My parents weren’t big watchers of sport. We didn’t have a family football team or spend all summer obsessing about cricket scores. But when I was about eight or nine Dad introduced me to the joys of Pot Black, the BBC snooker competition that was televised in Australia on the ABC.
At the time I’d never played snooker or seen a pool table. I didn’t understand the rules or know how it felt to send a white ball barrelling along the green felt to nudge another into a pocket.
Dad didn’t play and I doubt he knew the rules any more than I did but each week we’d curl up together on the old couch, waiting for that jaunty theme song to start. As the first player broke, we stopped talking.
Sometimes the games would be so close that I worried I was going to stop breathing. If our favourite player, the Australian Eddie Charlton, was in contention, I’d pace around the room, not looking at the screen until he’d played his shot, just in case he missed.
The show stopped being televised in the mid-1980s and it would be 10 years or so before I picked up a cue. I never played snooker like Charlton and the rest of the cast. It was always pool. A pub game on a pub-size table, requiring less skill and less knowledge.
From the first time that I pocketed a ball I was hooked. And from that point on through my 20s I could be found most nights draped near a table in inner-city Melbourne pubs, smoking and drinking cheap beer. We would slide our 20 cent coins on to a table and eagerly awaiting our turn.
Some nights I’d pair up with a talented friend and we’d manage to hold the table for hours. It’s where I learned that the thrill of competition roared in me and where I discovered I often lacked patience.
On a good night I could sometimes hold my own but I was never consistent. I rushed too much, approaching pool the same way I did most things: impulsively and without considering all the angles. I had a sort of reckless hope when I played, assuming that because I wanted the balls to go in they would. And sometimes that seemed to work.
When it didn’t, I’d quickly forget the failure and approach the game exactly the same way the next time I played. I was a great loser but a dreadful winner. I couldn’t keep the smugness from my face. It just oozed out of me.
I still play pool when I can, although these days it’s more often in a dingy hall with a friend than in a pub, but I’d forgotten about my childhood love of watching Pot Black until I visited an art exhibition. I was there to see if I could afford one of the artist’s paintings because I’d loved his work for years.
Right in the middle of the gallery was a small, square painting, with a bright green background and an arm stretched long with fingers curled around the tip of a pool cue. The cue was pointed at a white ball, suggesting the player was readying to take a shot. I stared at the painting for much longer than I would normally.
Giddy with excitement, I explained to the gallery owner that it reminded me of Pot Black, a show I’d loved as a child. She smiled and told me the painting was called Snooker and that the artist had grown up watching Pot Black too.
I did the sums in my head. If I budgeted for the next few weeks, I could buy the painting on the spot. And I did.
I rushed home and started my hunt for old episodes of the show. I thought I’d find it dull but I didn’t. It was all as I remembered. The live audience applauding fine play. The commentator speaking in hushed and serious tones. And the players themselves in their bow ties and vests, suit pants and slicked-back hair. Each with their own style of humour, playing and concentration.
What I didn’t know as a child was that the BBC had started broadcasting in colour in 1967 and that its controller, David Attenborough, had been on the hunt for shows that would exploit the technology. What better way to show off this new vibrancy than to televise a game that saw coloured balls pinging around a bright green table?
At the time snooker wasn’t a popular sport. It was mostly played in divey billiard halls or in the homes of the wealthy. But after Pot Black aired in 1969 its popularity was altered forever, with millions of people tuning in each week to watch their favourite player compete.
The painting now hangs on the wall opposite my kitchen. As I cook each night I look across the room at the small green square and the shirt sleeve of the player, as he prepares to hit the white, and I’m back in the 1970s with my dad on our old couch, silenced into anticipation.
• Nova Weetman is an award-winning children’s author
