Straight after my victory over Fred I had to dash down to Brighton for an important playing engagement at the Hippodrome. It was not a match, it was up on the stage in variety, with Tommy Trinder topping the bill.
The story behind this unlikely debut on the boards began, oddly enough, at Lewis's store in Manchester when Walter Lindrum and I were giving twice-daily exhibitions there in 1933. We were playing on 6-foot tables made by Kay Sports and Games Ltd, one of a series of miniature tables designed to fit on to a dining-table. I had been approached by Kay's managing director, Harold Kempner, to give technical advice and entered on a contract that has been in existence, I am happy to say, ever since. And the tables, providing a wonderful nursery for budding players, are still selling like hot cakes all over the world.
At Lewis's there was no special seating, just a few chairs circling the table, and it soon became clear that the management had seriously underestimated the interest our exhibition would arouse. The problem was: how to enable more people to see the game without embarking on major construction work. It was then that the store manager came up with his bright idea. At an angle, along one side of the table, he erected a huge mirror and lined the chairs up in rows along the other side. Those people who could not actually see the table simply looked into the mirror where they could follow the game perfectly clearly - although, admittedly, in reverse. The customers took to this method of viewing straight away and seemed to experience no difficulty at all.
The episode gave me food for thought. Several theatrical people had suggested that I perform a stage act with a billiard-table until I had pointed out that owing to the height of the stage and the table people in the stalls would be unable to see what was going on. We had all been guilty of negative thinking, assuming that the problem was insoluble. But this mirror idea was surely the basis of a solution.
I set to work. It soon became clear that there were many other obstacles which were not readily going to be overcome, but I persevered. Taking the view that, just as in billiards the amateur considers to be impossible strokes which the professional takes in his stride, I sought expert advice. I had lunch with a friend who arranged all manner of theatrical stunts and I outlined my problems to him. Firstly, could a mirror be placed in such a way as to produce the required result, bearing in mind that it would have to be suspended somehow in mid-air at just the right angle? And while it would have to be extremely large it would also have to be movable and capable of being erected in a few minutes; I could not expect to monopolise the stage all night. Finally, what about the billiard-table itself? This could not be erected and dismantled for every show - an operation which would normally take an experienced man a good few hours. And to make life even more difficult there was the rake of the stage down towards the auditorium which would surely make levelling impossible and which in any case would vary from theatre to theatre. Like a true professional my friend did not seem daunted by these seemingly insuperable obstacles. He promised to think around the problem for a little while and undertake experiments at his workshop.
When he came back to me he had solved everything. The mirror would be 20 feet long and 4 feet high on a strong wooden backing and would be placed on a type of trestle at the back of the table. It would be further supported by chains from up above which, by the use of a crane or winch, would enable the angle to be adjusted as necessary for each theatre. I was rather concerned about the weight - approximately 7 hundredweight - but this, I was told, was a mere bagatelle to stage hands. Now came the all-important table. Firstly it would not have to be dismantled each time; it would be fitted with castors so that one could push it around as easily as a pram, even though the slate bed alone weighed three-quarters of a ton. Instead of legs the table would have jacks, rather like car jacks but with very fine threads for sensitive adjustments, and these would then be camouflaged by the building of mock legs round them. I would obviously have to take an expert table hand around with me (supposing that I ever found anywhere to go to) and he would be responsible for ensuring that the table was level. Using the jacks it should have been possible to erect the table perfectly well on the side of a hill and once it was erected the position of the legs would be marked on the stage so that it could simply be wheeled on and off for every performance without needing further adjustment. It all seemed foolproof even though my props were pretty cumbersome and would need some efficient road-managing. The problem was whether I would succeed in getting any engagements and, even if I did, whether they would justify laying out hard-earned capital on the stage equipment. The mirror alone would cost £150 and I really needed a reserve in case of accidents - after all, without it there was no show. All told, including the modifications to the table, I was going to have to spend some £500 without any guarantee of success. It was one of those occasions in life when you have either to take a chance or leave it. I took it.
