Joe Johnson to Dennis Taylor: Pots of Gold takes fans on a journey through snooker's history

But the journey to the Crucible was far from straightforward. Amazingly, it started with a missed bus.

Johnson’s rise from gasman to world champion is just one of the amazing stories covered in David Hendon’s superb new book ‘Pots of Gold: A History of Snooker’.

A promising amateur player, Johnson – who had a day job working for the gas board – made good money playing in invitation tournaments.

But his world changed one morning in 1978, when he was late for work and had to run for the bus.

“I could see it pulling in, a quarter of a mile away,” he said. “I started running and realised I wasn’t going to make it.

“I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing? I’m getting up at seven in the morning, running for the bus to get £25 a week from the gas board, and I’m earning £150 a week in these little tournaments, and I’m only playing part-time’.

“So I stopped running, turned round, went home, took my overalls off and said, ‘I’ve finished’.

“That was late 1978, and I turned professional a year later. Suddenly, my kids, the food on the table, the bills depended on me winning matches. I remember thinking, ‘This is hard. I have to win’,” he said.

Johnson had to graft, but the ultimate success came in 1986 – in his third appearance in Sheffield.

The 33-year-old beat Dave Martin and Mike Hallett before facing Terry Griffiths in the Crucible quarter-finals.

“I’d never beaten Terry, but what made it a little bit easier was that I’d already got more money than I’d ever seen in my life,’ Johnson said.

“That money bought my house. It was a great feeling, and I was cemented in the top 16. I had no fears now about what would happen. Against Terry, I decided to open the balls and go for my shots and not get involved in his game.

“I did that and was leading 9–7 going into the final session, and then he won five on the trot. I thought, ‘He’s done me again’.

“Then he missed a straight green off the spot, screwing back for the reds, and I got up from my chair and thought, ‘He’s going to need a couple of chances to win, and he’s only going to get them if I miss’.

“I played the snooker I was capable of but very rarely showed in tournaments.

“After I beat him, he took me into the toilets and told me about all the good things that would happen now, told me to be careful about the press, to go on holiday after the tournament,” Johnson said.

“He said some lovely things. For him to do that after he’d just been beaten spoke volumes for him.”

After beating Tony Knowles in the semi-finals, Johnson was a huge underdog against Davis in the final – but delivered on the big stage, winning 18-12.

“I didn’t feel pressure,” he said. “I had the ranking points, I had the money, I was just playing snooker. Steve was expected to win, I wasn’t.

“I didn’t expect to win myself. Even when I was a few frames ahead going into the final session, I didn’t expect to win. Even at 17-12 I didn’t expect to win. I expected him to come back at me. But it was like because I was prepared for that to happen, it didn’t,” he said.

“The next morning, we were woken up by flashing cameras.

“We invited them all in and had a cup of tea with them. Then they started bidding for my story.

“I ended up getting £50,000 from the Daily Star. I couldn’t believe it. It was weird and it was hard. I was on the front page of every newspaper. I had to turn Terry Wogan down because I was so fed up of being on TV. I was on everything.”

It’s amazing to think that next May will mark the 40th anniversary of Johnson’s Crucible win.

But reading Pots of Gold delves into the history of the sport, how the working-class game became a multi-million pound business.

It’s packed with interviews and stories – about life on and off the the green baize – with the likes of Ronnie O’Sullivan, Jimmy White, Alex Higgins, Judd Trump and Stephen Hendry.

A history of snooker would not be complete if it did not include the 1985 final when Dennis Taylor beat Davis in that incredible black ball final, watched on TV by 18.5m people.

“I knew it had to go in the book, but you do feel like what’s left to be said about it,” Hendon told The Yorkshire Post.

“Having the opportunity to speak to Steve and Dennis, and also Trevor East – who was in Dennis’ corner, the man he wagged his finger to at the end – that was the absolute zenith.

“It proved that snooker could produce sporting drama and human drama at the same time.

“If Steve had potted the black and won it would still have been incredibly exciting, but it wouldn’t have meant as much.

“The fact that Dennis, with his upside down glasses, didn’t look like a world champion, it was saying to people – in the mid Eighties in that area, where people didn’t have a lot of money, the miners’ strike had just finished – that actually not everything is inevitable, and the underdog can win.

“People bought into that with Dennis, he was an unlikely sporting world champion.”

It’s obvious that Pots of Gold has been a labour of love for Hendon – a journalist and broadcaster who has been synonymous with snooker for many decades.

The book opens with a beautiful line: ‘For Dennis Taylor, it was a glimpse of colour in a black and white world’. That was the moment a young Dennis as a boy first snatched a glimpse of a snooker table back in Northern Ireland in the 1950s.

“Initially I had the idea of doing the book a couple of years ago, because next year is the centenary of the first professional snooker match, at the World Championship in 1926,” Hendon said.

“Then out of the blue, the publisher emailed and said ‘we want someone to write a history of snooker’.

“It was a year doing interviews, and a few months writing. The hardest part was cutting it down, there’s a lot to say in 100 years. The first bit with Ray Reardon, that could have been a book in itself.

“The book starts with me, a true story, at primary school you had to say to the class what your hobbies were. Mine was snooker. That was 40 years ago. It’s taken two years to write, but really it’s taken 40 years. I have been working in the sport since I was 21. Snooker has been a huge part of my life.”

Pots of Gold: A History of Snooker, by David Hendon, is out now.