A player known to millions who have never picked up a billiards cue, Joe Davis is one of the world's best known and loved sportsmen. Now he tells the story of his fifty years' association with the green baize, the ups and downs of his career, the struggles to establish snooker as a recognised game, his great wins and his life away from cushions and corner-pockets.
Son of a publican in a tiny Derbyshire pit village, Joe began playing billiards on the pub's lower than normal table and by the time he was fourteen he was already the local champion. Billiards was the game then and Joe tells how, through the twenties, he fought his way to the billiards titles against the top pros of the day - eccentrics to a man. Snooker was despised by the older pros; but Joe could see the game's great spectator potential. Persuading the authorities to begin a World Professional Snooker Championship in 1927. Joe had to club together with the other competitors to buy the trophy I When Joe won the title that first year it was the start of his twenty years as undefeated world champion - an amazing record in any sport!
But it wasn't all easy pot-shotting. Through the Depression Joe had to give endless exhibitions just to make ends meet and there were endless rows over money with the great Walter Lindrum and others. The war saw Joe on the road in the star-studded Garrison Theatre, narrowly missing death while playing to packed houses through bomb raids ... all made worthwhile by an unlikely meeting with the glamorous singer who became his wife, June MaIo.
Half a century of tough competition has given Joe Davis a fund of stories. gritty and hilarious. appealing alike to students of human nature and of snooker - the game he gave to the world.