I was about to undertake my 1939 visit to South Africa and so I sent a second-hand table round to the workshop and told them to get on with it as fast as possible. Meanwhile I had to unearth a booking agent. I had never had such a person in my life but without one there was no likelihood of breaking into the theatrical world. He, of course, had to arrange demonstrations of my act for I could hardly expect any theatre management to take me on trust, and grandly booked the London Palladium for a morning, inviting along a bunch of impresarios and managers to watch me run through my exhibition trick shots. Several bookings accrued from the audition and were lined up for my return from South Africa. So I suddenly found myself entering a whole new world. It was very exciting, I remember, but also more than a little frightening.
But when I returned from South Africa, having successfully dodged the U-boats, I found to my dismay that all the theatres had been closed down - an action which, along with food rationing, was one of the first tastes of war. But fortunately, unlike food rationing, the action of the theatre managements was short-lived. By the following spring their establishments were opening up again all over the country and I dusted off my act in readiness. It had been a thin winter, since I had not expected to be earning my bread on the billiards and snooker circuit and so had no such bookings in my diary when I returned to Britain.
And so I arrived in Brighton in the Easter of 1940 for my first performance. Despite all the early preparations it was, in the end, somewhat of a rushed job. I had already arranged a compere to work with me, a fellow called Eric Mason who also did his own act as 'The Great Masoni' (I kid you not). Eric and I spent a whole day rehearsing with Marigold, a girl whose job was to stand decoratively at the right pocket to fish out the balls and place them in the agreed position for the next shot. The only difficulty was that while Eric was giving me a crash course on stage techniques, I was having to introduce him to billiards and snooker about which he had no knowledge at all. However, we finished rehearsals having decided on an attractive routine which we sincerely hoped we could squeeze into the eighteen-minute spot which I was allowed. We were ready to open.
In the first house on the first night all the preliminaries went according to plan. While a front-cloth act was playing, my assistant set the table in position and I then played a few warm-up shots to get my cue arm going and to test the overall conditions. Then I was on.
Nervous was not the word for it.
I had played before thousands of people all over the world, but this was different. Normally in my matches and club exhibitions my audience was only a few feet from me; I could even talk to them on my way round the table. Now, even with Eric and Marigold hovering near, I felt very lonely and very vulnerable, like a man awaiting the dawn firing squad.
Very soon I was in trouble. I fluffed one or two shots, became anxious and lost grip on my concentration. Bad became worse. One particular missed shot I just could not gloss over so I repeated it - and failed again. Then Tommy Trinder, who was waiting in the wings to follow my act, came to my rescue. He walked on to the corner of the stage and yelled: 'Shall I send for brother Fred?' This brought a good laugh and helped to alleviate the tension I was suffering. Later on when I missed yet another shot he looked in again, calling out: 'Are you sure you're using the right colour of chalk, Joe?'
By this time we were also in trouble with the stage manager who was sending frantic signals to Eric that we were running well over time and should wind up pronto. But this was not easy; we had our agreed sequence of shots and if I picked out one or two and ditched the rest Eric would surely lose himself and Marigold would not know what on earth to do with the balls. In any case, being unaccustomed to this sort of work, I did not have the confidence even to try. And so I ploughed through the act to the bitter end. I was eternally grateful to Tommy Tinder and relieved the performance was over, but desperately unhappy about the whole project.
There was much thinking to be done before the second house. Charles Henry, the manager, came round to my dressing-room and said in as kindly a fashion as he could that he was sorry but I would have to chop twelve minutes from my act. I had over-run to an unheard-of extent. Even those notorious performers who hugged the stage when going well never went over their time slot by more than a couple of minutes. So out came the twelve minutes and the simplification benefited the act. The performance went much better for the second house and from that point improved steadily all the time.
On Friday night in the audience was the celebrated impresario and London Palladium boss George Black senior whom I knew quite well from the days when he had a financial interest in some billiard-halls round Newcastle. I felt that my act went well that night but afterwards thought I could do no better than to ask George what improvements I should make. His reply was to leave it alone. 'It's good, clean entertainment put over with simple sincerity,' he said. 'When all's said and done the public aren't expecting you to be a great stage star. They know you well enough in your own right and don't mind if you miss a shot now and again. In fact it may be all the better if you do.' These words I found greatly encouraging and my confidence was boosted a hundred per cent. I felt that I might, after all, continue my theatrical career.
