A night of laughs as Davis and Taylor relive the Black Ball final
Snooker is usually a sedate, quiet sport played in silence and requiring great concentration from the players.
Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis were both world champions at it and are paid to talk about it, but that doesn't stop them from making jokes and entertaining audiences up and down the country.
The pair were at Stafford Gatehouse Theatre to recreate the Black Ball final, one of the most famous moments in snooker history which saw Dennis Taylor win the 1985 World Snooker Championship Final on the final black ball.
It was a moment witnessed by more than 18 million people on TV and helped to propel snooker into mainstream culture, and more than 250 people were at the Gatehouse to see the two wax lyrical about that moment.
The evening started with the 1979 UK Championship winner and BBC commentator John Virgo inviting members of the audience onto the stage to take on a selection of trick shots on the full-sized table.
Engaging and funny, John Virgo was a good host throughout the evening, telling jokes about his time on Big Break and keeping the evening moving along.
He acted as commentator for the two frames of snooker played by Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis, both of whom have retired from the sport, but who can still build a break and make a difficult shot.
They interspersed the frames of the match, which finished in a one-all draw, with jokes about Steve being on I'm a Celebrity and meeting Joey Essex, while Dennis laughed about doing Strictly Come Dancing.
The main event of the first half gave Steve and Dennis the chance to recreate the Black Ball final from the point where Dennis took a chance on a double to win the match.
It's a sequence of shots the pair have talked about constantly over the last 37 years, but one that never gets boring as they went into the detail of each shot and their reactions to it, including Steve's own reactions to missing the final black before Dennis won the match.
Even now, 37 years later, you can still tell how much it annoys Steve Davis to have missed that final shot and the sheer emotion it brings from Dennis Taylor when he potted the final black and did his famous cue-over-the-head victory dance.
The second half featured John Virgo interviewing Dennis and Steve about their stories, taking up snooker and some of the characters they'd met over the years.
It was a scene that resembled three mates down the pub having a chat, as Dennis told stories about his experiences with Alex Higgins, while Steve Davis joked about bringing the game into disrepute after asking for a ham sandwich at the 1979 World Championships.
The Q&A session which followed saw questions about who they thought would win the world championship this year, Steve's favourite world final win and whether Dennis would exchange his own world title for anything else.
The evening ended with a show-stopping story from Dennis about Canadian player Bill Werbeniuk drinking 30 pints of lager before and during a match and attempting to play a difficult red and climbing up on the table, only to rip off a massive fart.
There wasn't a dry eye in the house as Dennis told the story of him biting his cue trying not to laugh at the time, with audience members biting their hands to avoid laughing, only for Werbeniuk to then turn around and say "Who did that?!"
It was an evening of nostalgia and laughs and a wonderful opportunity to see the participants of a moment in time still talk about it fondly and entertain a crowd as a result.
