SIX times former world snooker champion Steve Davis, known widely by the not wholly flattering nickname of Interesting, has just finished his shepherds pie.

I’m about to instigate a fascinating debate over where – if at all – the apostrophe should be in shepherds when a text message clicks in on his mobile.

The man said to have enjoyed inflation-adjusted career winnings of £26m has just sold a vinyl record for £3, but failed to hit the space bar when detailing postage and packaging.

“Did you really mean £175?” asks the sender.

“Try £1.75,” replies the champ.

He declines the jam roly-poly which is to follow. Interesting? You can see where this is leading, can’t you?

DAVIS, born 58 years ago in Plumstead, has driven up from his Essex home for an exhibition night at Darlington Snooker Club, owned by Peter Everett. Beforehand, there’s tea at Pete’s mum’s.

Unlike his last Darlington appearance, he’s not staying over. “I had everything ready for him,” says Rita Everett. “If he came any more I was going to call the spare bedroom the Steve Davis suite.”

She thinks he should have some jam roly-poly, too. “There’s not a picking on you,” says Rita – not quite old enough to be his mother – and nor is there the familiar red hair. “I’m down to the slate,” says Steve.

Though not officially retired – “I’d have to have a big wave-off, I don’t really want that” – he no longer plays competitively. “I just lost the urge,” says the man who reached the world championship quarter-finals as recently as 2010.

“It might come back in a couple of years, so I keep my ticket, but I no longer have to spend all day practising.”

He was a child of the Barry Hearn snooker revolution, his arch rival Alex Higgins its enfant terrible. Where Higgins was force 10, Davis rarely rippled respectability’s green baize surface. For seven successive years he was world No 1, four times world doubles champion with Tony Meo, winner of 28 ranking events, star of everything from Morecambe and Wise – the Christmas show – to Tiswas.

“I got a Blue Peter badge, too,” he says.

He’s both MBE and OBE. “Honours were mainly for those who killed people,” he says, modestly. “When we ran out of Sir Lancelots they had to start giving them to sportsmen, instead.”

Hearn, the club chairman, also invited him to join the board of Leyton Orient FC. The arrangement proved short-lived. “My first meeting was after our first win for ages, and we’d only had ten men for most of the game,” he recalls.

“I suggested we play with ten men every game, but they took no notice. They weren’t taking me seriously, so I didn’t go again.

“I don’t like football or rugby, anyway. I don’t like any game where people cheat. It’s very hard to cheat at snooker, but in football they fall over fresh air.”

Hearn knew him as Nugget – “You could put your case of money on him and know you were going to get paid”. The “Interesting” tag was first applied to his Spitting Image puppet. “It was like a breath of fresh air, it was a peg to hang me on,” he says, gratefully.

Someone once asked if he preferred good sex or good snooker. The answer may be imagined. “It just underlined my boring image, dug the hole still further,” he says, though the guy is altogether more multi-faceted than the no-pickings profile suggests.

He’s a top-notch pool player, a good chess player (“about golf handicap 14”), has written three cookery books and has both radio show and magazine column devoted to what apparently is called progressive rock. Hence the £3 record deal.

“It began when I was at school,” he recalls. “Even when we were 12 my friends were into David Bowie or Led Zeppelin and I had all kinds of strange tastes.”

Perhaps best of all he is remembered for the 1985 world championship final against the bizarrely bespectacled Dennis Taylor. Taylor, 8-0 down, fought back to 18-18. The final frame lasted 68 minutes, decided on black ball.

“At the end I was struggling to find the end of the cue with my chalk, never mind the pockets,” says Davis.

The climax was watched by 18.5m viewers, still a record BBC2 audience and still British television’s highest post-midnight viewing figures. In 2002 it was voted the greatest moment in sporting history.

Pete Everett phones from the club to see if I want pie and peas. The offer’s declined. There’s a second helping of jam roly-poly to be had.

THERE’S a column about snooker in the March issue of The Oldie magazine. “Those in charge,” it begins, “must every morning get down on their knees and thank the Lord for the continuing gift that is Ronnie O’Sullivan. Right now the Rocket is just about the only thing that the sport has going for it.”

Davis is defensive, supportive, perhaps recognising his younger self in some of the day’s potmatic players. “It’s hard to practise for eight hours a day and then go out and be charismatic,” he says, a mite disingenuously.

We walk round the corner to the snooker club, Davis carrying what he calls his stick. “When you reach a certain level you’re allowed not to call it a cue,” he insists.

“This was my first. I’ve only had three or four and for years I tried to resist the temptation to blame the cue, but finally I went back to this one. It’s had things done to it, it’s a two-parter now, but it’s still the same bit of wood.”

Perhaps absent-mindedly, he briefly refers to the stick as “her” but usually it’s it. “I think it’s asexual, really I’m just glad we’ll be ending our time together.”

THE club’s chocker, much fuller than when current world champion Stuart Bingham appeared a few months back and with noticeably more women.

On Davis’s last appearance they’d even brewed an Interesting Ale – “I still have the beer mat, I must have stolen it” – now there’s something called Bitter and Twisted, which doesn’t describe him at all.

Soon, indeed, a first impression is endlessly underscored: pressure off, the catatonic cue man has transformed into the Crafty Cockney.

He’s engaging, self-effacing – “Seventeen? That’s my biggest break all year” – raises more laughs in the first frame than Bingham had all evening.

The crucible’s cooled, it’s no longer centre stage. Visually eager, the audience is aurally inattentive. “I don’t mind; you can play bingo if you want,” says Davis, jocularly.

Someone recalls the first televised 147 maximum, for which he won a Lada. “At the time I was driving a Porsche, for which the insurance was £2,500,” he says. “The Lada cost £2,499. I had this image of being the most boring player in the world. It wasn’t my fault I won a Lada.”

Another punter asks about Stephen Hendry’s reputation for parsimony. “The only way to get a drink out of Stephen Hendry is to shove your fingers down his throat,” says Davis.

Though three times world trick shot champion – “the crappest title ever” – his trick shots last Friday prove, well, tricky. Few come off.

None doubts that they’ve had a greatly entertaining evening, nonetheless. None other has to drive home to Essex straight afterwards.

The man they call Interesting seeks out Rita Everett. “I’m bound to get hungry on the way back. Is there any of that jam roly-poly?”