George Black was right. I went down well the following week at the Finsbury Park Empire and showmen were beginning to take notice. At the end of one house at the Empire my agent came up to me beaming happily. 'I've got another booking for you, Joe,' he announced.
'Good,' I said. 'Where is it?'
'At the Palladium,' he replied.
It was a little earlier that year, on February 21st, that Queenie was granted a decree nisi at Derby Assizes. We had been living apart for some time: me in my London flat and she in Chesterfield with the children. I did not defend the action nor was I even present. I learned about my divorce from the newspapers the next day. After separating I had fallen in love again, the lady in question being Sheila Bisset, the daughter of the Billiards Association chief John Bisset. But we had agreed at the outset that whoever wished to break up our arrangement would be free to do so without any recriminations from the other party and in the end Sheila cut loose, having fallen for someone else. I was therefore on the shelf as my stint at the Palladium began. But my unattached days were short-lived for it was on my first day at the theatre that I fell in love with a singer with honey-coloured hair, June Malo, who was to become my wife.
The show was Garrison Theatre, presented by Jack Hylton, who had retired from leading his famous band to try his hand at being an impresario. It was due to open on May 31st, to run twice nightly with three houses on Saturday and was basically a string of acts interspersed with sketches. The star was Jack Warner with, as the female lead, Joan Winters who was Jack's 'Little gel' in their radio show. Also high on the bill, with me, was a slimmish young band leader called Billy Cotton who, as a car racing enthusiast, used to practise his skid techniques down the Bayswater Road after the show and scare the life out of his passenger - me.
At first rehearsal my act, by now running on well-oiled wheels, went perfectly and later Jack Hylton introduced me to June who knew him well, having been a singer with his band. She politely said she had just seen my act and thought it was very interesting. I thought she was very interesting too, though I could tell that I, on the other hand, had not exactly set her pulses racing. A long time afterwards she revealed that she had, in fact, had a strong argument with Jack about hiring me. When Jack first told her that Joe Davis was to be the speciality act she had said: 'What is he, a wire walker or something?'
Jack, lavishing praise on me, said, 'No he's the greatest billiards and snooker player in the world.'
'Maybe,' replied the perky Miss Malo, 'but what can he do on stage?'
But relations did thaw slightly between us as the show went on. After the second house each night Billy Cotton and I and a few other pals used to have supper at the Hungaria restaurant and there on the night of July 23rd we found Jack Hylton with his own table of guests. Principal amongst them was June: it was her birthday and so, during the evening, I went over to their table and asked whether I might be permitted a dance. My request was granted and together we took the floor to the Glen Miller favourite 'In The Mood'. I can picture it now.
Garrison Theatre was a roaring success right through to the autumn, closing in London on August 24th. But that was not the end of the show for on the Monday we all made our several ways to the Birmingham Hippodrome where we were to play for a fortnight. By this time the bombing was under way in earnest and towards the end of our London run we were playing to a background of air-raid warnings, searchlights, fires, ruined buildings and human casualties. The picture was much the same in Birmingham where after the first show the cast spent the night in an underground shelter. Our next stop, Blackpool, was an unlikely enough bombing target and we all looked forward to a peaceful fortnight. But we were even unlucky there. I remember sitting nervously in Billy Cotton's dressing-room at the Winter Garden Theatre while the town suffered its only real bombing raid of the war.
But I remember Blackpool principally as the place where personal disaster struck. In the centre of the stage there was a lift so large that my table mechanic and I discovered that we were compelled to erect our table half on it and half off it. Fearing that there would therefore be some difficulty in keeping the table level we decided for safety to pack the lift once we had got the table into position. And although this involved more work we were confident that, having marked off the position, we would manage the fortnight perfectly well. Not so. When it came to my spot in the first house we placed the table on its marks perfectly normally - but when I tested it during the preceding front-cloth act I discovered to my horror that the table was out of true to an unbelievable degree. I had no time to speculate on what had happened; all I could do was to grab my mechanic and set him furiously to work with his spirit level and his tommy bar to adjust the jacks. This he did to the best of his ability but he could hardly achieve perfection in the ten minutes at his disposal and so I was left on stage almost shaking as I contemplated the possibility of missing every shot in the act with the balls running round in circles. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life:
2,500 people gazing at me expecting wizardry and me knowing that the performance would be a shambles whatever I did. And it was the opening night, with Jack Hylton watching the show into the bargain! But there was no point in announcing what was wrong; that was no concern of the audience. I just had to press on. I cut out two or three shots which I knew would be worst affected and scrambled through with an audible sigh of relief as the curtain came down.
