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WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP SNOOKER A lot of people knock snooker but I quite like it. Even though players nowadays carry more advertising on their waistcoats than a couple of Formula One racing cars, which whilst fattening their wallets cheapens their image in inverse proportion, it is still a game which is played in a gentlemanly fashion, of great skill, and with moments of high drama. Who can forget that famous final of long ago when the final black of the final frame was potted to win a first and only World Championship for the popular David Taylor? Well me apparently because I've just remembered it was Dennis Taylor.      Incidentally, it is snooker that I have to thank for giving me quite a funny line when I used to write for radio's The News Huddlines. At the time the grossly overweight Canadian player Bill Werbenuik split his trousers in the act of stretching over the table to pot a ball, and I came up with the line that he didn't realise it had happened until he noticed there were three pinks on the table. Well the audience laughed.      During this year's World Championships I have been rather busy so when I switched on the TV set at nine-o-clock last night it was the first time I'd seen any of it. A few years ago if I'd switched on for snooker starting at nine I would have been watching it at a minute past nine, and if Alex Higgins had been playing probably have seen half a dozen balls potted. But this is not a few years ago, this is now, the age of the build-up. Consequentially by ten past nine all I'd seen was an over-elaborate title sequence, followed by the Scottish tart who does chirpy and two snooker players who used to be World Champions but aren't up to it any more rabbiting on about what might or might not happen once the snooker started.      This in turn was followed by a player profile about each of the two players taking part in the coming session, telling us everything we didn't want to know about them from their favourite junk food to which side they dress on.      Then Steve Davis and John Parrot, the players who used to be World Champions but aren't up to it any more, were joined by three more players who used to be World Champions but aren't up to it any more, and all five of them demonstrated their favourite trick shots. They were joined in this by Willie Thorne, who had already demonstrated his best trick, which was to transform himself from Willie Thorne into something resembling the Goodyear blimp in a tuxedo.      At this point I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea in the hope that when I returned the snooker would have started. It hadn't, but by then the five players who weren't up to it any more and the Goodyear blimp had left, and the Scottish tart who does chirpy was doing chirpy all on her own, and after a couple more minutes of doing chirpy we finally went over to the match.      The snooker got under way - a semi-final between Mark Williams, a player who used to be the World Champion and is still up to it, and Steven Lee, a player who like Willie Thorne is clearly as adept with a knife and fork as he is with a snooker cue. After the end of the first frame, won by Williams, I expected the referee to re-set the table, a minute's work at most, and the second frame to get under way, maybe with a little voice over from the commentator to fill in. Not a bit of it. Back to the studio we went for more chat with the Scottish tart who does chirpy and Steve Davis and John Parrot. How much do you think Mark will have gained in confidence by winning the first frame? How do you think Steven will react to losing the first frame? Would Mark have thought the balls are running for him when he fluked that pink? How would Steven have felt after missing that easy blue? What was going through Mark's mind when he was looking at that plant? In fact was it a plant or could it possibly have been a vase of flowers? And did Steven really dress on the left because it certainly didn't look like that to me?      All this took about five minutes - yet when we eventually re-joined the match the players still hadn't started the second frame. It hadn't taken the referee five minutes to set up the balls again so clearly we were watching a recording, although there had been no mention of this by the Scottish tart who does chirpy. I wondered why, and before long it dawned on me. The BBC now schedule umpteen hours of snooker every day of the World Championships. They scheduled quite a lot thirty years ago but now they schedule even more. But the players are playing faster than they did thirty years ago. In those days a nineteen frames match between Eddie Charlton and Cliff Thorburn was virtually guaranteed to last for upwards of three days, but these days Ronnie O'Sullivan and his ilk are getting through nineteen frames in about an hour and a half. So fast indeed that the BBC, now having a lot more snooker time to fill, have a lot less snooker to fill it. And this is why we are force-fed ten minutes chat and God knows what else junk they can come up with at the start of every programme. And a dissection of every frame at the end of every frame. Marvellous, isn't it.