Rack Pack: When Davis and Hearn revolutionised snooker... with a little help from Sheffield

That’s just like a wet-behind-the-ear Steve Davis as he walks off the streets of Romford to meet Barry Hearn and produce a partnership that would revolutionise snooker.

The fabulous ‘The Rack Pack’ - BBC’s new film about snooker’s popularity boom - centres on the careers of Davis and showman Alex Higgins.

You meet them as youngsters, Davis sporting a donkey jacket and crazy mop of hair, Higgins with a swagger to match his cue action.

The film charts the duo’s different paths through the Eighties, and is funny and tear-jerking, as Higgins struggles with his off-the-table demons.

But if Davis - played splendidly by Will Merrick - is Rodney, then Barry Hearn is his Del Boy.

Swap Peckham for Romford, though, as this lovable pair sit down to discuss Hearn’s masterplan for snooker.

“I think snooker is going to be big, bigger even than wrestling,” boasts Hearn.

It’s a funny line, but in an era when Saturday lunchtimes were compulsive viewing of blokes in leotards and household institutions like Big Daddy, it was an ambitious claim.

We see the film go from 1972 when Higgins won the world title in front of a bunch of old men in a room, to 1985 when Davis lost to Dennis Taylor at Sheffield’s Crucible in front of a record TV audience of 18.5m viewers - at 1am in the morning.

I grew up as a huge Davis fan - and would later go on to be The Yorkshire Post’s snooker writer over the last decade - and would sit at home, the grandparents round, as we watched the theatre of the Crucible.

And while my dad loved the volatile Higgins - and after him Jimmy White - the methodical and stone-faced Davis was mesmerising to me.

In the film we even see Hearn showing Davis how to sit in the arena, minute details like how to sip his glass of water.

“A flair player? That just means you miss,” quipped Hearn to Higgins. That statement probably stands the test of time, and not just confined to snooker.

As the film develops though, it becomes darker, the laughs replaced by winces and emotional build-ups as Higgins’s life spirals out of control. Luke Treadaway does a great job playing the self-destructive Higgins to a tee.

Sometimes, films like this can upset the real-life characters, but both Hearn and Davis are both fans.

If Del Boy had ‘New York, Paris, Peckham’ sign-written on his van, then Hearn would need something bigger than a three wheeler to include all the locations he has racked up making snooker a global sport during the last decade.

On the film, Hearn said: “It transported you back, when me and the ‘ginger nut’ were taking on the world.

“I phoned Steve before he watched it. I said look there’s two things you’ve got to know about this film.

“One, it’s brilliant, and two, I come across as a loud-mouthed barrow boy and you a boring nerd. They’ve nailed us both, that’s exactly like it was.”

For Davis, who made a career out of being ‘boring’, supping milk while Higgins - who died aged 61 in 2010 - guzzled booze, the film was an emotional rollercoaster.

“I was just a kid who could play snooker,” said the six-time world champion, who dominated the sport in the Eighties.

“When I watched the early part of the film - my own nerdy part - I was laughing, it was brilliantly funny.

“But by the end I was in tears, because it was just like that. I didn’t know the whole story of Alex Higgins.

“By the end I was sorry for Alex, it shows how the drinking destroyed him, perhaps he was tortured by my image, that was what everyone was telling him he should have been like.

“It was laughter and tears, a fantastic piece of drama.”

‘The Rat Pack’ is currently available to watch on BBC iPlayer.