Jack came round to my dressing-room at once. 'Aren't you feeling well, Joe?' he asked.
'There's nothing wrong with me,' I said, 'but the table was cock-eyed.'
We investigated and discovered that a stage hand, trying to be helpful and without a word to anyone, had reset the lift in an attempt to make it more level with the stage. This, of course, had upset all our previous minute adjustments. When the stage hand appreciated what he had done he was more upset than anyone but he and his colleagues, under the stage, and me and my mechanic, up above, managed to rectify matters for the second house. However the show started late as a result and the customers were kept waiting outside.
This fortnight was the end of my association with Garrison Theatre but, having got a taste for the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd, I carried on touting with various music halls. It was a fascinating period, meeting every week such marvellous new characters. Characters such as 'Monsewer' Eddie Gray, the great juggler and comedian, a man funnier off-stage than anyone I know. I remember taking a young lady to see him with the Crazy Gang at the Palladium. We were sitting close to the front row and during the mumbling talk with which Eddie accompanied his juggling we heard him clearly say: 'Drop round after for a drink.' When we got to his dressing-room he at once told the girl at all costs to ignore a strange fellow; who would 'shortly be coming in since he was Jewish and was ruining the show. Sure enough, on came the fellow, who turned out to be Bud Flanagan. Eddie ignored him totally and carried on mumbling gibberish while the girl, taking it all seriously, felt very embarrassed. However she was nothing like as embarrassed as I was when we were saying goodnight at the dressing-room door. I was half-way out of the room when Eddie called out: 'By the way, Joe, you remember that coloured girl you used to live with; I saw her in the Charing Cross Road the other day. 'His timing was so perfect that I had not a leg to stand on. Was my face red!
My main problem was moving my gear around the countryside as the war effort had taken over all available transport. Ideally I used a 30-foot railway truck, but this was often difficult to arrange and even when I succeeded I had to hope that when it was shunted into a siding to let a war train go by it would not be forgotten for all time. When I was playing in Northampton the truck arrived all right but when I opened it up I found I no longer had a mirror - just 7 hundredweight of glass. Fortunately my spare had survived the London bombing and arrived intact. Trickiest of all, though, was the problem of hiring a lorry or van big enough to take the mirror and table from the station to the theatre and back. On two occasions, in Aberdeen and Middlesbrough, all efforts failed and I had to resort to hiring ten stout-hearted men to carry the mirror through the streets like a circus procession.
I experienced no such problem at Coventry, but otherwise it was a nightmare week. Until October 1940 Hitler's gangsters had not visited the city to any extent and theatre business was booming. Sam Newsombe, proprietor of the Hippodrome, was offering all manner of fancy deals; my agents hardly knew where they were. First it was a fee and then a percentage until we finally agreed on a guarantee of £250 for the week. Unluckily, though, on the Sunday night before our Monday opening the Germans decided to bomb the whole area and only a handful of people turned up at the theatre for our first night. That evening's raid began half-way through my act in the first house but since I could detect a few hardy patrons sitting it out in the stalls I soldiered on as the theatre rocked on its foundations. Eventually I realised that the orchestra had vanished from the pit, the stage hands were missing from the wings and even the minimal audience had thinned out almost to nothing. In effect I was alone in an empty theatre with a 20-foot mirror swinging ominously over my head. So I dived under the stage with everyone else and stayed there for several hours until the all-clear sounded.
It was a grim trudge back to the King's Head where I was staying, with burning and smoking shells of buildings on all sides and shattered glass inches deep on the pavements. And when I reached the King's Head I discovered that it had been hit by incendiaries and was still partly ablaze. Naturally all the guests lent a hand to sort out the mess; there was no sleep for anyone that night.
