FORMER world snooker champion Joe Johnson hits 65 next week, still playing despite seven heart attacks, a quadruple coronary bypass and failed laser surgery which has left him almost blind in his left eye.

Bradford lad, he’s philosophical. “It’s because I don’t play as well that I get quite a lot of invitations to exhibitions. People like to say they’ve beaten the world champion.”

The heart attacks, he reckons, were the product of 40 years of smoking, quite a lot of alcohol and way too many late night Bradford curries.

“When I were growing up we seemed to be eating curry every night. They used a lot of ghee, which is like butter. I don’t think it’s too good for the heart; I probably got what I deserved.”

The first laser procedure on his eyes was in 1991, the third attempt 18 months ago. “They over-corrected but it’s settling down again now,” says Joe. “They hope to be able to fix it soon.”

Snooker, he supposes, has changed. “In today’s game all the fellers are striving to keep fit, to stay at the top. I never really thought about fitness.

“I look at people like Ronnie O’Sullivan, who’s 41 and still at the top of his game, and that’s because he keeps himself right. I suppose it’s a bit too late for me.”

CATARACT removal usually seems to work wonderfully, many the excited stories of those who once again can see clearly.

It must be more than 20 years ago that I went to visit former LNER boxing champion and concert party entertainer Charlie Raine, back in Shildon.

Then in his 80s, Charlie had been unable to read before the laser job and, with manifest delight, was again perusing the Echo.

I told him that I was pleased he’d be able to read my columns again. “Bugger your stuff, I buy it for the racecards,” said Charlie – and toddled off down the bookie’s with his half-a-crown each way.

JOE Johnson spent last Tuesday evening at the New Club in Darlington – opened in 1909 and thus rather an old New Club but in any case known more usually as the Key Club.

Above a fruit shop, opposite Wilko’s, it’s wholly egalitarian, always welcoming to visitors and pretty much centred on snooker and on its elder sister, billiards.

Joe had played there last year, too, lost six of his eight games. “One was to a blind man, another to a man with one arm and a third to a chap who didn’t take his hat and coat off,” says club committee member John Dixon by way of affable introduction.

“They’re queuing up to play me because they know I can’t see a thing,” says Joe.

He pots an easy black, there’s a ripple of applause. “Thanks, lads,” he says.

In truth the 68 spectators which are all that fire regulations allow may as much be there for the potter patter, a sort of green baize version of Wheeltappers and Shunters Social club and with more grandfather gags than Stan Boardman.

It was his granddad, he says, who taught him to play snooker – and who lost a leg in the war. “He’d never go into an air raid shelter, me grandfather.

“He always said that if your name were on it, it would get you. That were all right for him, but Mr and Mrs Doodlebug were getting a bit fed up.”

JOHNSON, a former pipe layer, was a 150-1 outsider when he beat Steve Davis 18-12 in the 1986 final at the Crucible – a venue at which he’d never so much as won a match. He also became the only man ever to have lifted the trophy without having won a ranking tournament.

Davis had his revenge in the following year’s final. Though ranked fifth in the world in 1987-88, the man they called The Shoe never won another ranking tournament but remained close to the top of the table until he was 53 and broke his ankle.

“I was walking up some steps and slipped on the first one. It was the start of the season so I missed the whole year and that knocked me out of the top 64.

“These days they protect people who’ve had accidents or illness, keep them at the same ranking, but then they didn’t. I’d no option but to retire.”

He owns two snooker clubs, commentates for Eurosport, still plays in a European seniors tour, has seven children and 11 grandchildren.

Once he tried to show them the DVD of the 1986 final. The kids had taped He Man: Masters of the Universe over it. “Thanks lads,” he said.

THE New Club loves him, loves his stories, loves his comments on contemporaries. Of one he says that he worships the ground that’s coming to him, of another that he wishes the pockets were as big as the guy’s mouth is. A third is simply called something very unprintable.

“Some of the old pro’s are so dour, still want to beat everyone no matter what the circumstances,” someone says. “Joe’s different, you can have a laugh.”

He’s going well, though, beats reigning club champion Jos Scalley in the first game and then sees off multiple winners Sean McCabe and Roly Glew.

In between, he reports that his wife’s had her credit cards stolen. “I haven’t reported it. The chap who took them is spending less than she did.”

When the column heads homewards at 10.30pm he’s still unbeaten, still holding the crowd. The 100 per cent record’s maintained. As Erasmus or someone once suggested, the one eyed man is king.

HARRY Gilbert, the New Club’s estimable and amiable secretary, once refereed a football match at the Bin Laden Stadium in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. The groundsman – “definitely no groundswomen in Saudi” – had a grass pitch but no idea how to look after it.

“The water sprinklers weren’t moved, hence clarts in some places and cracks in others.”

And the Bin Laden Stadium? When Sheikh Mohammad Bin Laden died in 1967, says Harry, he left each of his 48 sons $340,000,000. Many, like the stadium builder, appear to have put the inheritance to great good use. Osama, shall we say, seems to have been more prodigal.

HARRY also played cricket back in the days when the Northern Despatch, our once-cherished sister evening paper, carried a Monday feature called Fives and Fifties, listing all those who’d achieved a half century or five or more wickets the previous Saturday.

He only qualified once, back in 1978, when the printers were on strike and there was no paper. “I never did get my thirty seconds of fame,” chides Harry.

OK, then: H Gilbert (Aldbrough St John II), 50-odd not out v Torrington’s. Some things take a little longer.