Snooker: Pin-up Hunter fires waistcoat brigade into boy-band age

For seven years of a former life, I was a television critic. And as such I always used to make it my business to review the BBC's coverage of the Embassy World Snooker Championship, partly to assuage the guilt I felt at doing something which seemed illicit, namely switching the telly on at 1.20pm every day for 17 days, sitting impatiently through what remained of the news, then lying back contentedly as men in waistcoats screwed and stunned each other into submission.

I could watch for hours, and did. If I had devoted the time I have spent watching snooker to something more useful, I could have walked round the world backwards by now, juggling eggcups.

Even in my present capacity as a sports columnist, watching the snooker still feels illicit; yet it sucks me in against all my better judgment.

Men who steal women's underwear from washing-lines probably say the same. Just one more double D-cup and then I'll quit. But they never can. They have to go back for one more thong.

In my case, I resolve to watch just one more shot by Peter Ebdon, and then go and do something constructive, like answer the telephone. But how can I watch that safety shot by Ebdon without seeing how Paul Hunter replies? And so I sit and sit, and suddenly Ebdon has been knocked out, settled his hotel mini-bar bill and driven back down the motorway to Wellingborough, in the time it has taken me to realise the kettle is boiling.

For me, Paul Hunter, or Poor Lunter as most of the BBC commentary team call him, was the sensation of this year's championship, his exit in the semi-final its biggest disappointment. He is blessed with the temperament of Ray Reardon but the looks of Ronan Keating, a combination which took the Crucible by storm. Watching him working out how many cushions he needed to come off if he was to get the cue ball safely back to baulk was mildly disorientating, because he looked like a boy band member who should be making love to a microphone. Indeed my wife, not normally a snooker enthusiast, showed particular interest in Poor Lunter's progress. For her, one of the highlights of the tournament was Poor Lunter's highlights.

It is a pity that my wife's grandma did not live to see Poor Lunter. Grandma Nellie was just short of a century when she dropped elegantly off the green baize of life into the celestial middle pocket a few years ago.

She lived just outside Barnsley for all her 98 years, but would no sooner have made the trip to the Crucible, all of 12 miles away in the centre of Sheffield, than to Tierra del Fuego. Via the telly, however, she lived every shot. And often used to rhapsodise over the break-building ability of Steve Davis. But she was a sucker for a pretty face, too. She'd have loved Poor Lunter, a Yorkshire boy to boot.

Of course, snooker has always had its dishes. Even in the days when grizzled veterans such as Eddie Charlton and Rex Williams held sway, there was always a token dish in the field.

For a while it was Kirk Stevens, who favoured white suits in the manner of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and whose good looks were slightly blighted by an inability to close his mouth while potting, giving the impression that he was about to regurgitate an inadvertently-swallowed pink.

And after Stevens it was Tony Knowles, who if memory serves me right, was once a competitor in the BBC's Superstars series, in which he discovered slightly too late that being able to run almost three times as fast as Bill Werbeniuk did not actually amount to much.

By contrast, young and svelte snooker players are today the rule rather than the exception. In fact, it is often difficult to tell them apart, which is why it was so heartening to see Stephen Lee reach the semi-final. Lee is a throwback to the old days in that he looks as if his idea of cardiovascular exercise is to eat a vanilla slice in less than five seconds. Watching him made me feel quite nostalgic.

The BBC's coverage has at times made me feel nostalgic too, for simpler times. Sitting, and sometimes standing, presenter Hazel Irvine has interrogated resident pundits Steve Davis and John Parrott, standing and sometimes sitting, more than is good for either her, them, or more crucially, us. And memo to producer: snooker needs constant action replay shots like fish need bicycles.

On the whole, though, the BBC have done a grand job. Hats off in particular to Clive Everton, who has commentated on the telly, provided updates on the radio, written reports for newspapers, and in his spare time, for all I know, walked around Sheffield displaying the latest score on a sandwich-board. Clearly, the World Snooker Championship has dominated his life almost as much as it has mine.

b.viner@independent.co.uk