Sam Newsombe had decided that he would advance the times of the following day's shows to noon and four o'clock in the hope of bringing down the final curtain before the sirens went off, which was usually around 6 p.m. Even so, we only just made it. That morning I had checked out the damaged King's Head and arranged to pop over after the show to stay the night with Bill Camkin in Leamington. The problem was how to get there. It was impossible to hire a car so I walked to the bus station only to find that the bus service had ground to a halt with several buses blazing away before my eyes. That only left the train. So a group of us trekked down to the railway station and waited on the platform to see what happened. Ultimately a train did pull in and a crowd of us crammed ourselves in like the proverbial sardines. But before we could move off a parcel of incendiaries hit the station and we were immediately ordered to get out and make for the nearest shelter. Another sleepless night.
Yet still the show went on. Though quite how we managed it the next day I do not know. I think we must have taken our cue from that marvellous comic Billy Bennett - Almost a Gentleman' as he styled himself, with his hob-nailed boots, badly fitting evening dress, a blue silk band diagonally across his shirt and his hair plastered on to his forehead. He arrived at the theatre for the midday house to tell us that the Queen's Hotel, where he was staying, had suffered a direct hit during the night. A dozen people had been killed and he had worked for ten hours helping to rescue the injured and pull out the dead. He was in a state of shock, the only time I ever saw him without his cheery bounce, but he went on stage and made the customers laugh.
The Hippodrome itself, though damaged on several occasions, escaped total devastation. A bomb which landed in the foyer failed to explode. But after a week it was forced to close down and all the artistes reached a compromise with the management over pay, with me taking a cut from £250 to £160. On a happier note, the theatre reopened six months later when I had a guarantee of £160 plus 25 per cent of the takings up to a maximum of £350. And I am glad to record that we played to packed houses.
After my enforced departure from Coventry I continued touring, feeling quite the old trouper, and went to Cardiff where I shared the bill with Turner Layton. Then I moved to Manchester with Joe Loss, Arthur Prince and George Doonan, to the Liverpool Empire with Billy Cotton again, to the Dudley Hippodrome with Flotsam and Jetsam and Stainless Stephen, to Sunderland with Stanelli and to the Tivoi Theatre, Hull, with a show called Ridgeway Parade. And so to the end of 1940.An eventful year.
From that point on I continued playing some music hall with artistes such as Tommy Trinder, Cyril Fletcher, and Hutch; even playing at one point with a broken wrist. Billy Cotton and I had dashed from Bristol at the end of a two-week show for a party at his home in Farnham Common (incidentally losing a headlamp mask in the middle of a Bristol air raid and incurring the wrath of the air raid wardens). It was while dancing the Big Apple at about one o'clock in the morning that a rug vanished from under me on Billy's parquet floor and I landed with a crack on my left wrist. The following morning I went straight along to Windsor Hospital where a bone in my wrist was found to be splintered, and so a plaster cast was put on it while I reflected gloomily on the several weeks enforced idleness that would ensue. Luckily I had no engagement the following week and I experimented to see if it was, after all, possible to play with my left wrist in plaster. I found it was child's play; all I had to do was to work the plaster off my bridge, plonk my hand on the table and cue along it as usual. At once I telephoned the Imperial Theatre at Brighton where I was due to play the following week and told them I would be doing my act after all. Nobody noticed a thing.
But gradually exhibitions for the war effort took over my time. In 1941 I launched, though the Billiards Association, the Joe Davis Penny Fund, a straightforward appeal for coppers which would eventually mount up to the £550 needed to buy an ambulance for the Red Cross and the St John Ambulance Brigade. To boost the Fund I toured the country with various players, including Fred until he joined the Army, and within months we reached the target. It was to be the first of seven vehicles bought through the Fund and from this simple beginning my charity work snowballed. I made an appeal for money at the White City greyhound track on behalf of the London War Weapons Week and other players were scattered round the country making similar appeals for all manner of local efforts. We developed quite a technique of public speaking. I also became an expert auctioneer; in town after town people dipped deep into their pockets as I sold off items collected by the sponsors of the effort concerned - water colours of Churchill, cigars, autographed cues and so on. A great right for me as an auctioneer was at John Caufield's pub, the Greyhound, in Kensington Square during a charity night for the RAF Benevolent Fund. (I did many shows for this fund and for innumerable local Comfort Funds for the armed services.) The jockeys Steve Donoghue and Gordon Richards played a game of snooker and every time Gordon bent down to play a shot, Steve would leap on his back and ride Gordon round the table. Raymond Glendenning of the BBC was compère and helped me sell the goods. As bananas were scarce someone put one up for sale; it fetched £100. Then a bomber pilot ripped off his wings and I sold those for another £100. All told we made £1,600 on the single night.
