Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry still sending snooker fans loopy All the old prog rocks groups are coming back. And we're the prog rock group of sport," says Davis. It's a strange thing in the UK that's where snooker is at: it's a nostalgia sport. But everywhere else in the world it's growing, it's on the march. Go abroad, they're only interested in current players. Go to China they don't want to see me and Dennis play. The only player here today who gets invited to China is him. He gestures dismissively at the man sitting alongside him. "They started watching snooker in China in the Nineties," Hendry says. I was their first superstar. I'm over there every month playing pool. I'm their face of pool. But Davis has a point: it is a surprise to see Hendry back at a snooker table, his eyebrows again heading northwards as he addresses the pink. He retired from the circuit in May 2012 saying he had finished with the sport. "I hardly ever play," he admits. The odd exhibition. For me the pleasure was simply in winning. When my standards dropped I hated it. I admire Steve and Jimmy, who can play for the love of the game. For me it was win or nothing. So now, since I can't win anymore, it's nothing. It was a tough decade of slow decline for Hendry after he lost his position as world No 1 in 1999. As his timing and touch began to deteriorate, he was mentally unable any longer to put in the endless hours of solo practice that once set him apart from his rivals. The table never changes. You've done every training routine ever invented. It just becomes impossible to maintain the level of intensity you need to stay at the top. He was reminded of how bleak things became for him during the recent investigation into the disgraced player Stephen Lee's match-fixing activities. "One of the games he was done for was against me," Hendry says. He was charged with deliberately giving me the first couple of frames for a betting scam. But the thing is, he went on to win. That was the depths I'd sunk to, somebody could fiddle it and still beat me. "Oh, when I read that report, I couldn't stop laughing," Davis adds. The difference between me and Stephen is how you deal with the losing. Maybe I'm more of a masochist. I've come to terms with my own mediocrity. I've asked myself the question: even though the outcome is not what I once wanted, can I get some enjoyment from playing? As long as the answer is yes, I'll carry on. Besides, what else am I going to do? As he speaks, Davis is tucking into a bacon sandwich. Hendry has declined the tired pork pie and underdone sausages that constitute the hospitality buffet. Whatever it is that has brought the pair together here Portsmouth, it is not the glamour. "Snooker tournaments did seem much more glamorous in the old days," Hendry says. The tobacco sponsors put a lot of money into backstage. There never seemed to be a shortage of booze. There were loads of cigarettes lying around too, but they were of no interest to me. I never smoked in my life. "Yeah, the hospitality of the cig companies was amazing," Davis adds. But also the more glamorous tournaments are the ones where you're the centre of attention. Glamour seems to diminish when you're one of the bit-part players. Davis agrees things have changed a bit for snooker since their heyday. Not least in terms of merchandise. "At snooker's height, it was amazing what we had," Davis says. At Matchroom [Barry Hearn's stable of players] we launched Matchroom aftershave, Matchroom slippers, Matchroom duvet cover, Matchroom pillowcase. Then there was Snooker Loopy. "Christ, Snooker Loopy," Hendry says of the Chas &Dave top-10 hit with Davis on backing vocals. "I bet you were singing the words in your playground," Davis says. Was I hell. Course you were, you just can't own up to it. I bet you had a copy. Actually knowing you, you probably bootlegged it rather than spend any money on buying it. I was in the top 10 with two songs at the same time. I was backing vocals on Snooker Loopy, then in the chorus on the Spitting Image Chicken Song. Oh, happy days. Not just the top 10 either: Davis recalls that his snooker-derived fame took him to the most unexpected places. I went to the Old Bailey once for lunch, invited by the judges. This judge said he was sitting on a case I might be interested in, so I went to watch the afternoon session and it was some bloke who'd killed someone with a pool cue in a pub fight. Item one in the prosecution evidence was the cue. What I remember most was thinking it wasn't a very good cue. The two agree that those were good times. Where they differ, though, is on where the game currently stands. Davis is convinced the standard is better than it has ever been, Hendry thinks that while there may be more decent players on the circuit, the top performers are no more effective than when he dominated the rankings. Plus, Hendry worries about the unquestioned decline in the sport's relative standing. "When I first came to prominence, there was more money on the snooker tour than on the European golf tour," he says. Look at it now. There's £100 million of total prize money in the golf and snooker's what, 8½? "It was down to 3½," Davis says. It's fighting to make up so much lost time. Three years ago we were down to six events on the main tour. Now we've got a full calendar. Regardless of whether he's my mate or not, make your own judgment on Barry "s involvement," he says of Barry Hearn, newly installed in sole charge of developing the game. But I'm convinced the future's bright. It was not the future, however, that had drawn the crowd in their dozens to Portsmouth. As Davis took on Taylor and Hendry was pitched against White, it was the opportunity to wallow in nostalgia. What will they expect of us? Hendry says. Well, you can guarantee they'll expect Dennis to waggle his finger like he did at Steve in the [1985] final. If they're expecting me to win, they'll be lucky. I'm 9-4 favourite, which is a joke. One thing they both agree on is that the crowd will want White to win. According to Hendry, that was always the way. "I played Jimmy four times in the world final and the only people in the crowd supporting me were my family," he says. "Most of them secretly wanted Jimmy to win," Davis suggests. You're probably right. I remember playing Jimmy in Scotland and the whole crowd was behind him. It was down the road from where I lived and my neighbours were cheering for him. "Sometimes I felt the favouritism actually weighed on him," adds Davis. Same with Alex Higgins. I've seen them asking the crowd to calm down. They were putting them off. There is one thing about Henry's relationship with White that still perplexes Davis. I hear people coming up to Stephen all the time and saying: 'Couldn't you have let Jimmy win one of those finals? And I think: 'Let him win? Have you any idea what this game's about?" " Once again, however, the crowd's wishes are dashed. As the Seniors Championship comes to its conclusion, White loses a best-of-three-frame quarter-final to Hendry, who in turn loses the semi-final to defending champion Nigel Bond. Bond cannot repeat his trick of last year. He loses 2-1 to Davis. Wearing a triumphal grin, he heads back to Essex with the £18,000 first prize in his cue case. You can imagine him whistling the tune of Snooker Loopy all the way home.