The 1985 World Snooker Championship final came down to this: one black ball, alone on the table in the 35th and deciding frame, deep into the small hours of Monday 29 April, with the score at 17–17 and both players' nerves visibly shredding. When Dennis Taylor finally knocked it in and raised his cue above his head like a pikestaff, wagging his index finger at the crowd, 18.5 million Britons were watching BBC2 after midnight — still the largest post-midnight television audience in British history, and still the record for that channel. All of it for two men in waistcoats and a game played in whispers.
The pairing was a morality play. Steve Davis was the machine of the age: world champion in 1981, 1983 and 1984, remorseless, nicknamed "the Nugget", managed by the impresario Barry Hearn and marketed like a pop act — the face of a snooker boom that had begun when colour television discovered a game of coloured balls. He arrived in Sheffield as the shortest-priced favourite anyone could remember. Dennis Taylor was the 36-year-old from Coalisland, County Tyrone, a popular tour pro who had never won the title and was easily identified by the extraordinary spectacles he wore — oversized frames with the lenses set high, effectively upside-down, custom-made so he could sight the cue through the optical centres while crouched over a shot. Seven months before the final his mother had died suddenly; Taylor had considered walking away from the game, then returned and promptly won the Grand Prix, playing, he said, with a freedom grief had given him.
From 8–0 to 17–17
The final began as ritual slaughter. Davis took the first eight frames without reply, and the talk was of whether the scheduled two days would even be needed. Taylor salvaged the first evening 7–9, and thereafter clung on like a terrier — level at 11–11, behind again, level at 15–15, then 17–15 down with three to play in the Sunday-night session. He took two nail-biting frames to force a decider, and the 35th frame became 68 minutes of exquisite agony, swinging on safety errors and missed chances. The mathematics eventually reduced to the final black: pot it and win. Taylor attempted a double and missed; a tense exchange of safety followed; then Davis, of all people, twitched — overcutting a thin black to the corner and leaving it pottable. Taylor knocked it in. The most reliable fact in the sport had blinked at the only moment that ever mattered. Famously, Taylor had not been ahead at any point in the match until that instant — the first and only time he led was when the trophy was effectively in his hands.
In the commentary box, the BBC's Ted Lowe — the "whispering" voice who had once helpfully told viewers that, for those watching in black and white, the pink ball sat next to the green — presided over the sport's supreme moment of theatre. Embassy, the tobacco sponsor whose branding wallpapered the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, could not have bought the exposure: a quarter of the UK population, awake past midnight on a work night, for snooker. Inside the theatre itself fewer than a thousand people held tickets — the Crucible's tiny capacity is part of its charm — meaning the ratio of viewers to eyewitnesses was roughly twenty thousand to one. When Taylor finally kissed the trophy, planted atop his head like a crown, the BBC had its most improbable blockbuster ever.
Aftermath
The 1985 final was the summit of the 1980s snooker boom, the era of Pot Black, Alex Higgins and rinky-dink theme tunes, when the game briefly rivalled football for British eyeballs — a year later Davis and the Matchroom stable would even reach the pop charts with the novelty single "Snooker Loopy". Davis, far from broken, won the world title again in 1987, 1988 and 1989 — six in the decade — and grew into the elder statesman who could laugh about the black. Taylor never won another world championship, and never needed to: the finger-wag made him immortal, a fixture of highlight reels and after-dinner circuits, forever paired with Davis in one of sport's happier rivalries-turned-friendships. Decades on, the two still tour exhibition halls re-enacting the frame. Nobody has to explain the reference. In Britain you need only say the words "the black ball final" — and everyone over a certain age can tell you exactly where they were at 12.23 in the morning.
Quiz nuggets
- Dennis Taylor beat Steve Davis 18–17 on the final black at the Crucible, in the early hours of 29 April 1985.
- 18.5 million watched on BBC2 — the biggest post-midnight audience in UK television history.
- Davis led 8–0; Taylor never led at all until the championship-winning ball.
- The deciding frame lasted 68 minutes, finishing at about 12.23am.
- It was Taylor's only world title; Davis won six during the 1980s.