Almost as good a night was one arranged by my friend Billy Wild in Derby which made £1,000 for the Benevolent Fund. My exhibition opponent that night, as on many other nights during the war, was Charlie Simpson, a left-handed Sheffield pro who never branched out into the big time because of his other business interests, but who was certainly the fastest player I ever saw - faster than Walter Lindrum or Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins, the 1972 snooker champion. On one occasion during the war Charlie and I had a lucky escape. On the night that we were due to play at the Marples Hotel in Sheffield I had to telephone him from Hull to say that I simply could not make it as the rail link was totally disrupted. He would have to apologise to the manager and rearrange our exhibition for the following week. That same night the hotel got a direct hit and some fifty people died.
I always did well in the Midlands. Howard Nuttall was a tireless Comforts Fund worker around Nottingham and together we raised many thousands of pounds. But I think the Manchester area was the most successful fund-raising spot for everything from the RAF Benevolent Fund and the Red Cross to the ATC, the Welfare Air Raid Distress and Aid to Russia. There always seemed to be so many great sports and tireless workers in the region - bookmakers and businessmen alike. Charlie Hughes must have organised dozens of charity shows pulling in vast sums of money. And Vincent Harley, the inventor of the blackout headlamp shield, travelled hundreds of miles round Lancashire from his base at Greenfield, just outside Oldham. His shields were officially recognised by the Government, and since he manufactured them himself he made a fortune on the deal - though the Vincent Hartley Billiard Table Lightshade which we invented together did not do as well.
It was in Manchester that I was given the best odds I ever had. It was on a game of golf on the billiards-table, a game in which you placed the red ball on the centre spot and, playing from baulk, you attempted to pot the red into each of the six pockets. Missing the ball or going in-off counted as two penalty points and I suppose the average player would take twelve to sixteen shots to complete the 'round'.
I had just finished an exhibition and had returned to the city's Queen's Hotel when I noticed a great bustle of activity in the billiard-room. Inquisitive, I wandered in and heard a voice call out: 'Here's a bloke who can do it' - meaning me. Herbert Howarth, an Oldham bookmaker, said he had once seen the 'round' completed in ten shots, which he reckoned fantastic, but a pal of his opined that I could do it in just six. Then Herbert announced the odds: '£100 to a penny that he doesn't,' he wagered. I said that on these terms I would take him on; a dozen attempts at a penny each. Once I had become accustomed to the table the reds started to go down well and at the eighth try all the first five balls ran sweetly home. Now for the sixth pocket; down it went. But the tumultuous cheers from the onlookers were still ringing out when the cue bail itself disappeared into a pocket and my £100 vanished with it. I did not hit the same form in the remaining attempts but was ready to take on Herbert for another shilling's worth. 'No thanks,' he said. 'That was a narrow escape for me.'
But on another night my sporting friends of Manchester got me in a terrible jam when I was raising money for the Red Cross at their great haunt, the Wilton Club. Ernest Withington, a good friend of mine and a good amateur snooker player, had spent that night losing a lot of money to a Scottish professional called Crompton. In an attempt to extract revenge and recoup his losses Ernest informed me, after I had completed an exhibition and auction which raised £1,000, that he had made a match for me to play Crompton. 'I've backed you to give him 28 start for £100,' he said. Now, I knew that some chaps from Blackpool had wheeled Crompton over with the precise intention of fixing a match with me on terms favourable to him. This was just what they had been angling for. 'Don't be stupid, Ernest,' I told him. 'Crompton's a much better player than anyone in Manchester. A 20 start would be plenty.' But Ernest urged me to play on the terms he had outlined and I finally gave in; it was his money, not mine.
