In snooker we had Ted Lowe foisted on us, and also Jack Karnehm, both pretty much as bad as one another. Ted Lowe is remembered mainly for saying, “and for those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green”.
When the new breed of commentators started in the 90s, they had a stumbling inception. Their lack of experience was evident. John Virgo’s commentary seemed all at odds with the play, his attempts at humour fell flat and he didn’t know when to stop talking. Neither did Willie Thorne, whose comprehensive dissection of every shot was like the toothache. Thorne would also shout the odds on every shot, game and match. The irony is that he has lost more money to the bookies than many people earn in a lifetime. However, both have matured. John Virgo in particular has now found the confidence to let the play do most of the talking. He is famous for his sudden explosions of “Where’s the cue ball going?!”, and his humour now shines through. A player shoots an object ball round the table in a hit and hope. Virgo dryly remarks, “Attention all pockets!”
In fairness, we have had good as well as bad. Mark Wildman was excellent on ITV. Neal Fouldes is very good, and John Parrott perhaps surprisingly so. But there is one man who puts all the others in the shade. Clive Everton started commentating in 1978 and continues to this day. He sets the standard for commentary in all sports: he illuminates and demystifies without the viewer even noticing his presence.
But in the competition for the worst snooker sportscaster of all time, who’s this coming up on the outside? He’s widely credited with a good knowledge of the game, but his commentary has become the embodiment of dreadfulness. Anyone who watches the sport on BBC will already know who I’m talking about: it’s Dennis Taylor of course. Not content with boring us with his tedious and unimaginative play over nearly 30 years as a professional, he’s now on course to get everyone switching over to British Eurosport. The underlying problem is that he wants to be a celebrity (even appearing on Strictly Come Dancing), and that is a poor starting point for live sports commentary where less is more, and gabbling is not required. But the babble is his stock in trade, regularly trying to belittle perfectly valid comments from co-commentators with one of his frequent inanities. “What a difference a frame can make!”, says one. “That sounds like the title of a song” retorts Taylor vacuously, “Do you like a good song?”
Like all wannabes he is a relentless name dropper, finding any excuse to bask in the reflected glory of others, no matter how tenuous the relevance. He never fails to mention meeting a famous person. He never fails to point out a famous person in the audience. And like so many afflicted with the cult of celebrity he is obsessed with golf. He spares no opportunity to make comparisons between the two games, despite the glaringly obvious fact that they have little in common. It is just another excuse to mention someone famous. I heard him say that a certain snooker player put him in mind of Ian Woosman: because they are both short!
While we are on the subject of comparisons, another one of his idiocies (though he’s not the only culprit) is that snooker is sometimes like a game of chess. Snooker is nothing like chess. It is absurd to compare the tactical safety battle in snooker with the cerebral exertions needed to analyse the complex positional struggle on the chessboard. Furthermore there is no correlation between snooker ability and intellectual prowess.
I said that he is credited with a good knowledge of the game, but personally I have my doubts. His incessant wittering does certainly include detailed analysis of which shots to play and how to play them, but the validity of the information is open to question. He is fond of the phrase “on that particular kind of shot”, implying that he himself would know exactly how to execute it, and all the player really needs to do is hand over his queue to Dennis. In reality he is talking about a level of skill that he never demonstrated as a player. Despite three decades of professional experience his title haul was paltry: he won only two ranking events. He did reach the World Championship final twice, but lost badly on the first occasion to Terry Griffiths playing only his second professional tournament. Unfortunately for us he won on the other occasion, and don’t we know about it! Despite a distinct lack of quality in the 1985 final, he never tires of reminding people. It has gotten so bad that other commentators have broken their private code of on-air politeness and started to poke fun at Taylor’s unashamed self-aggrandizement.
He is desperate for us to believe that his natural bonhomie makes him popular amongst players, but the man has no charisma whatever and I imagine a very different reaction when people see him heading in their direction. He is so boring that he doesn’t even merit a snooker nickname. Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins famously threatened to have him shot – a threat that Taylor took seriously. Nevertheless, he strains to give the impression of friendship with a player, often imitating golf commentators by telling us how lovely the player’s wife is, in that nauseating way that equates wife with adjunct. He is particularly fond of telling us how friendly he is with Cliff Thorburn. That’s easy to say when he lives 3500 miles away, but maybe Thorburn really can just about put up with Taylor – they did at least share a dull and unexciting playing style.
The main way of steering the monologue round to Thorburn is to associated him with a certain type of shot – a safety shot where the cue ball is left on the top cushion. As far as I can determine, this connection is entirely in Taylor’s head. There is no evidence that Thorburn even popularized the shot, and he surely did not invent it. Maybe he played it more than other players, but only by dint of a general defensive style. Again it is just Taylor’s way of dropping in that name. In fact he regularly reports completely baseless associations between “that particular kind of shot” and the player he personally first saw use it. Does he think we will be interested in the fine detail of his own snooker education, or is it a thinly veiled excuse to drop in another name?
Perhaps the most revealing and farcical aspect of his self-promotion is how he warps the reality of great snooker triumphs. On Planet Taylor the key aspect of Ronnie O’Sullivan’s maximum break in the 1997 World Championship was not the flare and panache with which the balls were taken, nor the remarkably low break time: it was that Taylor was commentating. This is why he talks about the break so much, never failing to mention how privileged he was to commentate on it. When he confidently repeats that O’Sullivan’s break time will never be beaten, it is not a prediction: it is a boast. When Taylor describes O’Sullivan as a “total genius”, the sub-text is “and I am part of it”. When a match is over, instead of celebrating the victor, Taylor vicariously shares in the victory. He cuts a pathetic figure.
Dennis Taylor stands in stark contrast to the veteran Clive Everton, with his detached perspicacity, effortless fluency, measured style and unwavering impartiality. It is incomprehensible that the BBC has chosen to limit Everton’s involvement in favour of the likes of Taylor. Get a grip BBC!