“It was like a strange dream,” Joe Johnson says as he remembers becoming the world snooker champion 40 years ago as a 150-1 outsider and former gas board and factory worker who was the father of six children. Johnson had never previously won a game at the Crucible and he had struggled for years to make a living as a pro.
It was a time when Britain was “snooker loopy” and Johnson played characters such as Bill Werbeniuk who, in 1985, beat him in the first round while drinking a staggering amount of beer.