The first game I managed to win, though only on the pink and for the next game the word went round the club that I was 5-2 on. Some bets were struck at as much as £500 to £200 with innumerable lesser bets being placed all over the room. When I won this game too I became 5-1 on and two chaps agreed to bet £500 to £100. 'You're mad,' I said, but my words went unheeded and many more wagers were made on these terms. To make matters worse I made a break of 29 on my first visit to the table - and at this point a voice shouted out: 'Now he's £500 to £1 and a chorus of voices shouted: 'Taken'. Now it was not only Ernest's money at stake. With such vast sums hovering over my cue and the interested parties practically jogging my elbow I was not enjoying the atmosphere at all.
Then things began to go wrong. I never potted another ball until we came to the colours, by which time I was 50 points in arrears. Then I began to hear the murmurs: 'What's he playing at?', 'He's carving us up'. I was beginning to wonder whether, if I failed, I would leave the place in one piece. Crompton, playing well, was becoming cockier with every stroke, being that sort of chap, and this only put my back up. When I laid him a snooker which he got out of, and I said, 'Good shot', his reply was: 'Of course it was a good shot; I'm a good player.' And that comment was his undoing. I determined to beat him if it took me all night and began to play him snooker after snooker until I managed to cut back his lead to 21. By this time there were just four balls left, together worth 22 points. But I sank the lot in one break to win by a single point. Cheers took the place of mumbles as I mopped my brow, and Ernest, grasping my hand, said: 'Well done, Joe. You're on £100.
'Give it to the Red Cross,' I replied. 'And don't get me into a spot like that again.'
In the later war years I had the opportunity of meeting personally the men and women whom I had hitherto been helping from a distance. I took part in a large number of ENSA shows, visiting RAF camps, naval depots and military centres which enabled me to meet some charming and courageous people. But I think the most remarkable man that I met, indeed the greatest character I ever met through snooker, was a young man called Alan McConnell, of whom very few people will have heard.
Fred and I at one stage gave an exhibition at the National Liberal Club to raise £1,200 to buy a Nissen hut for the plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillis, so that he could house his own billiard-table at the establishment in East Grinstead where he carried out experimental treatment on badly burned servicemen. Sir Harold thought that billiards was ideal therapy for his boys. He later invited Fred and me to give a further exhibition at the opening of his billiard-room and one of the guinea-pigs whom we met was Alan, an air-gunner who had lost both hands in a blazing bomber. I subsequently met him on other occasions when he and some pals came to watch matches in London. Once I was contacted by his father when I was due to play an exhibition in Southport. Alan very much wanted to watch the show but since it was a member's-only club the secretary had been unable to let him have a ticket. I naturally agreed to help and the secretary readily let Alan and his father in when I explained the circumstances. What is more, they later made them both members. Indeed, there they both were when I returned to the club for an engagement a year later - and to my astonishment Alan asked whether I would do him the honour of playing him at snooker. 'How on earth can you play snooker?' I asked. So he showed me: the cue was strapped to his wrist and his father made the bridge for him. And that night, admittedly on a fairly substantial start, he beat me.
All these charity games kept me busier than I had ever been and also in reasonable playing trim even though the professional circuit was dormant. I think the only professional tournament of note that took place during the war was one organised in the billiard-room of the Albany Club in Savile Row which to me was the most interesting place in the West End at that time. It was managed and part-owned by Bill Little, with Sam Henry as a sleeping partner. If you wanted to meet anyone who counted in the worlds of sport, business or entertainment, the Albany was the place. And their auction snooker handicaps with £3,000 or £4,000 for the lucky buyer of the winner were a great feature of the club's life.
Over the war years every American stage or screen personality was seen at the club but, despite this competition, one of the most prominent and popular members was the comedian Sid Field, famous for his 'Golf Lesson' sketch with Jerry Desmonde. Sid was no mean performer at snooker and we played many frames, so it was logical that we should discuss making a short snooker film together on the lines of his golf scene. Sadly, however, before we had progressed very far, he had a heart attack and died.
Although he was very popular, he had only recently hit the jackpot in London having had an agent who kept him touring the provinces for twenty years. When he died Danny Kaye and several other stars put on a show to raise money for a testimonial and the Sid Field Trust was set up on behalf of his son and two daughters. The original trustees were Dave Morris, Andy Eddie Chalk, all of whom did an excellent job of investment, and when Eddie resigned, through living at a distance from capital, I was invited to take his place.
I was proud to accept the position, which I still hold, but I am sorry that do not have that film to look back on.