BBC colour TV made Pot Black a snooker phenomenon
Snooker is a cue game on a baize table with twenty-two balls: fifteen reds, six colours, and a white cue ball. British officers in India shaped its rules in the late 1800s. Matches are races to a set number of frames, each won on points.
Neville Chamberlain helped finalize rules around 1875–1882 by blending pyramids and black pool; “snooker” was army slang for green recruits. Standard rules arrived in 1919 under the Billiards Association and Control Club. Joe Davis won fifteen straight world titles from 1927 to 1946, then postwar interest faded until BBC2’s 1969 Pot Black—commissioned by David Attenborough to show off colour TV—reignited the sport. Daily World Championship coverage from 1978 and a permanent Crucible Theatre home from 1977 sealed the modern era.
Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan each own seven world crowns (most recently 1999 and 2022). The Triple Crown groups the World, UK Championship, and Masters. Tobacco sponsorship once underwrote the tour—Embassy backed the Worlds for thirty years through 2005—until advertising bans shrank calendars from twenty-two events in 1999 to fifteen by 2003; Barry Hearn’s 2010 takeover later multiplied events again toward forty-four in 2019–20. Full tables measure twelve by six feet and need roughly twenty-two by sixteen feet of room, which is why pubs favour pool while snooker thrives in dedicated halls.
World Women’s Snooker runs a parallel path; disabled and senior circuits widen access. Variations such as six-red, Shoot Out, and Snooker 900 remix pace for screens. Referees like Michaela Tabb, first woman to take a Crucible final in 2009, became part of the broadcast cast. From officers’ mess to Sheffield theatre, the green cloth remains television’s favourite geometry lesson.
Source: Snooker
