that individual room.
Then the big clubs like you mentioned earlier, one in Solihull in Birmingham, breaks there and then there was a breaks in London. There were chains of snooker clubs as well that were really good.
But I did go into the Crucible to watch and I bumped into Mick Hucknall from Simply Red. I was in the elevator with him in the lift as we say back home. He was like, who do you want to win?
I couldn't believe that Mick Hucknall was talking to me. The lead singer of Simply Red in an 80s band, a very big one back then. And I said, well, I want Jimmy to win because he's never won it.
I said, but Stephen's probably going to win it. And he was there with Stephen Hendry, which I didn't know. I thought he'd have been there with Jimmy because he's from that neck of the woods.
But anyway, it was like great, great times because it attracted all these people into the sport too. These famous celebrities watching it, Gary Lineker, the famous soccer player. Lots of great celebrities love Snooker too.
How about the Tower Circus?
Did you ever play there?
No, that wasn't a venue for Snooker. There was the, I forget what it was called. There was this famous hotel in Blackpool where all the pro tournaments were played, that I played every year at, which I didn't really enjoy.
It was very, what's the word? There was no atmosphere. I forgot the name of the hotel.
It's escaping me. But we all went there for pro tournaments. And it just was four white walls and a Snooker table.
Barely anyone watching. It was just not atmospheric at all.
It wasn't the Imperial Hotel, was it?
No, don't think so. I feel like it became with Elle, but I can't remember it.
Oh, well. So we're in 1989. You got four world titles under your belt.
Just for our listeners to give them an appreciation for what the money was like in women's professional snooker, what would you be grossing a year in pounds?
Not a lot. For winning a national tournament, you probably win about 250 pounds, which is probably a few hundred, 400 dollars. And then for winning a world championships, probably a thousand to 5,000 pounds.
I don't really, it varied a little bit. Not much. Not enough to really keep a roof over your head.
So where were you parking your Bentley?
Yeah, exactly.
I didn't have a Bentley. Did I, did I, Mark? No.
I used to have sponsored cars. I usually had my name splashed all over them. So there was no privacy at all, but there were sponsored cars that got me from A to B.
Look who's coming down the street.
Yeah, exactly.
It's good and bad. So yeah, like I said, I had that sponsor at 17, so that helped a lot because I got a flat nearer to Kent, well in Kent nearer to where I was playing. So that helped.
I bought my first house when I was 19. But I don't even know how I afforded that to this day. And left home at 19 years old to be out on my own.
So quite young, really. But I felt I was very mature at the time, like you do.
And very ambitious.
Yes. Yeah. Very ambitious.
I mean, I never strayed from my, I suppose I had all these goals in mind. I used to play in these tournaments across England. And some international ones we had.
And then I was playing the matchroom league. And so there was a lot going on for me. And then I was doing lots of media, lots of interviews because I was a top female player in a man's world.
So that became a thing. So I was sort of the ambassador of the women's game, if you like.
Well, let's talk about some of those media appearances, shall we? Let's go back to age 14, being on the Swap Shop with Noel Edmonds.
That was a very famous show. Every Saturday morning, if you were in your youth, you would watch it. I had a variety of different things on it.
But I was on there with Ray Reardon, who was a famous snooker player. He looked like Dracula. His name was Dracula, I think.
He had the fangs and the black hair. A great guy from Wales and a multi-world snooker champion. He set me up this shot to play.
This was live television. My whole school was probably watching it. They were informed that I was going to be on it that weekend.
I could not get this shot to save my life, but boy would I keep going at it. They kept coming back to me. I remember that.
I'm like, why did I listen to him to play that particular shot that I'd never played before on Newcloth, a very difficult shot. But I always look back at these things and laugh, because I think they're character building.
That's what we always used to say, at least it's character building, making you feel like an idiot.
Well, like you relating of these events where you had a chance to play in front of hundreds and just to get that experience, right?
Yeah. I mean, amazing. The first time I ever played in front of a crowd, I played John Spencer, who was another world champion.
I mean, I had these amazing times. I really wished I had soaked it all in back then. That's the thing that you wish.
You don't realize what you've done until later on in life. And I went to this, the Conalt Club in Worth in the 1117 Club. And I didn't realize it was a big to do.
I thought I was going there to play John and just a little practice match, you know, just nobody watching. And it was full of, it was an evening event with all the parents and a big crowd in there, a hundred or so in this small little room.
Quite an atmosphere. And I played John and played quite well, I think. And so I had very, very good experiences at a very young age that was shaping what was to come, but I didn't realize it at the time.
Yeah.
And one of those would have been on the Terry Wogan show.
Now that, that was a thing back in the day. That was a very, very, very big talk show back in the day. The Terry, Terry Wogan was a host.
He used to be on radio and then he went to TV. And he was one of the big TV people of the time. And to get on that show was a very big deal.
It'd be like being on Johnny Carson in the US.
It would be.
It would be, yes. And a thing was to touch Terry's knee. Every guest did that.
It was like a thing. So I was teaching him how to play snooker or how to hold the cue. And then I bent down and touched his knee.
And I said, no, you've got to straighten up that leg. And I was touching his knee. It was just a thing, you know, and all the audience laughed.
But it was again, another wonderful thing in my life. I did, you know, to meet people like that and be on these shows, because millions of people would have tuned into that.
Yeah, I'll just take off of some others. Then you can comment on the ones that you like. But question of sport on BBC, you're on there a number of times.
Body matters, big break, and Steve Davis and Friends.
Well, Steve Davis and Friends was a very big deal to me, because it was a full interview. Steve had his own show at the time on television. Because he was a big celebrity, Steve Davis.
In fact, he was so boring, they called him Steve Interesting Davis. That was his nickname. Barry Hearn coined that for him.
We're making him Steve, and they made a puppet out of him. You know, like Saturday Night Live type thing? Well, we had a puppet show.
Saturday Night Live type of thing. And they made a skit on Steve Davis, you know. So that's how famous he was.
And I went on Steve Davis and Friends. So I was one of the guest appearances on that. And it was about a 45 minute interview.
So wonderful. And my dad passed away in 2001 of lung cancer, but I just got on that Steve Davis and Friends right before that. So he got to see it.
So really nice. Question of sport. I was obviously at the top of my sport and doing what I did and was invited on to that.
So that was people from all walks of sport were on that, top people in their fields. And it was a quiz show. And then I was on Big Break, which was a big TV snooker show, clear as many points as you can in a certain amount of time.
And it had guests answering questions and they would be doubled up with a snooker player. And John Virgo and a guy called, I think it was, I'm trying to think of his name, Jim Davidson was the host. He was a famous TV personality.
And John Virgo was a famous snooker personality. So John would do a trick shot in between each break. And we would be trying to get as many points as possible for our people on there from the public who would answer their questions.
So lots of great experiences, a lot of fun too.
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